The Far Forests by Joan Aiken
Fresh off a few lackluster (or straight-up awful) books in a row, I needed a win. And since winging it had ended in misery a few times too many, I also needed a plan.
Enter that old-timey zine, Yandro. Its author(s) also hated The Song of the Pearl and reviewed plenty of other books. Men authored most of them, but there was one standout: The Far Forests by Joan Aiken.
While Aiken, daughter of famed Conrad Aiken, seems to have been pretty successful, this book of short stories never seems to have taken off. Few copies are for sale online—though those few are pricey—and even her Wikipedia page omits it from the extensive "selected works."
Thankfully the Palos Verdes Library District withdrew their copy from circulation, and it ended up in the hands of someone willing to sell it for a reasonable price.
The best word to describe the fifteen short stories of The Far Forests is charming. This is despite several stories that involve characters seeing/predicting a person's death, a potential case of cannibalism, a twist on a haunted house story, and a poor soul whose damnation on earth follows him into the afterlife.
I'm not entirely sure how Aiken does it, yet she does. Even the grisly stories have this cozy, homey feeling like you could curl up and stay awhile.
This charm doesn't (always) come at the expense of substance. While most stories are light-hearted, several had a good deal of staying power. The last story, A Taxi to Solitude, especially intrigued me.
While charming doesn't come at the expense of substance, it does come at the expense of urgency. Kindly, laid back characters who, for the most part, take the peculiarities of their life in stride don't compel me to read with haste. There's a reason why offices and gyms aren't often charming or cozy: psychologically, coziness makes you want to relax.
I wouldn't say that's a detraction to this collection, but it is important to know, lest you burst into these "Tales of romance, fantasy, and suspense," expecting a bit more drama.
On that note, while most of the stories have a supernatural or fantastical element, not all do. A good deal of them have a thread of romance, though it's a classical English sort of love story: a man and a woman meet, fall in well with each other, then one says something like "Well, we're to be married, aren't we?"
All-in-all, I agree with Yandro's positive assessment and am glad I picked it up based on their review. If you're in the mood for something cozy and charming with just the right amount of mental heft, The Far Forests is as perfect a recommendation as I think I can make. Given, that is, that you can pick up a copy for less than $75.
(Aside: It's funny, the concept of The Panorama Egg would be right at home in this collection as a short story—probably more so than it was as a standalone novel. I would love to read Joan Aiken's take on that deeply-intriguing and enjoyable yet somehow awful novel.)
Cover art by Joe Ciadello:
