A little girl is given a doll’s house for her birthday. And, because this is a Robert Aickman short story, it turns out to be haunted! Wooooooo, spooky stuff!
I like the idea of the story, which has a kind of Russian nesting doll structure to it, and aspects of it as well, like the hidden room that can be seen from the outside but not found within. And the final act was suitably creep-tastic.
I like the idea of the story, which has a kind of Russian nesting doll structure to it, and aspects of it as well, like the hidden room that can be seen from the outside but not found within. And the final act was suitably creep-tastic.
But it’s a really slow-moving story with not much happening for the most part. Aickman’s prose felt especially thick in this one, perhaps to accentuate the dream-like atmosphere - it doesn’t seem quite real - though it made it hard to visualise what little was happening. Aickman is sometimes too subtle for his own good and I definitely felt that way with this one. And, as always, the ending is anticlimactic - he can’t ever end his stories well.
I didn’t like The Inner Room much. I’d recommend Ringing the Changes instead but Aickman is an acquired taste so don’t expect much from this fairly unknown (for a reason) horror writer.
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