Valentine’s Day

introduced by Alice Thomas Ellis

This book was an unwanted gift for, well, Valentine’s Day. You would think that neither subtitle (Women Against Men: Stories of Revenge) nor cover art (the famous Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi) are particularly suitable for a Valentine’s Day gift, but here you go. When I was found engrossed in the book, the owners (i.e. recipients of an unwanted gift) gladly parted with it. So in the end everybody was happy.

I wish all the stories in the book were really about revenge of women on men (Accident by Agatha Christie, Beware the Gentle Wife by Deborah Bosley, Stitch and Bitch by Jane Barker Wright and Widow’s Peak by Sylvia Petter are perfect examples), not just intention or desire of revenge. Even so, I enjoyed most of the stories. The French Boy by Amanda Craig is one of the happiest tales, although here men mostly escape unharmed. Instead, Mrs Stevens exerts sort of revenge on her teenage daughters and gets a “French Boy” for herself. The book is concluded with Set in Stone by Pat Knight, the diary of a prehistoric woman (“unfortunately pen and paper not yet invented so have to hack words onto cave walls with flint”).