I picked this anthology up mostly off the back of the idea of stories from unappreciated women. I didn’t think too hard on the kind of stories, or really what “weird” fiction is. And what it is is darker and more horror-tinged than I usually like. Many of the stories definitely descend into the sort of creepy, psychological horror that I really feel uncomfortable with. These include Let Loose by Mary Cholmondeley, about an architect who delves into a country church crypt and lets something out; Kerfol by Edith Wharton, about a young woman and the lengths to which her husband went to keep her isolated; and particularly Where Their Fire is not Quenched about a woman who has an affair and is doomed to spend eternity repeating it.
These are all great examples of the genre, and I tip my hat to the editor for finding all these stories and airing these examples of women writing in what could often be considered purely a man’s world, but the genre isn’t one that I particularly enjoy, even if I appreciated the form of the the stories. Of all the collection, I think The Haunted Saucepan by Margery Lawrence is probably the one I enjoyed the most. I liked the way it took an everyday object and made it scary, but also the scientific way that the protagonist and his friend went about deducing the cause of the mischief.
So an interesting collection, and certainly of note, but not one for me, personally.
