Reviews

The Haunted Dolls' House and Other Ghost Stories by M.R. James, S.T. Joshi

mulletgal's review

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mysterious fast-paced

3.0

lynchy8's review

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4.0

M.R. James is meant to be one of the best writers of ghost stories, and certainly his beginnings are very atmospheric. He is very good at scene-setting and building you up... Only for a number of his stories to end in 2 maybe 3 paragraphs; the supernatural equivalent of "they all went home for tea".

Some of the stories are really good - I particularly enjoyed "A Warning to the Curious", "Rats", and "the Wailing Well". Plenty were really good to start (I loved the premise of "A View From A Hill") but just needed 5 or more paragraphs to tidy the ending.

I still give it 4 stars for the knowledge of folklore, Shakespeare references, and that the stories were enjoyable, even if they did end rather suddenly.
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