Night Shade: Gothic Tales by Women [Paperback]

Judith M. Redding (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 24, 1999

From a housewife with morphing hands to a teenage girl who communes with La Noche, this audacious collection showcases 16 eerie, otherworldly tales by talented women writers. Contributors include Terri de la Peña, Ruthann Robson, Susanne Sturgis, and Barbara Wilson, among others.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press; First Edition edition (March 24, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580050247
• ISBN-13: 978-1580050241
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,846,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Goth feminist fantasy, May 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Night Shade: Gothic Tales by Women (Paperback)

Women writers keeping it real. Seventeen Goth Short Stories that inject modern lifestyles with supernatural myth to gloriously gory effect.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FANTASTIC VISUALS FOR THE MIND BENDERS OUT THERE, August 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Night Shade: Gothic Tales by Women (Paperback)

Where else can you spice up your love interests reading this book for ideas and plumming the depth of your soul to achieve everything you can possibly drain from your mind to THINK you've achieved it! Goth forever!

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Nope, April 5, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Night Shade: Gothic Tales by Women (Paperback)

So I bought this without even bothering to read any of the chapters. Boy, was THAT a mistake, but I read it because I didn't have anything else at the time. If you're real desperate for supernatural stories, and I mean REAL desperate, than I guess you could get this book. If you're into stories like "Aperitif" (by Susan Raffo): the story about the woman who relates having her glass eye [filled] with sex or the story about a guy who gets trapped on a sheet of film-yes CAMERA FILM - ("Newtime Cowboy" by Joyce Wagner)then this is the book for you. Unfortuately, as you can see, this WASN'T the book for me but everyone has their own tastes.