CBR 14 Bingo: Gaslight
Ghosts glide by through the present time now, but their own time is the past, replete with grimy streets and gas(-)lighting.
Authors and ghost tour guides Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes tell the stories of America’s female ghosts, discussing how they fall in the landscape of gender and time.
I enjoy a good ghost story, which was why I requested this book on NetGalley. However, what I learned was far beyond the scope of merely spooky tales, and I really enjoyed this. The authors relate the stories of the ghosts with particular emphasis on the women’s place in space and time, expanding the way I looked at them.
Yet at the same time, the stories managed to be humorous and heart-rending and spooky. I especially liked the story in the chapter “An Unreliable Narrator,” which tells the story of a certain strange house in New York City.
However, I did think the authors sometimes wrote with sweeping generalizations about both ghosts and gender, and the tone of the writing became a little dramatic at times. I also wished that the authors would have included more stories about women from marginalized backgrounds – while they discussed the paucity of stories about such ghosts, I thought it would have been interesting if they could have included more of the stories they did find.
Overall, a fascinating read for those who believe in ghosts as well as those in search of good historical yarns.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.
