Book Review: "The Shadows on the Wall" ed. by Mike Ashley

Full Title = The Shadows on the Wall: Dark Tales by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman edited by Mike Ashley

Suddenly he began hastening hither and thither about the room. He moved the furniture with fierce jerks, turning ever to see the effect upon the shadow on the wall. Not a line of its terrible outlines wavered.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman was an American writer born on the Halloween of 1852 in Randolph, Massachusetts. She grew up in a strict New England family and experienced all the hardships and norms of her gender in the 19th century. This meant that on top of financial constraints, she experienced little formal education due to gender expectations in that time and place and yet, she kept a keen interest in literature throughout her younger life. This would pave the way for more later on.

She gained recognition for her writing of short stories especially and her novels did pretty well critically. Her novels often explore the New Englanders of her own time exploring complex situations whilst also going through the constraints of gender, class and other prejudices during their lives. She would later marry Dr. Charles Freeman in 1902, and the couple would settle in Metuchen, New Jersey. It was this marriage that gave her the freedom to write more and give herself to a writing career.

At the age of 77, the writer suffered a heart attack and died. She is buried in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. The Shadows on the Wall is an exploration of her best-known and most well-written ghost and supernatural fiction.

This book opens with a short story called In the Marsh Land and when I say 'short' story, I mean that this is more flash fiction level. It is a very atmospheric tiny story where you get a sensory feel for everything that is going to happen in the book. I mean just check out the way it sets up the horrific, eerie and dark details of the surroundings:

"Over the marsh-land stray odours from border flowers, but there is no sense to harbour them. Over the marsh-land the sound waves flat, bot there is no tongue to awaken them to speech and no ear to receive them. In the marsh-land is God, without the souls in which alone He shines unto His own vision; in the marsh-land is God, a light without His own darkness. Tha marsh-land is a lonely place; there is no man there. Only my thought is there, holding what it can encompass of God."

One of the things I have noticed constantly in these stories is that Wilkins Freeman often writes about stuff that seems a little uncanny, off or a bit wrong. For example: in A Far Away Melody, we have two women who are similar heights and have these similar looks and behaviours, nothing has gone 'dark' yet but we can feel it start to. This is something that is repeated and makes for a great opening to each story. It sets up the atmosphere, the surroundings and the plot so that the reader may be eased into the 'darkness' of the tale.

I don't think it could get any more obviously than something like A Gentle Ghost which starts off in a cemetery. In the story Silence, we have the dusk and darkness going down over the protagonist's house and in The School Teacher's Story, we have this weird repetition of how the first person narrator has been very strict with themselves over the course of their career. If that doesn't set up something to go wrong, I don't know what does.

All in all, it may not be the very best attempt at an anthology, but it was an enjoyable read with some really interesting unknown stories. The anthology itself could've benefitted from adding maybe two more authors who wrote upon similar topics, maybe Mary Elizabeth Braddon. There should be more of a comparison between authors who wrote on similar topics rather than having just a whole anthology dedicated to an author. This can make for some very repetitive reading even if what is being repeated is pretty good in idea and form. In conclusion, it was enjoyable even if it was a bit misdirected.