American Gothic Short Stories from Flame Tree Publishing – Non-Spoiler Book Review
Howdy, howdy, my name is John, and this video is
a review of the book American Gothic Short Stories
published by Flame Tree Publishing. This book is
a collection of short stories in the Gothic style
by American authors, and it ranges from
stories that are first published in this volume
to stories that are much older. A lot
of these stories from older authors
are stories that may not be well known for in
their own right, but they’re by authors that
have published much more famous works.
There’s a total of 53 stories in this volume,
plus there’s a forward, and then a brief biography
of all of the authors at the end of the book.
In my opinion, there were six of the stories
that deserve five stars. 22 of the stories
were four star stories. Another 22 were three
star stories. There were three two star stories,
and then there were zero one star stories. After
I averaged out all of the rankings it came in just
over 3.5, so I went ahead and gave it a four star
rating on Goodreads. I’m going to provide a full
list of the short stories and their star rating
in the description. Now I want to talk about the
six stories
one is titled Stone Baby and it’s by Terri Bruce.
This story really impressed me because it
successfully put me into the shoes of someone
I will never be, a pregnant woman. In this story
a woman loses her baby, and in medical terms a
stone baby is a baby that a woman has miscarried,
but stays in the womb and then becomes calcified,
and if left in the womb it can prevent future
pregnancies. This story follows a young woman
who has had such an event, and follows her
as she contemplates the surgery to remove
the fetus. The next five star story is A Good Man
Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor. I do need
to warn you about this story in particular, and
several of the other stories. They do use racially
insensitive language in their stories. If you can
put that aside, the main character in this story
is a grandmother, and she is going with her son,
daughter-in-law, and their children on a vacation
and this story I think very perfectly captures
a stereotypical American family that is set
when the story was written in the mid (19)50s.
The next five star story is TheTell-Tale Heart
by Edgar Allan Poe. This is a story I of course
originally read in school, and it’s a classic.
This collection does contain
one other Edgar Allan Poe story
and I did not find that one as interesting as
TheTell-Tale Heart. The next five star story is
Approaching Lavender by Lucy A. Snyder. In this
story the main character is a young woman who is a
newlywed, and she’s married to a man with kind of
traditional views of marriage. She has a regular
day job and then she paints in her spare time.
Her husband asks her to paint a self-portrait. The
next five star story is Amazing Patsy by Valerie
B. Williams. This story follows a grandmother
and her granddaughter. The daughter is no longer
living at this point. All the women in this family
have a magical ability. The grandmother teaches
the granddaughter how to use it. The last five
star story is Hollow Tree by Nemma Wollenfang. In
this story, the main character is a young woman
who is murdered by her husband, and her body is
stuffed inside a hollow tree. She is then able
to watch as her husband repeats this process.
She is able to befriend the women who have also
suffered the same fate. I was really pleased
with the selection of stories in this book.
It was a little bit difficult for me to switch
from story to story. I’m a little bit more used to
reading novels, where, you know, you can sit and
follow a story for a much longer period of time,
but if you’re in the market for some short
stories of Gothic fantasy, this is a good
one to check out. Thank you for watching this
video and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.