A charming collection of tales on the sea in various forms, curated by Harrier Sanders, all delightful if a bit too heterogeneous for my taste. You go feom tales of sailors (“The Captain’s Arm”, “Hornblower and the Widow McCool”) to tales in which the sea or the wind almost are characters (“The Open Boat” and “Make Westing”), from tales with sea creatures (“A Matter of Fact” and “The Mermaid”) to tales where you almost have no sea at all (“Ninety Days”). And then you have “Three Skeleton Key”, which is possibly the best story in the collection but it’s full-on weird horror, and I find it uncalled for if not properly advertised.
Here’s the list of tales:
- Rudyard Kipling, “A Matter of Fact” (1892);
- Stephen Crane, “The Open Boat” (1897);
- Joseph Conrad, “The Secret Sharer” (1909);
- Jack London, “Make Westing” (1908);
- George A. Birmingham, “The Mermaid” (1914);
- Perceval Gibbon, “The Captain’s Arm” (1930);
- Georges G. Toudouze, “Three Skeleton Key” (1937);
- C.S. Forester, “Hornblower and the Widow McCool” (1967);
- J.F. Wilson, “Ninety Days”, for which I could find no information.
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