Wilde Stories 2009 is the second in an annual anthology series reprinting gay-themed fantasy and horror stories published during the previous year. While the debut collection was uneven, it contained much that was touching and delightful, and left me looking forward to a long and successful run.
This year’s collection is, overall, disappointing. Too often, darkness and violence are made to substitute for genuine storytelling, and there is a surfeit of writing that calls attention to itself—sometimes to the point of incoherence. It also suffers from a great many distracting—and occasionally, confusing—typos.
The collection is not without its bright spots, however, including “Firooz and His Brother,” Alex Jeffers’ fable of love among the caravan masters of long-ago Samarkand, and Jameson Currier’s sad and spooky “The Bloomsbury Nudes.” Best of all is “AKA St. Mark’s Place,” a shadowy tale in which the magisterial Richard Bowes revisits the Greenwich Village of the 1960s and the lost young people who lived there.
Recommended only for collections that aim to be comprehensive.
Reviewed by, Joyce Meggett
Division Chief for Humanities
Chicago Public Library