From Amazon.com
Gothic fiction transforms normality--the supernatural becomes the everyday, human fears are exaggerated, familiar landscapes are turned into places that are strange and bizarre. Female writers have inhabited this landscape for generations. Mary Shelley, Anne Rice, Angela Carter are just three of the more famous dark divas. Now some less well-known voices have their say in
Night Shade: Gothic Tales by Women. The 17 short stories take place in everyday settings--contemporary houses, a bar, a veterinary hospital. Yet in this collection, the familiar is subverted. In Roz Warren's "The Birthday Present," a quite ordinary young woman is given a special gift on her 25th birthday--the powers of shapeshifting. When she falls in love with a married man, Liza morphs into a body that this man will find irresistible.
Continuing with the theme of metamorphosis, Lisa D. Williamson's "The Existential Housewife" is the story of a frustrated homemaker who develops the ability to transform her hands into household objects. As Mel's boredom and frustration with her domestic confines intensifies, her hands take on more sinister characteristics. Her fingers "morphed into sharp, curved blades, deadly looking files and long, pointed knives." Her husband will do well to watch his back!
Night Shade is a melting pot of the erotic, the supernatural, and the gloriously gory. Fans of Gothic fiction will eat it up. --Naomi Gesinger
From Publishers Weekly
Evidently the editors of this anthology define "gothic" as stories of the supernatural. As such, however, most of these 17 stories fall flat, for they lack the frissons of fear and suspense so necessary to the genre. Also, few of the selections fit the editors' stated theme of transformation. The stories themselves are competently written, and readers will find some satisfaction in the sheer variety of these dark tales, some of which edge into the (primarily lesbian) erotic. Subjects range from the empowerment of a Scarlett O'Hara-like Southern belle through voodoo-induced lycanthropy (Diane DeKalb-Rittenhouse's "Femme Coverte") to the romance of an unwed, pregnant, Hispanic teen with a shape-shifting witch-dog (Terri de la Pe?a's "La Noche"). The better stories are the most unusual. Joyce Wagner's "Newtime Cowboy" succeeds as an amusing, if obvious, tale about a Hollywood superstar who changes into a strip of film. Meredith Baird imagines a deformed child's strange symbiosis with her mother in "Breech Birth." Jean Stewart's strong characterization of humans and dogs drives the plot of "Feeding the Dark," in which a tough policewoman finds true love with a leather-clad goddess when she joins a pack of canine vigilantes. With the exception of Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman's "Luella Miller"Aa fine New England yarn first published in 1903Athe stories are previously unpublished works from contemporary writers. At least 12 of the 17 authors (including the editors, who have each included a story of her own) have appeared in Brownworth's earlier anthologies. Considering the number of women writing supernatural fiction these days, perhaps this uninspired volume would have been better served by dipping into a broader pool of contributors.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
