Book Review: "The Uncanny Gastronomic" ed. by Zara-Louise Stubbs

Full Title: The Uncanny Gastronomic: Strange Tales of the Edible Weird edited by Zara-Louise Stubbs

As you know by now, I love the British Library Tales of the Weird books and this one is no exception whatsoever. The Uncanny Gastronomic: Strange Tales of the Edible Weird is perhaps one of the most varied books in the series I have read. With a ton of different kinds of stories, there are a few that stand out amongst the rest but also, each one has its own personality. From the absolutely horrifying to the darkly comical, these books often have an anthology quality in which the text is set on a theme. For this, we have food. From Robert Browning to Franz Kafka, from Shirley Jackson to Christina Rossetti, Saki, Angela Carter and even Jim Crace, this book is packed full of brilliant writers on the theme of food and eating in which we are given multiple different types of horrific texts that add to a truly creepy experience.

One of the stories that stood out to me was A Fasting Artist by Franz Kafka. A man who starves himself as performance art is central to this strange story where people come to watch him simply waste to nothing over months and months. In the typical Kafka way, he becomes increasingly alienated from the rest of society in his efforts of art, he has isolated himself from his fellow man - his grip on reality is slowly slipping. Feeling like a spectacle as opposed to an artist, he feels like he is not appreciated by anyone. In another typical Kafka method, the story comes to a weird conclusion and the denouement may not be exciting, but it really does feel like one of those weird episodes of Black Mirror where the decline is really just how reality works. Out of all of Kafka's stories I have read, I think I enjoyed the darkness of this one the most. It was a wicked feature in this anthology of eating-based horrors.

The second one that stood out to me is by one the Mother of Modern Horror, Shirley Jackson. Like Mother Used to Make is a story about obsession and unfulfilled recognition. Like A Fasting Artist, this story centres on the unfulfilled life of someone attempting to gain understanding from the world around them. The validation of one woman being a housewife of the perfect order, keeping everything clean and quiet, making everything just right, relies on her husband who is absolutely oblivious to it all. As she declines mentally, we see Shirley Jackson's true writing nature come out between the lines. This woman is going mad. By the end of the story, the reader is left with questions and a shiver down their spine.

The final one I will mention is one I have read a few times before. Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti is such a great poem and for anyone who has not read it, I recommend it to all. Two sisters named Laura and Lizzie hear the cries of goblins selling weird and strangely delicious fruits in a forbidden yet mystical market. As one of the sisters resists the fruit and the other eats, one must witness the other's health rot away as she succumbs to wanting more and more - gluttony being a key sin here. In this Victorian narrative poem, we witness the ecstasy of things forbidden and the price that must be paid for overindulgence.

There are a number of other stories I really enjoyed including: The Watering Place by Virginia Woolf, Pig by Roald Dahl and of course, one that I have read a number of times: Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe - which when I first read it actually frightened the daylights out of me. All of these stories have been an absolute joy to read and though I have read many of them before, it is nice to see them recognised as being part of the gastronomic gothic, something I hope to become a bigger thing with each passing day.

As I have said, I hope that this theme of the gothic and subgenre of horror becomes more written in the coming years, it is such an expansive subsection with so much to offer. The anthology has shed new light on something that might become a reading obsession for me.