When I read on Amazon a couple of one-star reviews (bear with me) for Diana Secker Tesdell's selection of Christmas stories, I knew straight off that this would the perfect collection for our group to be reading and talking about this December.The first review, written by a certain Francis M. Schiraldi of Eugene, Oregon fulminates thus:
"Every home that celebrates Christmas deserves an anthology of beloved holiday stories that enrich the season. This is not it. Despite the nostalgic cover and the ribbon marker, this rather unpleasant collection lacks most of the familiar and seems to focus on the morbid and depressing. Probably more suited to the jaded and cynical reader, don't buy this one if you are looking for an abridged version of 'A Christmas Carol' to read aloud or 'The Night Before Christmas.'"
In the second review, with a sharp intake of breath, Mary C. Hattan of Coosa County, Alabama opines:
"The stories were not what I expected. They included Lesbians, alchoholics, and for the most part the stories were not the warm ones I would share with my friends."
Well, Francis and Mary.
Aware as we are that Christmas, for many people, is as much about loneliness and alienation (short story territory par excellence) as Victorian families gathered round fires with cheeky urchins caroling in the snow-bedecked yard, we say: BRING ON THE MORBID, DEPRESSING, LESBIAN-FRIENDLY CHRISTMAS TALES (please).
Although the cover of the volume is the kind of naff you'd expect from a self-promoting Christmas Collection, it's stuffed to the gills with wonderful stories by the likes of Tolstoy, John Updike, Alice Munro, Grace Paley, and even Vlad Nabokov.
A more measured review of Tessdale's selection, written by Penelope Lively in The Independent, can be found here.
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