Homefront Horrors: Frights Away From the Front Lines, 1914-1918 by Jess NevinsMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This should have been an interesting organization scheme for an anthology: short horror stories written between 1914 and 1918 but not about World War One. Unfortunately that means that most of the entries are sorely afflicted by the enduring 19th century trends in Brit lit. Using the stiffest possible language, the majority of these tales take the most roundabout routes when advancing their plots. Everything seems to center around trivia. I found myself imagining a parody in which a parson accidentally paints the pulpit in the village church ecru when it was supposed to be eggshell. Occasionally patience is rewarded when the ecru paint opens a portal to hell. But more often than not the ecru paint itself is the only horror to be found. And while at the outset I was ready to applaud the editor for publishing lesser known stories by authors famous for writing something else, a lot of these have remained obscure for a reason. That’s a genuine shame, because all of these authors had talent, and all of these stories had potential. Also this really ought to have come with a sterner warning about racist content. While none of the slurs are out of keeping with the times and the social class of the authors, they’re still jarring by 21st century standards.
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