The Wishing Pool and Other Stories
In her first new book in seven years, Tananarive Due further cements her status as a leading innovator in Black horror and Afrofuturism
"Tananarive Due is the master of Black horror, even teaching a class where Jordan Peele guest-lectured. So her new collection, The Wishing Pool, out in mid-April, is a major treat, full of major scares. Due excels at twist endings but also brilliantly creates an atmosphere of creeping dread in which you know something terrible is coming. The Wishing Pool is helpfully divided into four sections, and each feels like a movement in a symphony. There are classic tales of horror, then a series of stories set in a Florida town where the swamp tends to swallow people up; the final two sections shift to science fiction about post-apocalyptic futures. (These last sections include pandemic stories, written before 2020, which hit harder now.) Due shows just how much territory she can cover in one short book and just how versatile terrifying tales can be."--Washington PostAmerican Book Award-winning author Tananarive Due's second collection of stories includes offerings of horror, science fiction, and suspense--all genres she wields masterfully. From the mysterious, magical town of Gracetown to the aftermath of a pandemic to the reaches of the far future, Due's stories all share a sense of dread and fear balanced with heart and hope. In some of these stories, the monster is racism itself; others address the monster within, each set against the supernatural or surreal. All are written with Due's trademark attention to detail and deeply drawn characters. In addition to previously published work, this collection contains brand-new stories, including "Rumpus Room," a supernatural horror novelette set in Florida about a woman's struggle against both outer and inner demons.
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Community Reviews
Very well-written and creepy. Not super scary horror, not murder mysteries. But creepiness pervades this collection. Don’t come in expecting a HEA or even the H for every story enclosed.
The stories often feature fantastical elements, but each contains a lot of realism in terms of themes, characters, and situations. Tricky familial relationships. Having to carefully, slowly navigate around white people’s racism to prove their humanity, the worth of black lives.
Monsters come in many forms. Sometimes the monsters are gigantic swamp leeches, ghosts, demonic possessions; sometimes the monsters are racists, trigger-happy cops, child killers. Sometimes they are the wishes we make, the promises we can’t keep, the suffering we ignore.
The short stories about the pandemic viruses were written before the COVID-19 pandemic, but Tananarive Due keeps them in this new collection. It’s startling how close we could have been to that dystopian world, how another virus pandemic could get us there.
The stories here cover the past, the present, and the future. The future tales contain regresses into the past, from a societal standpoint, from a progressive standpoint. The past tales feel like they could still take place in the present day. And yet I wouldn’t say that “the more things change, the more they stay the same” is a theme of the work here. There is novelty in each story from the situations to the reactions to the consequences.
9/10 for me. I think that this will be a book that stays with me long after the narrator’s voice stops on the audiobook, long after I get brave enough to again turn off the lights.
Review copy of the audiobook provided by NetGalley, not sponsored.
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