Alan Ryan - Haunting Women

Alan Ryan (ed.) - Haunting Women (Ace, 1988)



Alan Ryan - Introduction

Shirley Jackson - The Renegade
May Sinclair - The Villa Désirée
Muriel Spark - The House of the Famous Poet
Ruth Rendell - Loopy
Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper
Gertrude Atherton - The Foghorn
Mrs. Henry Wood - The Ghost
Tanith Lee - Simon's Wife
Rosemary Timperley - Hell on Both Sides of the Gate
Ellen Glasgow - The Shadowy Third
Jean Rhys - The Sound of the River
Mary Danby - Robbie
Hortense Calisher - Heartburn
Isak Dinesen - The Cloak

Perhaps the most notable thing about this collection for us is that shamefully, this is the only instance I can find of a Mary Danby story being used in a collection outside of those she edited herself. Robbie is one of her nastiest conte cruel's concerning a mentally retarded kid who wants a brother to play with. But how are little boys made? According to his parents, "frogs and snails and puppy-dog's tails." Whatever inspired Danby to have Robbie ask everyone he meets the same obscure certainly works - or at least, I remember the story not by title but as 'the "had yer snap?" one'. Ruth Rendell's Loopy is a neat werewolf yarn, which sees Colin give a very spirited performance in the annual production of Little Red Riding Hood. Sadly for him - and wife-to-be Moira - he's still not all that clever at slipping out of character.

Rosemary Timperley - Hell on Both Sides of the Gate: Gordon Sleight, seventy, is released from an asylum for the criminally insane having served twenty-five years of a life sentence for murdering his slatternly wife. He considered it his duty to new-born daughter Astrid to ensure she had the best chance in life, and her mother certainly wasn't going to be allowed to drag her down.

Now Astrid, happily married, is to meet him for the first time and is less than thrilled at the prospect. Sleight will be staying with he and her husband Cyril, a lighthouse-keeper who spends one month at home, two months away on duty. The domineering Sleight soon makes clear his loathing for Cyril, alienates him from his exhausted daughter and then instigates his death. He takes her husband's place in Astrid's bedroom and soon she's pregnant with his daughter. You can bet he'll see to it that she has the best chance in life ....

Hortense Calisher - Heartburn: Psychiatrist walks into a Doctor’s surgery and says “I have some kind of small animal lodged in my chest …”
It began when a troublesome boy arrived at the school and boasted of his special ability. He could swallow animals and regurgitate them whole. Obviously, nobody believes him and when one of the kids says as much, the ‘gift’ transfers to him. Soon it has passed from one boy to the next until only the shrink dismisses it as some kind of collective mania …

You can see the end coming a mile off but that doesn’t detract from the powerful strangeness of the thing.