Monster, She Wrote

I started reading Monster, She Wrote, with a pencil and notebook by my side thinking to jot down a few titles and authors that caught my attention. I would like to start this review by saying Do Not Do This! Within just a few chapters I had patted myself on the back for already having read Frankenstein and The Yellow Wallpaper, and having an Ann Radcliffe collected works downloaded since reading Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (note to self, Read the Radcliffes!). However I had also already blunted my pencil on a TBR of suffocating proportions and I wasn't even a quarter of the way through this book yet. If you truly want horror, the realisation of just how many important women authors I haven't read was terrifying!

I am, of course, partly joking here, but also partly serious. Monster, She Wrote is an excellent resource for horror and speculative fiction fans, and also for readers such as myself who want include as wide a variety of influences as I can. Nesrine Malik's We Need New Stories, which I recently reviewed, clarified my thoughts around how the stories we read and hear informs our social and cultural expectations. Monster, She Wrote is a perfect accompaniment because it shows me hundreds of stories already in existence. Perhaps we don't only need new stories, but to make sure that these older stories continue to exist and aren't forgotten.

Kroger and Anderson have done an excellent job in drawing this book together. At times the sheer number of books and authors they cross reference is bewildering, but it's also a superb statement of pride in the history of female authors in what are commonly mis-assumed to be male-dominated genres. I liked the progression through time from the 1600s to the present day and also the grouping of authors by genre where possible. The illustrations are a wonderful idea too. They are brilliantly evocative of classic horror themes. So I now have a real burst of enthusiasm for historic horror, a teetering TBR, and the kernel of an idea for a Monster, She Wrote reading challenge - I just need to make a list of every book Kroger and Anderson namecheck, and then read them!

2 1/2 stars. Not enough detail. Too many mentions of Kelly Link throughout the book (“Kelly Link refers to this book as…” “Did you know Kelly Link was nominated for…?” Are the authors friends with her?)

And the offensive slights: One paragraph—and only one suggested book—for Joyce Carol Oates, who has written many, many horror and weird novels, and only two sentences dedicated to Lois Duncan, who wrote a long, long list of terrifying novels (I didn’t sleep after reading Daughters of Eve or Down a Dark Hall) and introduced generations of kids and teenagers to the horror genre.
They tossed her in at the end of the paperback horror chapter after riffing on all the lurid Zebra books, and talking about who Ruby Jean Jensen might have been for pages, as an afterthought: yeah, you know, that Sarah Michelle Gellar movie, that was her book. She, and her decades of work that terrified millions of kids and brought them into reading horror, deserved much better than an afterthought.

And finally: the authors pull back from whether or not Amelia Edwards was gay, stating that she preferred to travel with female companions. I researched Amelia for an episode of my podcast about her, and Ellen Braysher was her partner and family.