Unspeakable: A Queer Gothic Anthology

I really enjoyed this — there's a good range of varieties of gothic included, and a good representation of queer identities — and a lot of sapphic ones. I was expecting this to be tilted towards gothic romance because of the theme, and that is the case, but there's some gothic horror here, too. And if a few of those stories didn't quite hit gothic for me, I wasn't upset at their inclusion — most of the entries are really enjoyable; I think there are only two I didn't have a great time with.

There are 19 stories in 288 pages, so even with  three of them very short and more prose poems, these are all a pretty quick read — which was delightful for me in a fairly busy few weeks, since it made for a good book to dip in and out of. 

A few standouts, for me:

• “The Moon in the Glass” — classic Victorian set haunting, and a wonderfully creepy ghost and narrator
• “Lure of the Abyss” — admittedly boats and mermaids could have been written for me, but the tension building was great
• “Hearteater” — beautiful gothic romance; I figured out one character's secret very quickly but loved both women's instinct to reassure the other that their love at least was not monstrous
• “Quicksilver Prometheus” — gothic horror set in the interwar period, and unprocessed grief given ghostly form
• “The Ruin” — this is the one that genuinely freaked me out a little; it's modern gothic in the preoccupation with decay and a bit post-apocalyptic. I loved the casual trans rep
• “My Love Lays Split on Either Side” — very bisexual prose poem of self-acceptance with gorgeous imagery