It has been so amazing to see Gwendolyn Kiste’s career accelerate over the last few years. My first encounter with her work was her debut collection, And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, which contains one of my all-time favorite stories, The Man in the Ambry. Her novels are also great, but especially The Haunting of Velkwood. All of this is to say, I’m a big fan of Kiste’s work.
Kiste’s new collection, The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own, contains more creepy and moving stories.
I love Kiste’s creature stories, and there are a couple of great ones here. In A New Mother’s Guide to Raising an Abomination, a woman gives birth to a strange baby. And we also meet The Sea Witch of the World’s Fair, a story set in a 1940s Dali Exhibit in New York, which has an incredibly satisfying ending.
But as well as horror, Kiste is capable of writing incredibly moving stories, such as Melting Point, in which a nuclear reactor threatens to blow, and two women leading trapped lives find each other. And in All the Hippies are Dying, a woman looks after her Woodstock-obsessed mother, and music plays a strange part in the mother’s illness.
A few notable figures from history pop up in these stories. We meet a female Caesar, the ghost of Rasputin, Marie Antoinette spends some time with Mary Shelley, and Elizabeth Short, the victim of the infamous Black Dahlia murder.
I could go on and on about these stories; I love them. There is such a mixture of tones in this collection, yet it feels cohesive. I recommend this book to horror readers, lovers of feminist fiction, and anyone who enjoys a well-written story. Yay for Gwendolyn Kiste!
California Reading 