I guess I am still unstuck in time because as I read the first few pages of Ghost Summer: Stories by Tananarive Due I thought to myself just in time for black history month. Except it was March. So oops. I amended my thoughts to Just in time for International Woman’s Day after I realised about half-way through Nalo Hopkinson‘s introduction that Ghost Summer: Stories, that Tananarive Due is female. I don’t know. I can’t really say I’ve been on the ball lately.
I feel like just going meh about this review and leaving it at that. I could have probably guessed I’d go meh after Hopkinson’s Introduction, because that’s how I feel about Hopkinson’s work as well. I don’t hate it. Just nothing grabs me. Going back to my complete obliviousness, I’d thought Ghost Summer: Stories would be more of horror stories, probably because of the ghost in the title. They’re kind of spooky, but nothing really terrifying, so that likely added to my assessment of meh. The stories don’t necessarily speak to my experience, which is fine; I don’t expect all books and all stories to be geared towards me. Perhaps if I were a WOC, specifically a black woman from the Southern US, I would feel some of the horror more acutely, like how certain stressors (like reactions to racist violence) can be passed down bloodlines.
But the real meh for me comes in the fact that most of these stories are less self-contained stories than starting points. Due can set up such a intriguing idea and then the story just ends. Reading Ghost Summer: Stories is like talking to that friend of yours who has so many cool ideas and then just doesn’t do anything with them. There’s a story about a disagreeable baby who gets possessed by a calming spirit and that’s it. The baby gets possessed. Nothing more. There’s a story about a boy who knows the day he’s going to die. It’s in four years. That’s it. Nothing more. There’s a story about a boy in quarantine who is a Patient Zero for an epidemic. Then his doors are left unlocked, so he walks out of the ward. That’s it. Nothing more. See what I mean? All these are just the starting point. They aren’t stories. They are half-stories, a whole (in my copy) two hundred and seventy three pages of starts with not one of those pages devoted to a proper ending. Not even ambiguous thought-provoking or discussion-provoking endings. Just stops. It’s crazy-making!
The most interesting part of this collection is the, for lack of a better word, bios Due writes at the end of the each story, about why or where or how she wrote the stories. At least those are more complete than the stories themselves.
Ghost Summer: Stories is a great poster-child for the We Need Diverse Books movement. I’m glad I read it. But I can’t say I’m really happy with the stories themselves. Maybe short fiction just isn’t where Due should be since her ideas need more room to grow.
Ghost Summer: Stories by Tananarive Due went on sale September 15, 2015.
I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.