THE BEST OF ROBERT WESTALL, VOLUMES ONE & TWO Macmillan, ? 10.99 Robert Westall is not an author who is widely read in India. Which is a pity, since his fiction for young adults is marvellously directed at capturing the imagination of his readers. His subjects, for the most part, belong to the realm of the preternatural and he conjures up that shadowy, twilight world in all its fantastic, immeasurable possibilities. That is not to say, however, that the late author wrote only of ghosts and haunted houses ? though there are plenty of those in his stories. As is evident from The Best of Robert Westall: Volumes One and Two, what sets him apart from other writers of ghostly tales is the finesse with which he handles his subject, building up atmosphere not through crude, Gothic props but by his masterful use of language and of course, by his eerie storylines. In his writing, good and evil, nature and supernature collide and at times coalesce, often with intriguing results. Though he wrote for young people, Westall?s protagonists are not necessarily children or adolescents. For instance, in ?A Walk on the Wild Side?, which incidentally, is one of the best stories in the collection, the protagonist is a fiftyish headmaster who slowly realizes that his cat Rama is not an ordinary Ginger who harbours an ordinary affection towards her master. By some weird, other-worldly shift, she has been transformed into a beast-woman who is desperate to consummate her passion for him. Sounds utterly absurd, but such is Westall?s craftsmanship that he does rather a good job of evoking the willing suspension of disbelief that is so vital in stories like these. Many of the stories in these two volumes are set against the backdrop of World War II, a time when Westall himself was growing up in Britain. But the pick of the lot are easily the ones where he catches the reader in a web of fascinatingly extraordinary circumstances. And so, there is ?The Creatures in the House? where a malevolent spirit which has fed off the minds of generations of single old ladies, reducing them to vapid, vegetable like beings, has finally to face the challenge of a strong young woman and her brood of cats. (Cats do, in fact, bag the star turn in many of Westall?s stories.) There is ?The Death of Wizards? where an 18 year-old would-be poet yearns to know the truth about everything so that he can create immortal poetry. But when he does receive that priceless gift, he realizes its awesome, horrifying implications. And there is ?The Woolworth Spectacles? where an honest, righteous young woman slowly opens her heart to evil once she finds an old pair of spectacles and keeps them on her person all the time. The supernatural in Westall can sometimes verge towards the mystical, as it does in ?A Nose Against the Glass? In this story, an old, immensely prosperous antique dealer is visited by the apparition of an emaciated young boy outside his store on Christmas Eve. Deeply troubled, he runs out into the frosty night intent on rescuing the child and giving him food and shelter. The pursuit ends in the local church where old Widdowson dies but not before scrawling a last testament leaving his entire fortune to the children of the world. For he has finally seen the child for who he is ? he has deep, bloody scars on his two wrists. There are shades of Oscar Wilde?s ?The Selfish Giant? here but what of that? Westall places his tale in a modern context and as usual, keeps his reader?s attention rivetted on the unfolding drama of the inexplicable, unknowable supernatural. What is refreshing about his work is unlike a lot of authors writing for young adults, Westall does not fight shy of referring to ?adult? issues like lust or adultery. And his stylistic excellence is indubitable. Whether he writes of fighter planes or haunted houses, archangels or lonely spirits, his style is always vividly evocative, always crisp and contemporary. Whether or not one gets gooseflesh reading his stories, young people could definitely go to Westall for some cracking good prose.