The blurb
Stories of love in the past, present and future – all as fascinating in their variety as love itself.
The authors
There are several: Harry Robertson, Edward Ahern, Victoria Zammit, Erin Horáková, Cheryl Morgan, Sarah Ash, Kathleen Jowitt, Sean Robinson, Garrick Jones and MJ Logue. Biographies can be found here.
The publisher
Manifold Press has been relaunched recently, with a focus on LGBTQ historical fiction.
How I got this book
I received a free copy as a contributing author.
The bingo card
This could count towards: ‘Genre fiction’, ‘Marginalised people’, ‘An anthology’, or ‘LGBTQIA’. Calling it a ‘Book that defies genre’ feels like cheating, somehow, although one might make a case for some of the stories.
My thoughts
(Without, of course, reference to my own work, which obviously I think is OK. I wouldn’t have submitted it otherwise.)
This is an eclectic collection of stories, varying in setting (in the sense of both time and place), genre, style, tone, and which particular letters of the LGBTQ+ alphabet soup they used.
Personally, I felt that the strongest stories were the historicals, which is perhaps fitting given the publisher’s focus on that genre. MJ Logue’s Restoration-set Firebrand was spirited and witty; Cheryl Morgan’s The Poet’s Daughter was gorgeously lyrical; and Ubytok — umu pribytok by Erin Horáková seemed to me to be a convincing pastiche of classic Russian literature.
Overall, this is an enjoyable anthology, and with such a mixture there should be something in there to please most people.
Kathleen Jowitt 