Ally Wilkes has crafted an essential volume for anyone who finds the city’s cheer a thin veneer over something ancient and hungry. Elvis Costello may not have wanted to go to Chelsea, but after reading London Weird, I don’t think I ever want to go to London again, as these pages ensure the city’s walls close in and the Thames runs black with dread.

London Weird, Calling to the underworld, Come out of the cupboard, ya boys and girls

London Weird, Calling to the underworld, Come out of the cupboard, ya boys and girls

This trio of tales reimagines London not as a vibrant capital, but as a concrete labyrinth pulsing with cosmic dread. Ally Wilkes masterfully unearths deeply rooted fears from the most mundane and familiar settings, creating a collection that is profoundly weird, unsettling, and claustrophobic.

London holds a strange place in my heart. I love it, but after two days, I’ve had enough. Beyond the vibrancy, I find it oppressive, a place where I feel a constant, low-level sense of threat. Wilkes’s London Weird doesn’t just feed this psychosis; it gorgeously articulates it, crafting a deeply unsettling, haunting, and smothering atmosphere. The three stories are linked by the entrapment and danger women face, moving from psychological prisons to literal ones, using a masterful sense of foreboding to suffocate the reader.

“You’re About To See This Colour Everywhere” is a modern, gut-punch reinterpretation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. In Wilkes’s hands, the original’s themes of patriarchal medical oppression are transformed into a tale of a toxic relationship between two women. An interior designer’s obsession with a specific shade of yellow seeps into her marriage, slowly peeling away the veneer of happiness to expose the rot of resentment and jealousy underneath. The genius of this story is how the madness blooms from within, a subtle psychological decay that gets under your skin and refuses to leave.

“Who’s That Trip Trappin'”: This story delves into the horrors festering beneath the financial district, in the unnerving depths of Bank/Monument station. As someone with a genuine fear of the Tube, this tale didn’t just tap into my anxiety; it mainlined it directly into my subconscious. When Sam becomes trapped in the tunnels, her frantic struggle for escape is utterly oppressive. Wilkes’s prose, completely free of graphic content, builds terror through sheer atmosphere and the threat of the unseen, making you desperate to reach the end and gasp for air in the suffocating dark.

“Billy Blue”: This extraordinary haunted-house story traps a pregnant woman, Alice, in a new-build flat and a troubled relationship with a controlling partner. As Alice grapples with antenatal depression and anxiety, her reality begins to fray, fixating on a mysterious man, the colour blue, and the sinister history of the land. The true horror lies in the unbearable claustrophobia of her life, trapped by her pregnancy, her partner, and her own mind. Wilkes handles Alice’s fear with immense sympathy, leading to a frantic, breathless conclusion that is as powerful as it is moving.

Ally Wilkes has crafted an essential volume for anyone who finds the city’s cheer a thin veneer over something ancient and hungry. Elvis Costello may not have wanted to go to Chelsea, but after reading London Weird, I don’t think I ever want to go to London again, as these pages ensure the city’s walls close in and the Thames runs black with dread.

London Weird: a micro-collection by AV Wilkes 

London Weird collects three short stories from critically-acclaimed horror author Ally Wilkes.

Included in this micro-collection on weird, cosmic, and unsettling modern London:

• You’re About To See This Colour Everywhere, a modern riff on The Yellow Wallpaper.
• Who’s That Trip Trappin’, in which Bank/Monument station houses something much darker underneath.
• Billy Blue: a pregnant woman is trapped in a new-build flat, a bad relationship… and there’s something bubbling up from the basement.

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