I had heard of Tananarive Due but had never read anything by her before coming across this collection of short stories on Early Reviewers, so I requested it, though I was slightly reluctant to try horror short stories. I'm always hesitant about horror (personally too squeamish for most) and short stories are very hit-or-miss for me. But I'm glad I requested this one, and I'll be glad to try more by Due in the future.

As with any short story collection, some worked better for me than others, but none were duds. The collection is divided into four parts, but only one (The Nayima Stories) features the same central character and another (The Gracetown Stories) uses a community as a backdrop, though only two stories are actually set there. All have horror and/or dystopian elements, but while all share at least a creeping sense of unease or impending threat, there is none of the gratuitous or detailed description of violence and violation that often puts me off horror.

That's not to say characters aren't in danger or dangerous to others--the stories never end wholly well for anyone, as might be expected--but the violence has a purpose, and the viewpoint rarely lingers there. Often though not always, the horror is linked with racism and other forms of oppression, but again, this feels necessary to the stories that Due is telling, rather than a cheap shorthand for "real horror" that I've encountered elsewhere. While I can't say I "enjoyed" all the stories, I was fully engaged while reading them and will likely remember some of them for a long time. I'd definitely recommend this collection of short stories to anyone interested in post-apocalyptic or horror-tinged stories and, more broadly, reading more Black American perspectives in genre fiction.

I was very reluctant to read this collection of stories. I know that Tananarive Due is supposed to be an amazing author but I'm not the biggest short story fan and am decidedly cowardly so the horror tag for these was hard to overcome. Having finally read them now, I will say that Due is as amazing as billed and that the horror was not really horror (or maybe it is but the horror of it is less each storyline and more its closeness to our actual life in many cases).

The stories in this collection are arranged thematically and divided into four different sections: Wishes, The Gracetown Stories, The Nayima Stories, and Future Shock. Wishes deals with the supernatural and the horror of the familiar that turns out to be something entirely other once the mask is removed. The stories in this section weave the supernatural into the everyday in creepy and sometimes terrifying ways. Haint in the Window, perhaps my favorite story of the entire collection, is in Wishes. It tells the story of a black bookstore manager who grew up visiting the bookstore as a child, took over the store as an adult, and has watched, uncomfortably, as the neighborhood around the store gentrifies. He is uncertain what it means when a haint moves into this store he's dedicated his whole life to but it can't be good. Due ratchets up the tension as the story progresses and then comes out swinging, presenting the reader with a terrible truth, one unfortunately not at all removed from real life. It was masterfullly done. The stories in The Gracetown Stories section are all set within the magical, and often sinister, Gracetown. The Nayima Stories only comprise two stories about a girl and then woman named Nayima, who is one of few survivors of a plague that has more than decimated the world. Both stories are set in a horrifying dystopia, one immediately suceeding the plague and one many years in the future. And the stories of Future Shock are firmly in the Afrofuturism camp but also set in a dystopian world (but perhaps not the same dystopia as The Nayima Stories).

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed many of the stories. Or perhaps enjoyed is the wrong word and appreciated is a better one. The stories as a whole are tightly written and complete on their own, although there were certainly a few that might have needed a bit more (and some I wanted a bit more from). Due weaves the theme of racism through many of the stories but it is not the sole focus of her collection. I definitely appreciated that Due's brand of horror isn't gory and graphic, no jump scares, just a rising sinister atmosphere, a dawning recognition, and suspense leading to a creepy, unsettling reveal. It's not my usual type of read but it's not bad to expand your horizons sometimes. ( )

I've long been a fan of Due's novels, but this collection of her short fiction was fantastic. Each story immerses the reader in new territory that first entrances, and then horrifies. My favorites were, I think, "The Wishing Pool", "Migration", and "Shopping Day", but this is really one of those rare collections where each story stands up to the others and only adds another layer of meaning and horror to those that came before.

Absolutely recommended. ( )

The Wishing Pool and Other Stories is a wonderful collection of Black horror and Afrofuturism by Tananarive Due, with tales of survival set in the real world of Florida and supernatural other-worlds, narrated by well drawn characters ranging in age from children to senior citizens. The past, present, and future are tied by phantoms, racism, transformation, plagues, magic, and the determination to survive all of it. A great read!
( )

As is true of almost every collection of short stories, the works in this book can be a bit hit or miss. In this case, I found the hits to outnumber the misses (and some of the misses might be due to my lacking some context). Four of the stories involve plagues, another deals with physical abuse, and racism figures in most of them to varying degrees, all of which might be issues to some people.

The stories are organized into four groups, two of them based on settings and the other two on thematic elements.

The first section is called ‘Wishes,’ and consists of stories with more fantastical/supernatural elements. I’m not sure that the name is really appropriate, since only one of the stories (the title one) really deals with wishes, although I can see an argument that one of the others could be seen as a wish for how things could have gone in reality. All four of these stories fall on the fantasy and supernatural horror axis to some degree.

The second section, ‘The Gracetown Stories,’ is the longest one, with five stories connected to the fictional town of Gracetown. All of them fall pretty firmly into the supernatural horror genre. One of these, ‘Rumpus Room,’ is original to this collection.

The third section, ‘The Nayima Stories,’ consists of two stories of the title character’s attempts to survive in an America devastated by a plague. The stories are set about forty years apart and left me feeling like I was missing a major part of the bigger story.

Finally, ‘Future Shock’ is a set of three stories set in futures where Earth has been ravaged by plagues, the effects of global warming, or both. All of these fall into the science fiction category, made all the scarier by their very possibility. The other new story in the collection, ‘The Biographer,’ is here.

Overall, I’d recommend this collection with the caveats I mention in the first paragraph. ( )