(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Edelweiss. Trigger warning for violence, gore, body horror, sexual assault, necrophilia, PTSD, racism, misogyny, and more.)

They were talking about Mrs. Hoffman whose head, it was said, became melon soft from the hammer blows.
"I guess he got tired of her."
"I guess she got fat."
And they laughed in a funny, high voices, like they didn’t mean it but wanted their words to be a shield that would protect them. Protect them from whatever put Mrs. Hoffman at hazard.
("Scarlet Ribbons" by Megan Abbott)

There are upsides. Snails in their own bodies cannot see the stars, but through these borrowed eyes I have now seen them. The stars are magnificent. Perhaps I will have memories of them when I am a snail again, if I am ever permitted that grace. There must be a purpose. I must be learning something. I can’t believe this is all random. I must stay positive until my present skin-and-tissue host wears out. Then my small bright spiral soul will rise and fly through the iridescent clouds and minor-key music of the intermediate spirit realm, to embody itself once more. But as what? Any husk other than this one. Any shell other than this.
("Metempsychosis, or The Journey of the Soul" by Margaret Atwood)

It is true, I did harm to myself. Tearing at my hair & clawing at my face, & rending my garments. It is true, I did harm to my “beauty.” That my “beauty” was not mine to destroy but the possession of my husband was a lesson to be learned. “Hysteria” is caused by a wandering womb, or broken-off parts of the womb circulating through the arteries, most virulent in the brain.
("The Chair of Tranquility (from the Diary of Mrs. Thomas Peele, Trenton, New Jersey, 1853)" by Joyce Carol Oates)

***

Dedicated to "those Harpies, Furies, Gorgons, and Fates through the centuries who never had a chance to tell their tales," A DARKER SHADE OF NOIR celebrates feminine monstrosity. From a misanthropic young woman who makes a miniature monster (Frankenstein, or Frank for short) out of her skin tags, willing him to haunt the dreams of her insufferable coworkers, to a young girl whose journey into the "night world" inhabited by grownup marks her with red ribbons, much like the ones sung about by her father, these stories are weird, gruesome, and - occasionally - downright obscene.

Like most anthologies, this one's a bit of a mixed bag, with stories ranging from "okay" ("Malena," "Dancing with Mirrors") to "downright unforgettable" ("The Chair of Tranquility (from the Diary of Mrs. Thomas Peele, Trenton, New Jersey, 1853)," "Gross Anatomy"). If you read just one story, make it Margaret Atwood's "Metempsychosis, or The Journey of the Soul." You'll never look at insects the same way again. Hopefully.

"Frank Jones" by Aimee Bender - 4/5
When an especially tenacious skin tag starts growing - and then regrowing - on her hip, college student Taylor rips it off and begins a collection of them. Some years later, stuck working in a basement office with three people she can't stand, Taylor stitches her assemblage of skin tags into a little person she christens Frank Jones. Whether her discontent with her coworkers (and humanity in general) gives life to Frank, or his nighttime adventures are simply a mass delusion, is anyone's guess. The ending is shockingly cute, though.

"Dancing" by Tananarive Due - 3.5/5
In 1937, Monique's Grand-mère Nadine was a fresh-faced girl of ten who simply wanted to learn ballet. Thwarted then by the white-passing Madame Pinede (and structural racism), eighty-six years later, her "buried dream [w]ould be reborn like a curse in the wake of the dead," as her spirit compels Monique's body to dance.

"Scarlet Ribbons" by Megan Abbott - 3.5/5
About to start sixth grade, Penny is convinced that she has to brave the horrors of the Hoffman house - the sight of a ghastly murder-homicide. ("It was like French kissing. Soon enough, if you hadn’t done it, you were good as dead.") But her adventure into the "night world" inhabited by grownups might prove to be fatal.

"Malena" by Joanna Margaret - 3/5
In which an art student draws inspiration from her newly discovered parasitic twin.

"Dancing with Mirrors" by Lisa Lim - 3/5
A story about beauty, vanity, and female rage.

"Metempsychosis, or The Journey of the Soul" by Margaret Atwood - 5/5
Unsurprisingly, Margaret Atwood's contribution is my favorite story of the bunch. An unsuspecting garden snail is blasted with an eco-friendly insecticide, only to be reincarnated into the (already occupied) body of a twenty-something office worker. Even though conventional (human) wisdom would count this as an advancement, the snail is slowly driven mad by their new, foreign body.
"Metempsychosis" might be meant as a metaphor for the transgender experience, but as a vegan I read it as a criticism of speciesism. Atwood challenges the reader to experience the world through the eyes of a "lowly" snail, resulting in some of the loveliest prose I've ever read.

"Concealed Carry" by Lisa Tuttle - 3/5
When Kelly's temporary job in America is, at the last moment, changed from NYC to Texas, she almost pulls out. She should have pulled out. As the 2nd, 9th, and 14th Amendments collide, she'll soon learn that few people are safe in Texas - especially women of a child-bearing age.

"Gross Anatomy" by Aimee LaBrie - 4/5
This would make a pretty excellent episode of LAW AND ORDER: SVU. I'd give just about anything to see Captain Benson's reaction to the big reveal.
Also, certain passages gave me strong Andrew Glouberman vibes.
No, I will not be offering any further summary.

