The Monkey's Wedding

Starred review from April 18, 2011
Focusing largely on prolific British fictionist Aiken's early works from the late 1950s and early 1960s, this imaginative posthumous collection includes among others six never before published short stories and two originally published under a pseudonym. "Honeymaroon" chronicles the adventures of a castaway typist who lands on an island inhabited by sentient mice; "Girl in a Whirl" features a motorcycle-riding, man-hating, daredevil albinoess; "Octopi in the Sky" follows a man haunted by images of cephalopods; and in "A Mermaid Too Many," a sailor's exotic present for his loverâa mermaid in a bottleâhas unforeseen consequences. The charm and unrestrained quality of Aiken's early stories are put into stark perspective by an essay from her daughter Lizza, who offers up glimpses into a particularly difficult period in her mother's life: Shortly after the end of WWII, widowed and homeless with two young children, Aiken made the bold decision to support herself and her family by writing. Wildly inventive, darkly lyrical, and always surprising, this collectionâlike the mermaid in a bottleâis a literary treasure that should be cherished by fantastical fiction fans of all ages.

May 1, 2011

Darkly whimsical stories, most of them from the 1950s and six of them previously unpublished, by the late author best known for the fanciful Wolves of Willoughby Chase series and Jane Austen sequels.

Aiken, who died in 2004, was a kind of modern folklorist whose stories (many of which were featured in Argosy) include a repressed English vicar reincarnated as a brazen cat, a mini-mermaid no one wants except the seaman who found her (but can't keep her), a forlorn 4-year-old boy summoned from the past by the sound of music, an ad writer haunted by octopuses and the chain-smoking devil himself. Then there's Midsummer Village, which is targeted by a millionaire developer blind to its legendary beauty, which is so great that it exists for only three days a year. Even in her more realistic stories, there's a sense of people getting pulled by unexplained or unseen forces, most affectingly in "The Monkey's Wedding," in which an elderly artist goes to reclaim his celebrated painting of a German-occupied Eastern European town, 50 years after the work fell into Nazi hands, and his crusty aged mother who discovers the grandson she never knew she had. Whatever the outcome of these tales, however deep the themes, Aiken writes with surpassing spirit and alertness, never ceasing to find interest or amazement in the traps people set for themselves. Some of the stories are slight, but Aiken's elegant restraint and dry wit never fail to leave their mark.

Stylistically, these stories are very much from another era (two of them were originally published under the pseudonym Nicholas Dee), but the moral insights in them are timeless.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 15, 2011

Best known for The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Aiken (1924-2004) was a prolific writer for 50 years, working as a copyeditor before turning her hand to fiction. The short stories in this collection include six never before published and two published under a pseudonym. These tales are vignettes of ordinary people trying to cope with extraordinary situations. A sailor brings a mermaid home in a bottle and has to figure out how to get rid of it when his wife refuses to keep it indoors. A man meets the devil and almost marries his daughter. A beloved village vicar is reincarnated as a wicked tomcat. Each story has a surprise or twist. Many are ironic, go-figure pieces. They are just like real life, only more so. VERDICT This book will appeal to readers of short stories and literary fiction. Highly recommended.--Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Kingston-Providence-Narragansett

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2011
Aiken wrote more than 100 books in her professional life as well as many short stories. Remembered mainly for the Wolves of Willoughby Chase series, she also wrote quirky adult novels with great characterization and scenes filled with laugh-out-loud humor, proving herself to be a writer of great skill and charm. This collection of 20 stories, written between 1955 and 2003, is, like many other retrospective collections, uneven. The earlier stories, written for magazines and limited by the publications requirements, show glimmers of the full-blown writer Aiken would become, while the later stories show her in the fullness of her writing skill. The Monkeys Wedding is a family story that ends with two ironic twists, while The Sale of Midsummer leaves readers with a premise and a promise but no concrete facts about the fate of the protagonists. Fans of all Aikens work will want this book for completion. Those who pick it up to see what her writing is about would do better to start reading at the back of the book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)