Gabino Iglesias Reviews The Wrong Girl & Other Warnings by Angela Slatter
The Wrong Girl & Other Warnings, Angela Slatter (Brain Jar Press 978-1-92247-961-7, $14.99, 186pp, tp) October 2023
Sometimes awards don’t mean much, but Angela Slatter’s accomplishments – a Shirley Jackson Award, a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, three Australian Shadows Awards, and eight Aurealis Awards – point to one thing very clearly: She’s a superb writer. She’s also a writer who is constantly pushing the envelope of what can be done with short stories, and her latest collection, The Wrong Girl & Other Warnings, shows Slatter firing on all cylinders.
There are two impressive things about The Wrong Girl & Other Warnings. The first is that there are no throwaway stories and Slatter brings the same care and wonderful prose to all of them. The second is that they are all very different while still showcasing Slatter’s voice. The book kicks things off with “Same Time Next Year”, a melancholic and somewhat fuzzy tale about the ghost of a girl on the anniversary of her death. Short and fun in a strange way, the opening story helps set the mood, but it has little in common with the rest of the collection other than having a female main character.
“Widow’s Walk”, the second story, is a feminist manifesto that serves as a good reminder that while witches exist, when we hear about them, what we’re hearing about is usually smart, independent women who subvert the status quo. At once a touching story about a young girl finding her place in the world thanks to a group of widows who are also witches and a tale about the way a small town perceives said women, this is one of the crowning jewels of this collection. The second jewel is a story titled “A Matter of Light”. It follows detective Kit Casswell after she is asked to assist Sherlock Holmes in cracking a recent murder. The story reads like a feminist answer to Arthur Conan Doyle’s brilliant detective, one in which Holmes looks like a guy who needs help instead of an all-knowing master of detection. The witty dialogue, twists and turns, and eventual supernatural angle at the end of the story made this one of my favorites.
Other standouts include the titular tale, “The Wrong Girl”, which is a heartbreaking story of deadly art, love gone wrong, and messing with the “wrong girl,” and “When We Fall, We Forget”, which brings together angels, anger, vengeance, a despicable crime, grief, and sacrifice to tell the story of a mother willing to do anything for justice.
Slatter is one of the best short fiction writers out there, and this collection will hit the mark with her fans while also being a perfect introduction to her work for those who haven’t read it yet. Don’t miss it.
Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book reviewer living in Austin TX. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs and the editor of Both Sides. His work has been nominated to the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards and won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2019. His short stories have appeared in a plethora of anthologies and his non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and CrimeReads. His work has been published in five languages, optioned for film, and praised by authors as diverse as Roxane Gay, David Joy, Jerry Stahl, and Meg Gardiner. His reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, Criminal Element, Mystery Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other print and online venues. He’s been a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards twice and has judged the PANK Big Book Contest, the Splatterpunk Awards, and the Newfound Prose Prize. He teaches creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University’s online MFA program. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.
This review and more like it in the March 2024 issue of Locus.
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