![]() ![]() The narrator's interests give HPL a great opportunity to play with the sort of fictional history and geography that he clearly loves so much, and he does a particularly good job in this story of building up weird details. In fact, there's an element of tragedy here, and his need to know is a fatal flaw that leads inevitably to his undoing. ![]() The narrator's particular interests provide him with a clear motivation throughout the story, unlike a few otherwise effective tales – like The Shunned House or The Lurking Fear – where one is forever wondering what suicidal instinct it is that keeps the protagonists in the midsts of the action. ![]() The travelling antiquarian with a dilettante's knowledge of local history and architecture and boundless curiosity instantly brings to mind HPL's own frugal travels around the north-eastern USA Joshi points out in A Life how he used his own observations and real locations as a basis for the fictional coastal town of Innsmouth. More than any of the other stories, the (unnamed, again) narrator is a distinctly autobiographical figure. It features some of his finest evocative writing and focuses on his favourite themes of xenophobia, degeneration, superstition and the spectre of madness that hangs over all HPL's first person narrators. In The Shadow Over Innsmouth, all his various quirks and ticks combine to produce a story of sublime rising horror, and where all the individual elements come together to a genuinely disturbing climax. ![]() If I had to choose a single story that shows the very best of HPL, it would have to be this one. ![]()
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