Stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio – review

Any time Neil Gaiman has a new project, it’s something I look forward to, whether it’s comics, television scripts, novels, or children’s books.   Stories is no exception.  This anthology is edited by Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio and has stories by Walter Moseley, Joyce Carol Oates, Joanne Harris, and Michael Moorcock, among others.  There isn’t a theme uniting the stories in the collection; instead, it’s just built around four very important words, according to Gaiman:  “and then what happened?”

Stories is a thick book that’s every bit as satisfying as a very good steak dinner.  These stories are excellent writers doing some of their very best work, and it’s the kind of prose that makes a reader want to sit and savor every single word.  Anthologies with so much good material in them are rare.  Usually there are a few stand-out pieces and some stories that just fall flat, mixed in with pieces that a reader may or may not remember later.  Any stories that I disliked in Stories were simply a matter of my own individual taste rather than any actual shortcomings of the pieces.

Gaiman himself contributed “The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains,” which is a dark fairy tale in the very best Grimm tradition.  The ending isn’t quite what you might expect, because it’s a bit on the gruesome side, but it is definitely a story well worth reading.

“Blood” by Roddy Doyle is the very first story.  A seemingly ordinary man suddenly begins to develop a very strange craving  for raw meat.    He tries to keep his newfound, escalating addiction a secret as he struggles to understand what’s happening to him.

Joanne Harris’s “Wildfire in Manhattan” transplants old gods into the modern city.  When one of them realizes that they’re being hunted, one by one, he tries to save a woman who doesn’t seem to remember her own divine past.

Richard Adams contributed “The Knife,”  which is a subtle horror thriller that takes place in a boarding school.  It’s very short, only a few pages, but packs a very visceral punch in the little time that it takes to read.

These pieces that I selected to spotlight were all stories that very much had me asking “and then what happened?” which was the main goal of the anthology.  They were the ones that I felt the most compelled to read because I had to find out what was going to happen next.  There are more stories from Jeffrey Deaver, Gene Wolfe, Peter Straub, Jodi Picoult, and many more.  There are vampires, werewolves, writers, human monsters, and some stories that don’t have any monsters at all.  This is the kind of collection that gleefully scrambles genre fiction into something that’s difficult to explain but incredibly easy to enjoy. 

Fans of fantasy or the weird will find plenty to keep them happy.  Readers who enjoy well-crafted short fiction will find even more.   I wouldn’t consider this anthology a good selection for younger readers–the prose is clearly intended for adults, since  these stories do contain some violence, some sex, and some fairly frightening stories. There are a few surprises and twists in the pieces that have been collected, but as a reader, you’ll surely find yourself echoing Gaiman’s introduction to ask “and then what happened?”

Editor’s note:  Stories: All-New Tales will be released on June 15, 2010.