Passion and Poison: Tales of Shape-Shifters, Ghosts, and Spirited Women (review)

Gather around a fire somewhere to share these creepy tales of women rubbing against the netherworld. These eight original tales and retellings all possess the uncanny feeling common to new takes on familiar traditional motifs, and they are enlivened by a voice so penetrating that it seems to be in the room rather than just on the page. From beastly men who get their just deserts, to bold women who brook no sass from inhabitants of this world or the next, to lonely children who find playmates among the green world, the tales explore themes of justice, courage, betrayal, vengeance, love, and just plain spookiness. The most moving is "Sea Child," wherein a mother grieving for her drowned son hears the wail of a child over several nights; she finally finds a young mother who has not allowed her own death by drowning to prevent her from caring for her infant until someone from the living world heeds the baby's call. Another mother protects her fortune from beyond the grave, ensuring that she find a female successor more worthy of its prize than her wastrel husband and son. Other tales find young girls taking care of business in various ways that usually result in the utterly just dispatch of their oppressors. While the focus of the stories is on strong women, there is no intrusive feminist message hampering the storytelling here—each of the tales finds its narrative arc naturally and without ideological coercion, with just a well-timed shiver here and there to let readers know that the unseen hands of justice in the universe are not idle.