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vivdunstanContinuing my reread, and onto this story, one of the most memorable ones for me, even if I have a tendency to muddle it up with "The Copper Beeches".
As a woman reading it, this story is particularly unnerving: a young woman pursued repeatedly by a mysterious male cyclist on isolated country roads. The 1980s Jeremy Brett TV version is hardly any less disturbing, with added televisuals, and is one of the earliest stories in his TV series.
It's yet another story in the canon to concern fortunes made overseas, in this case South Africa. Indeed there are many familiar elements reused throughout this story.
And re my repeated muddling, it is partly I think because the two strong female characters in "The Solitary Cyclist" and "The Copper Beeches" share the same first name, Violet ...
But it's that central image - mental or televisual - of the young woman being pursued by a cyclist that I can't shake from my mind. And it is one that remains chilling to this day.
As a woman reading it, this story is particularly unnerving: a young woman pursued repeatedly by a mysterious male cyclist on isolated country roads. The 1980s Jeremy Brett TV version is hardly any less disturbing, with added televisuals, and is one of the earliest stories in his TV series.
It's yet another story in the canon to concern fortunes made overseas, in this case South Africa. Indeed there are many familiar elements reused throughout this story.
And re my repeated muddling, it is partly I think because the two strong female characters in "The Solitary Cyclist" and "The Copper Beeches" share the same first name, Violet ...
But it's that central image - mental or televisual - of the young woman being pursued by a cyclist that I can't shake from my mind. And it is one that remains chilling to this day.