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A review by littlemimus
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
2.0
The title and synopsis of the book promised something new and creepy, if not gory. What I found inside was less exciting and I felt cheated. I mean, the ideas were interesting and had potential. However, the execution of many was less than satisfactory. My main problem is that it wasn't scary, as the title suggests. I wanted more fear incitement and gore, details that would make me recoil and shudder rather than fall asleep, which is what happened for many of the stories. I wanted to care about the characters. Many stories were predictable, so when the 'twist' came, I was prepared and therefore nonchalant. The most I can rate this book is 2.5 stars.
Many of the stories felt too short in length. While I understand they are written in the form of traditional fireplace stories, which are supposed to be short and sweet, it made some stories feel incomplete. I could easily pick them apart and find plot holes or things that needed more explaining. I feel like something is missing. Maybe that just means I'm too judgemental. There were some stories I enjoyed in this collection, such as Miracles and Marilena's Secret. However, these stories are all over ten pages long, are better developed in my opinion and have a stronger hook for me. They weren't dark in particular but were written well. That's the problem with anthologies, which is that not all of the stories will interest me enough to invest my time equally with them. I end up skimming some.
The writing is interesting. It is very direct, sometimes strangely phrased, which is a different way of telling horror stories, but could be because the writing is translated from Russian. It feels very structured and I'm not sure I really liked that, though I don't hate it either.
All in all, the anthology was okay. It could have been so much better in my opinion, but the ideas very very intriguing and I did enjoy reading some of the stories. It was not a waste of time.
Many of the stories felt too short in length. While I understand they are written in the form of traditional fireplace stories, which are supposed to be short and sweet, it made some stories feel incomplete. I could easily pick them apart and find plot holes or things that needed more explaining. I feel like something is missing. Maybe that just means I'm too judgemental. There were some stories I enjoyed in this collection, such as Miracles and Marilena's Secret. However, these stories are all over ten pages long, are better developed in my opinion and have a stronger hook for me. They weren't dark in particular but were written well. That's the problem with anthologies, which is that not all of the stories will interest me enough to invest my time equally with them. I end up skimming some.
The writing is interesting. It is very direct, sometimes strangely phrased, which is a different way of telling horror stories, but could be because the writing is translated from Russian. It feels very structured and I'm not sure I really liked that, though I don't hate it either.
All in all, the anthology was okay. It could have been so much better in my opinion, but the ideas very very intriguing and I did enjoy reading some of the stories. It was not a waste of time.