My favourite audiobook narrator, Wayne June, has recorded and released as a FREE MP3 AUDIOBOOK one of the greatest horror tales ever written.
The Willows was H.P. Lovecraft’s favourite story. He wrote this about it:
“In delineating the extremes of stark fear, yet infinitely more closely wedded to the idea of an unreal world constantly pressing upon ours is the inspired and prolific Algernon Blackwood, amidst whose voluminous and uneven work may be found some of the finest spectral literature of this or any age. Of the quality of Mr. Blackwood’s genius there can be no dispute; for no one has even approached the skill, seriousness, and minute fidelity with which he records the overtones of strangeness in ordinary things and experiences, or the preternatural insight with which he builds up detail by detail the complete sensations and perceptions leading from reality into supernormal life or vision. Without notable command of the poetic witchery of mere words, he is the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere; and can evoke what amounts almost to a story from a simple fragment of humourless psychological description. Above all others he understands how fully some sensitive minds dwell forever on the borderland of dream, and how relatively slight is the distinction betwixt those images formed from actual objects and those excited by the play of the imagination.
Foremost of all [his works] must be reckoned The Willows, in which the nameless presences on a desolate Danube island are horribly felt and recognised by a pair of idle voyagers. Here art and restraint in narrative reach their very highest development, and an impression of lasting poignancy is produced without a, single strained passage or a single false note.”
Get the complete audiobook of The Willows, it’s two hours in six chapters, HERE.
But hurry, the FREE version will soon become the pay version.
And if you like what you hear in The Willows be sure to check out one of the greatest novels you’ve never read, The House On The Borderland by William Hope Hodgson – Wayne June’s reading of it is unbelievably great.
Posted by Jesse Willis
P.S. An illustrated |PDF| of The Willows is available too!
Ah, great version of “the Willows”. Thanks.
Agreed! And our discussion of it will post in a few hours. Also, be sure to have a look at Wayne’s reading of THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND (at $10 it’s a steal of a deal).