Sometimes, when choosing books for Book Bingo, I make bad decisions. For example, my bookshelves hold several short story collections that are pretty slender and probably would have made for some pretty easy reading. But instead, I reached for Weird Women, edited by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger, a 360-page anthology of short stories written from 1852-1923.
To be clear, conceptually this is a great idea for an anthology. It collects stories from twenty-one pioneering female authors of supernatural fiction. Collections of such fiction from that era tend to be heavily focused on the men, and apparently some of these stories were hard to track down and had been out of print for some time.
The problem that I didn’t think about when selecting this book is that authors in the olden times loved to use dense language and tons of references and oh yeah, a little sprinkling of racism for extra flavor. These stories are all very much of their time and they didn’t make for fun reading, especially not on warm summer days. I really should have saved this book for the Autumn or Winter, when the moodiness of the writing and thematic elements would have been more seasonably appropriate (casual racism is, of course, never in season).
None of these stories really grabbed me, even though I could recognize that a few of the authors were really talented or exploring some interesting ideas. I suspect I would have really enjoyed Weird Women back when I was reading a lot of Poe, Lovecraft, and Bierce, but my tastes have moved on and I don’t have a lot of patience for old fashioned purple prose. And not to belabor a point, but my patience for old fashioned racism is greatly diminished, too.
Let me tell you what I did like about this anthology. Each story is prefaced by a short biography of the author, and some of these women seem like they were really cool! It was great to learn about the authors even if I didn’t enjoy the work. And the editors very thoughtfully footnoted the stories, explaining now-obscure words and references that readers in that era would have grasped but that might pull a modern reader out of the work to have to look something up in the dictionary or on Google. One story was so full of quotes from and references to various bits of literature, drama, and music from the era that it was almost as much footnote as story! I really appreciate the work the editors put into contextualizing the works and making them more approachable.
Ultimately, I think Weird Women would be a great resource for anyone who is specifically interested in the early days of supernatural fiction, or female authors writing during that chosen period. Readers with strictly modern tastes will probably not enjoy it and should avail themselves of the work of living female authors instead.
CWs and TWs: In addition to the aforementioned racism (which includes multiple uses of the g-slur in one story), there’s sexism, ableism, death (including of babies/children), illness, and general horror themes. Given the era of these stories, it tends more towards the atmospheric and psychological rather than the gory.
Format and Source: I read this as a paperback picked up at The Neverending Bookshop when it was still open.
Book Bingo Prompts
SAL/SPL Adult Summer Reading: Short Story Collection. This is a collection of short stories. Some were pretty long for short stories, like in the 40 page range, but none quite stretched to novella length.
Book Bingo Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 19 out of 25 prompts complete. 3 bingos.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 16 out of 25 prompts complete. 2 bingos.
SAL/SPL Adult Summer Reading: 20 out of 23 prompts complete, 5 bingos.
SBTB Summer Romance: 5 out of 24 prompts complete, 0 bingos.
Donation for Palestine: Since I bought this book from a bookstore which closed last year, it definitely counts for the Physical TBR Challenge and thus also another $50 donation to a family in Palestine. For this book, I chose to donate to Haya Murtaja’s family. Visit this post for a full write-up on my challenge and links to all of the families I have donated to so far. I am now at 8 books out of my 12 book goal.