Women of the Weird: Eerie Stories By the Gentle Sex

by Seon Manley (Editor), Gogo Lewis (Editor), E. Nesbit

Book by

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Gothic, Classics, Science Fiction Fantasy

188 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Danine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was in the library browsing through the Young Adult section and a book was untidily shelved. I looked closer and the cover displayed an Edward Gorey sketch. I'm very interested then. I open the book to the first few pages and there is a short introduction of Shirley Jackson and how H.P. Lovecraft inspired her writing. I'm really hooked.

This book is a small treasure of 11 stories ranging from Sci-fi to the supernatural. At first I thought this would be a cheesy book with scary stories. There are stories by Shirley Jackson and Edna St. Vincent Millay. I've very glad this book found me by not wanting to sit on the library shelf properly

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was part of a series of anthologies (some larger than others) focusing on female writers of mystery, crime, fantasy, supernatural, etc... stories. My dad brought this home when the library he worked at discarded it, probably in 1986. He never read it. I kept it in my collection because of the title and the Edward Gorey cover.

This is a really mixed bunch of stories, two of which I don't feel fit with the theme at all. The last story didn't have any eerie or odd element in the least and the preface to it referenced Freud and "Oh it's hard to write about mothers and daughters and they're competitive with each other" which really turned me off.

The stories I liked best were rather Thurber-esque tales by Shirley Jackson and Sheila Burnford. There's a terrible one in here by E. Nesbit, which is just a kids' camp fire story in my opinion and more attempting to be horror rather than just eerie.

It includes a literary fairy tale by Madame d'Aulnoy. Also includes a somewhat silly story by Elizabeth Gaskell and a bit of an odd one by Edna St. Vincent Millay

A quick read, with a few highlights, but not a well thought-out collection by any means. I think perhaps the editors had a few stories they really liked which they were unable to fit into the other collections. So they whipped up another title and padded it out with whatever they could find (at least one third were in the public domain).

[Ben Loory · Rating 2 out of 5]

meh... definitely "weird" stories (as opposed to, say, "frightening")... though i suppose i shouldn't hold that against it as it is clearly labeled on the cover... still, most of these stories are just kind of dull. exceptions being Shirley Jackson's "One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts" (the best story in the book), Edna St. Vincent Millay's "The Murder in the Fishing Cat" (obvious, but creepy and sad, and has a wonderful last image), and Joyce Harrington's "The Plastic Jungle" (which is kind of reminiscent of Grace Paley).

realization about self prompted by book: as soon as people start talking about faeries, i just tune the fuck out.