PEACH PIT

A 16-story anthology highlights a diverse list of authors who let their protagonists embrace their unhinged natures.

A smart-mouthed child locked inside a shed discovers a match and the intoxicating allure of fire (“All You Have Is Your Fire” by Yah Yah Scholfield). A disabled teenager takes the Devil, named Max, as her girlfriend through the summoning power of masturbation (“The Devil’s Doorbell” by Amanda Leduc). A Black woman ruthlessly disposes of men guilty of “the crime of wasting a Black woman’s time” (“Fuckboy Museum” by Deesha Philyaw). The protagonists of these stories bring new meaning to unsavory and unhinged and prove that characters—women especially—need not be well behaved or morally pure to have delightful literary value. Ranging from merely unlikable to downright deplorable, these women leave bodies, burning buildings, and broken plates in their wakes in these deeply disturbing and sublime narratives. The latter half of the collection is heavy on speculative fiction and magical realism. In Chantal V. Johnson's “MS Wrong,” Valerie contemplates the benefits of an Impenetrable Body Mod that seals up “all three holes” but instead turns to drugging men with an aphrodisiac—“ethical angle” aside—to enjoy mutually pleasurable kinky sex. Alison Rumfitt's “Buffalo” features a genderqueer woman who falls under suspicion when the skinned bodies of young women keep popping up in the neighborhood—just because she happens to own eight skin suits (“made from a clever mix of plastic, latex, and lycra,” not real flesh, thank you very much). While the book has a few weak links, standouts include Chaya Bhuvaneswar’s “The Monolith,” in which oncologist Jane Chun obsessively works to destroy the budding career of a young female medical student; Lauren Groff’s “Amaranth,” in which the title character spends years following her father’s death calculating the best way to ruin her mother’s happiness; and Chana Porter’s “Aquafina,” which takes the form of poetry written by the narrator about her best friend, whom she lusts after and envies in equal measure.

A riveting collection in which downtrodden, vindictive, and occasionally just plain evil women choose violence at every turn.