"Breathing Exercise" by Raven Leilani - 4/5
"It had been eleven years since she’d left home, eight since she’d graduated from a midtier art school and made her name showing audiences how much abuse the human body could withstand. It isn’t sustainable, her mother said, and, technically, she was right."
Suffering from an undiagnosed respiratory affliction, drowning in debt, and risking irrelevance, a Black artist decides to parlay her internet troll into the ultimate - and terminal - performance art piece.

"Muzzle" by Cassandra Khaw - 3.5/5
In an alternate universe where the US Army has weaponized lycanthropy, a young woman wrestles with her newly acquired infection (and a Karen).

"Her Heart May Fail Her" by Yumi Dineen Shiroma - 4/5
Mina waits for her newly-bitten sister Lucy to turn into a vampire - all while fantasizing about killing the immortal girl who turned her.

"The Chair of Tranquility (from the Diary of Mrs. Thomas Peele, Trenton, New Jersey, 1853)" by Joyce Carol Oates - 5/5
After a bout of self-harm, a woman's husband and father have her committed to the Asylum for Female Lunatics at Trenton, where she's to be treated by the new director, Dr. Silas Weir. Along with a diet that includes mercury, Mrs. Peele is to be swaddled in warm sheets, a bag placed over her head, and restrained in the Chair of Tranquility - to encourage calmness, rest, and a state of utter mental blankness. Subsequent to her release, Mrs. Peele recorded her experiences in her journal, which was discovered after her death.

"The Seventh Bride, or Female Curiosity" by Elizabeth Hand - 4/5
Livey is none too happy when she's conscripted to play the seventh wife of Bluebeard at the Royal Camden Theatre. Sure, it's a big step up from her role as a dancing flower in Harlequin's Honey Moon - but the actor who plays Bluebeard has a bit of a ... "reputation," shall we say. What happens next is a cathartic feminist twist on the Bluebeard folk tale.

"Nemesis" by Valerie Martin - 4/5 stars
When her beloved son Maurice brings a friend from college home with him for the break, Mrs. LeClerc is the only member of her family who is not charmed by the young man. She finds Eric Jeffrey to be irredeemably vain and narcissistic - and likely dangerous, especially to her two daughters, Cici and Henriette. As she is hatching a plan to remove Eric from their lives, fate intervenes, in the most karmic way possible. "Nemesis" is slow to unfold, but the ending is deliciously satisfying.

"Sydney" by Sheila Kohler - 3.5/5
"Sydney" might be the strangest story of the collection - no small feat in an anthology that includes necrophilia. A sheltered young woman living on a game farm in Zimbabwe agrees to marry a wealthy doctor who is passing through for a conference. Once she moves into his home in Johannesburg, she settles into a life that is privileged, yet idle and lonely. She cannot fathom why he married her, as he shows her little affection. Then she stumbles upon a secret room in his library - and the artificial intelligence hidden there. Is the narrator merely decorative, or his latest science experiment? ( )

Despite the number of big names in this collection, I have to admit that it was fairly lackluster for me personally. While there were some gems in the collection--especially the works by Tananarive Due and Margaret Atwood--there were just as many stories that felt either unpolished or unedited, and a few that just didn't feel like they fit in a collection of body horror. All told, while I generally love collections put out by Akashic, I wasn't sure what to make of this one, and I doubt I'd pick up another collection edited by Oates after reading this. The stories were somehow too one-tone while also not always feeling as if they fit the theme, and I was glad to finish it up. ( )

Short story collections are best read over a longer period of time, and I mostly enjoyed this one. Some more than others, of course. I liked Tananarive Due's contribution, as well as Cassandra Khaw's and Joyce Carol Oates's. One author I hadn't heard of, Lisa Lim, did "Dancing With Mirrors," which is illustrated by her as well. It was excellent.

A very eclectic selection of stories. For the most past I really enjoyed this anthology, finding particular delight (perhaps a poor choice of words for this particular sub genre) in several. “Frank Jones” by Aimee Bender actually made me laugh, Lisa Lim’s “Dancing with Mirrors” I found incredibly sad, and those by Margaret Atwood, Valerie Martin, Elizabeth Hand, and Sheila Kohler particularly good. ( )

(58) This took me quite a while to slog through. Short stories are not my thing, but I love well-written horror and with authors like JCO and Margaret Atwood featured I thought, surely, I will love this. Not so much. Apparently this is a genre called 'body horror,' and this collection was written with a feminist lens. Many of the stories were around the idea of something growing inside you, or something weird wrong with your body, or some disfigurement. A lot of them were symbolic of the power dynamic between men and women. But really, for me at least, they were gone from my mind as soon as I read the last word of each story and my feeling at the end of each was - 'Well, that was bad."

The stories are very forgettable, not scary at all, and feel mostly like they are written by amateurs. I value the opportunity to be selected as an early reviewer but this was a miss for me. Perhaps it is because I don't care for 'body horror,' and 'short stories,' and others would really like it. But I am not sure it is as simple as that. Granted, I think short stories must be incredibly hard to write well and tend to be rather quirky because of the limitations of the form. But, I think for the most part, these short stories empirically miss the mark. ( )