Couching at the Door

Book excerpt: In this collection of dark, supernatural tales the esteemed author D. K. Broster gave full reign to her vivid imagination. Sometimes—as in “The Window” or “The Pestering,” or “All Soul’s Day”—these are what we might call ‘explainable’ ghost stories: apparitions or hauntings whose origin is to be found in some violent or unjust action in the past. Other stories, “Couching at the Door” and “From the Abyss,” have little or no explanation, even in supernatural terms. Add to these an elegant reworking of the Persephone myth, “The Taste of Pomegranates,” the downright bloodthirsty “Clairvoyance,” and the psychological studies, “The Promised Land” and “The Pavement” which so well merit the heading ‘Madness and Obsession’, and you have a collection to disturb and unsettle the strongest nerves. Literary historian Jack Adrian describes Couching at the Door as “a pure masterwork, one of the most satisfying weird collections of the century”.