Strangely Enough is a collection of 21 short stories with weirdness as their defining feature. As with any anthology, there’s an unevenness to the writing. There’s also an unevenness to the idea of ‘weird’. In a spectrum of strangeness, some are mildly odd; others test imaginative boundaries.
The lead story, ‘The Builder/Dreamer’, tells of a Big Brother-ish bureaucracy observing a man constructing an odd object. The anthology hits its stride with the third story, ‘Cuckoo’, by Katy Knighton. A creature is seen by a mother near their chicken coop, waiting for hens to sit on and hatch its young. The title’s wordplay and the subsequent narrative subtly suggests an exploration of mental illness, in a masterful example of ‘show-don’t-tell’.
‘Atrophy’, by Az Cosgrove, forces the reader to look at disability in a very different way. ‘Out of the Cauldron’, by Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario, cleverly writes of the lifespan of a creature born from a bean within a cauldron of soup. Xandra Fowler’s, ‘Behind the Rowan Trees’ tells of two children lost in a forest and taken in by an old woman. This isn’t some derivative Hansel and Gretel story, though. It stands on its own originality.
There are stories towards the end which lift the collection. In ‘Great Big World’, by Jake Dean, tiny surfers bunk in with a normal-sized man. The banter and machismo of the tiny men belie their size. Sam Mayne’s, ‘Every Beast, Every Creeping Thing’ has an eeriness which outshines most other stories.
There is certainly talent on show within these stories, and if the odd and the weird is your thing, this anthology will deliver some gems.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gillian Hagenus is a writer, editor and book devourer living and working on Kaurna land in South Australia. Her short fiction has appeared in various journals across Australia, including Voiceworks, SWAMP, Social Alternatives and Aniko Press, and internationally in The Antigonish Review.
She has a Masters degree in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide, where her thesis focused on Australian Suburban Gothic fiction. In 2022, her unpublished short story collection was the winner of the AAWP/UWA Publishing Chapter One Prize. In her free time,
Gillian helps run literature festivals and looks after a menagerie of other people’s pets.
Gillian’s short story collection, Strangely Enough, was published in November 2023.
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