The content of issue # 3 is particularly alluring.

Peter Winnington provides a learned ,exhaustive article about Mervyn Peake’s life and work, discussing how the theme of solitude permeates both his ‘Titus’ trilogy and the rest of his literary and artistic production. This intriguing view brings forth a new insight in the understanding of Peake’s body of work.

The critical essay by Joel Lane on Cornell Woolrich, the master of the noir genre, emphasizes the supernatural undercurrent of some of that writer’s best known novels. The horror key makes Woolrich’s work go beyond the limits of conventional crime fiction, creating an unsettling series of grim novels that Lane discusses in some detail. Of course, as the reviewer points out more than once, not everything in Woolrich’s production is top- notch, but the weird nature of the plots (ranging from the supernatural thriller to the dark erotic tale) is so vividly rendered by Lane to arouse the interest of anyone fond of eerie fiction.

The myth of the god Pan and its influence on Victorian and Edwardian literature is revisited by Adrian Eckersley, who tries his best to revive a rather stale theme.

Brian Stableford, whose English adaptation of Villiers de l’Isle Adam’s story collections for Blackcoat Press are to be highly praised, reconfirms his great competence on French decadent literature by analysing in depth the notorious ‘Gaspard de la nuit.’

Other interesting papers featured in the present Wormwood issue include John Howard’s commentary upon Hugh Walpole’s posthumously published novel ‘The Killer and the Slain’ and Andy Sawyer’s dissertation about the “fantastic” nature of John Wyndham’s so-called“science fiction.”

The only part of the journal I take exception to is the “Late review” section, where Douglas A. Anderson reports about lost, rare gems of supernatural fiction from the past. Why tease the poor reader with the appetizing smell of literary food virtually unobtainable because long out of print? At any rate, it’s plain to see that the magazine is not only extremely entertaining but also the source of a great deal of new information for the weird fiction enthusiast who wants to know and understand more of his favourite literary genre.

Mario Guslandi was born and raised in Milan, Italy, where he’s currently living. He became addicted to horror and supernatural fiction more than twenty years ago, after accidentally reading a reprint anthology of stories by MR James, JS Le Fanu, HP Lovecraft and A Machen. Since then his collection of horror books has expanded to the point of requiring continuous addictions of new shelves to his library, in order to avoid the collapse of the whole structure. Most likely the only Italian who regularly reads (and reviews) dark fiction in English, he’s always tempted to hide his true identity under feigned English or american pen-names, just for the fun of it, but then he keeps forgetting to do that.

© 2004 Laura Hird All rights reserved.