Reason Read: ROOT, TIOLI July 2023
Robert Louis Stevenson is listed as an atheist. This set of short stories included
The Body Snatchers: a story of grave robbers and murderers supplying medical school with cadavers.
The Poor Thing: a tale of a horse shoe that leads to marriage,
The Bottle Imp: this reminds me of the Monkey Paw in that it is about a bottle that can grant your every wish. The problem is that if you own it when you die then you will go to Hell. You must sell it and you must sell it for less than you paid and the person buying it must know what he is getting in exchange for his money.

These were all a bit creepy and show a certain dread of death and perhaps Stevenson may have claimed atheism he also had a fear of death. ( )

2.5 - 3 stars

These stories weren't bad but weren't anything special really either. I liked the Bottle Imp the most. ( )

FROM AMAZON: A dark night, a graveyard and the suspicion of murder… The Body Snatcher is one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s most chilling tales. After many years, a chance encounter between two former medical students forces them to recall their sinister past and foul play that was better left buried. Perfect for long winter nights, these stories have been specially selected to create an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. Read by Roy McMillan, with Naxos AudioBooks’s trademark of carefully chosen music. ( )

I whipped through this, as it is only 19 pages long. It’s Robert Louis Stevenson, so of course it’s well written. The evil done in The Body Snatcher is threefold: murder, desecrating graves in order to steal bodies, and corrupting the morals of others. It’s more a commentary on the lows people will stoop to in order to advance their own ambitions than a horror story, although Stevenson does try to swing it towards the supernatural with his twist at the end. One man’s hardness and self interest infects another more principled man into accepting the immoral actions they undertake. MacFarlane in this short story equates the ability to silence moral qualms in order to get ahead to acting like a lion rather than a lamb. Perhaps at the time it was written, not long after Burke and Hare were in the news, it was shocking, but I found it a little tame. ( )

An excellent collection of stories, most of which have you sitting on the edge of your seat wondering what the next twist will be. A couple of the longer stories are a little slower to start, but the author more than makes up for this by the conclusion. ( )