Wild Women

by Melissa Mia Hall

Offers stories that celebrate women's wilder side and the strategies that have been used to raintain that wildness in spite of society, by authors including Margaret Atwood, Alice Walker, Gene Wolfe, and Ursula K. LeGuin.

Genres: Feminism, Fiction

373 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1997

Reviews

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This anthology has some very good writing by some excellent authors in it, as well as some pieces that feel dated and/or amateur. Typos and other errors contributed to give the book as a whole a somewhat unprofessional feel. (Fritz Leiber's name is misspelled every one of the four times it appears.) I also felt that not all of the pieces included really fit into the stated theme of the collection. Leiber's "Girl With the Hungry Eyes," while a classic story, is really a comparison of advertising to vampirism, not a paean to independent and powerful women, for example.
This is also not an exclusive collection, and I was disappointed to find that many of the better stories, I'd already read. (Connie Willis' 'Winter's Tale,' Ursula LeGuin's 'The Wife's Story' and Kate Wilhelm's 'The Merry Widow.') There were some great selections that were new to me, however: Joyce Carol Oates - 'Haunted,' Nancy Collins - 'Iphigenia,' Jane Yolen - 'Rabbit Hole.' Pat Cadigan's feminist analysis of the Peter Pan story was a joyful delight. Gene Wolfe's 'Wolfer' was really good up until the completely out-of-place injection of religion into the end. Many of the other pieces were just alright, or didn't really do it for me.

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a few stories in this collection were entertaining and engrossing, gems from literary masters like Atwood, Oates and Walker. Hall’s vision is laudable but I’m not sure that it’s realized in her project. Female strength, ingenuity, and independence are definitely celebrated but the notion of the multi-faceted wild woman is left flat and too ambiguous. The stories themselves are just too unsure of what they’re trying to say about wild women. Ultimately the collection lacks a coherence that the title promises; at least that’s my reaction. Wild Women was still very enjoyable though, and the mix of prose and poetry was refreshing.