The Mistletoe Bride & Other Winter Tales

‘'All houses wherein men have lived and died are haunted houses. Through the open doors the harmless phantoms on their errands glide, with feet that make no sound upon the floors.''
From ‘'Haunted Houses'' Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I discovered the beauty of Kate Mosse's' writing when I read The Taxidermist's Daughter. That book quickly became one of my very favourites. The Gothic elements, the British Marshes, the darkness in the people's soul. My search to read more of her work brought me to this beautiful collection where spectres beyond this world meet the ghosts that lurk in our souls.

‘'The Mistletoe Bride'' : The well-known tale of the bride who was locked in a chest during her wedding night.

‘'Duet'': An unusual duet, a psychological tale, beautifully echoing one of Poe's most popular stories.

‘'Red Letter Day'' : A tale crossing the boundaries of time, set in the haunting city of Carcassonne.

‘'The Drowned Village'': A bittersweet story set in Brittany that brought to my mind the tales of St. Mark's Eve which was described in beautiful detail in The Taxidermist's Daughter.

‘'The House on the Hill'' : Yes, this story is as mysterious and engaging as its title.

‘'Why the Yew Tree Lives So Long'' : A beautiful text, an ode to the mysterious yew tree.

‘'Sainte- Terése'' : Another story from Languedoc. A woman trapped in a suffocating relationship finds comfort in the most unusual of places.

‘'The Ship of the Dead'' : A self-explanatory title, and perhaps, the scariest tale in the collection. Set in Brittany.

‘'La Fille de Mélisande'' : A beautiful tale that is inspired by Debussy's opera Pelleas et Mélisande.

‘'The Revenant'' : A tale set in the Fishbourne Marshes, in Sussex, where The Taxidermist's Daughter is set. A wintery tale of mists and sins of the past, containing many elements that made me believe it paved the way for Mosse's extraordinary novel.

‘'On Harting Hill'': A beautiful rendition of the Vanishing Hitchhiker legend.

‘'The Princess Alice'': The sad story of a doomed family. This story contains a lovely scene, where the main character is browsing books in the middle of a storm,lost in her own world. Every bookworm will find this moment familiar. .

‘'In the Theatre at Night'': When I was a child, I had this weird notion that my toys certainly came alive while I was sleeping, at those hours of the night when the world falls silent. (The fact that I grew up with Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker didn't really help...) When I became an adult -theoretically speaking- and up to this day, I want to believe that theatres come alive once the lights go out and the backstage door is locked. This is a beautiful,poetic text, an hymn to Theatre and the tangible connections between the Past and the Present.

‘'The Yellow Scarf'': The last story in the collection that brings the course full circle. We meet the Bride amidst the fight of the civil war.

‘'Syrinx'': The first short play by Mosse, a story of women who were wronged and who wronged others in their turn. I can't say I was impressed by it. In my opinion, it didn't fit in the collection, it lacked the atmosphere and the beauty of the previous tales.

This is one of the most beautiful collection of stories I've ever read. The language is beautiful, sometimes raw, always poetic, dark and thick as the mists that cover the landscapes where the hauntings take place. The illustrations by Rohan Daniel Eason are eerie and powerful in their simplicity and depict the essence of each story perfectly. And they're scary, I guarantee you that, There were two-three tales that had me looking over shoulder during the night.

I never, ever comment on reviews, but there were two things that attracted my attention and I just can't keep silent tonight. :). I read a comment in how the stories are clichéd. They're not. If you feel you had read something similar before, you are correct. Mosse has taken well-known tales and legends and presented her own image. If that is what ‘'cliché'' means, then every book ever written on King Arthur is clichéd as well. She explains her source of inspiration in Author's Notes at the end of each tale, which brings me to a comment about how this technique diminished the magic of the stories. No, in my opinion, it adds up to it and makes us want to search for even more sources and versions of the legends. If we bother, that is...

Do you know what made me appreciate this collection so much? The feeling of hope it inspires. Yes, we have darkness and death and injustice, but we have also hope, the human strength to overcome not only the ghosts of a supernatural universe, but the hauntings of our actions and wrongdoings that are far more resilient than their spectral kins.And once we overcome those, then there are too few things to be afraid of..If you want gore and jump scares and ‘'boos'' in the dark, then this collection won't suit your interests. If you love the haunting kind of beauty and a proper look into the human psyche, then read this book on a winter's night, on Midsummer's Eve, on Halloween, on a stormy evening...