Seasonal ghosts

I've enjoyed my previous reads by Kate Mosse, especially the sequence set in the Languedoc, which have also been reviewed on Bookhound. I love her mixture of history and myth, and how she combines the past and the contemporary to produce an eerie otherworldly landscape that is characteristically her own.

Photo by Peder Sterll

So, when I came across her The Mistletoe Bride in my local library I grabbed it unseasonably early. Ultimately it didn't really measure up to my expectations, but there was still much to admire and enjoy about this ghostly anthology.

The book contains 16 short stories with a suitably haunting theme, along with a one act play on a similar subject. All feature a beautiful woodcut to illustrate each tale, and most of the stories also have a short afterword by the author where she places the story within the context of her writing life. This often made for fascinating reading in itself.

The bulk of the stories are set in the UK, with some set in Brittany or the Languedoc. Most are linked in some way to folk tales or legends; and all are well written. I especially enjoyed the way in which she linked the tales to the atmospheric landscape she adeptly conjured up.

Two of the stories are based around the popular Victorian tale of the Mistletoe bough - a story that had haunted me since my childhood.

These were probably the stories I enjoyed the most. I especially loved The yellow scarf in which a modern day heroine is able to re-write history (even if the philosophy and science of it would have most sci-fi fans screaming!).

I loved the gentle history of Why the yew tree lived so long, the M.R. James influence on The house on the hill, and the wonderfully strong women of Sainte Therese and The ghost of Christmas Past - a wonderfully comforting story, despite its underlying sadness.

But here's where I have a problem. I enjoyed all the stories, but none of them had that extra frisson that divides a good ghost story from a great one. In the words of Charles Dickens' Fat Boy, I feel that a proper ghost or horror story writer should want to make my flesh creep, and if they don't do that, however clever or atmospheric the tale, they have somehow missed the mark. 

I am quite sure that fans of Kate Mosse will enjoy the anthology. There's much to enjoy and learn from if you're interested in the craft of writing too, but unless you like your horror very "lite", as a collection of spooky tales it doesn't quite deliver.