Book of the Month: THE WEIRD TALES OF TANITH LEE by Tanith Lee
Worlds of wonder await.
I first came across the name Tanith Lee about a month ago, under less-than-ideal circumstances. Vulture had just published its big article detailing the sexual assault allegations made against Neil Gaiman, sending shockwaves throughout the sci-fi/fantasy community. Many members of that community, myself included, no longer felt comfortable reading and supporting Gaiman's work; discussions began about how to react to this news and which authors people might want to read instead. That was where Tanith Lee came in.
The first time I saw Lee's name, it was in a post alleging that Gaiman had plagiarized her Tales of the Flat Earth series when writing The Sandman (an allegation I'm not going to comment on further, since I don't have enough knowledge of either series to provide input). But the books sounded cool, so I made a mental note to look them up later. Not long after that, I came across a different post which listed some of Lee's prominent works and pointed out this anthology as an ideal starting point for new readers. At that point, I went "Oh, what the heck?" and I managed to track down a copy. And let me tell you, I'm very glad I did.
Let me provide a little background. Tanith Lee was a prolific British fantasy and science fiction writer. Born in 1947, she published her first story in 1968: between that point and her death in 2015, she wrote 90+ novels and 300+ short stories. She was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Society's August Derleth Award for Best Novel, and she received lifetime achievement awards from organizations like the World Fantasy Convention and the Horror Writers Association. In fact, the SFWA recognized her work with their Infinity Award just last year, almost a decade after her passing. Though she was never the most famous author in her chosen field, she was and still is respected by her storytelling colleagues. This anthology I'm reading, The Weird Tales of Tanith Lee, is a collection of stories by Lee that were originally published in Weird Tales. That, if you didn't know, is the famous fantasy/horror pulp magazine that launched the careers of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, among others.
The moment I started reading the first story in the collection—"When the Clock Strikes," a dark retelling of Cinderella—this book felt like coming home to me. Lee's style of writing is vivid and engrossing, changing and adapting so that each new story reignites a wonderful sense of discovery. The stories themselves represent a wide range of genre and subject matter: in these pages you'll find tales of high fantasy, magical realism, adventure, horror, drama, romance. Her descriptions are lavish and colorful, her fantastical worlds bizarre and lovingly constructed. The characters she creates range from larger-than-life forces of nature to flawed, complicated humans often struggling to fit the archetype that life has assigned them. Some of her tales have a personal and conversational tone, as though the narrator were in the room with you. Others feel impossibly ancient and otherworldly, as if they came from the pages of a lost medieval manuscript. Everything about her work spoke to me immediately and pulled me deeper into the book. I saw some of my own favorite literary themes and ideas woven into several of the stories, strengthening the connection I felt to this material. Here was an author I didn't know was missing from my personal canon, works to aspire to and be inspired by.
To give you a taste of what Lee offers, let me point out a few samples from the collection.
- "When the Clock Strikes" is, as I mentioned, a Cinderella retelling (specifically the Brothers Grimm version rather than the more familiar Perrault version). But you've never read a Cinderella story like this. Our heroine is no tragic damsel, and she does not sneak away to the prince's ball in search of love or adventure: she's out looking for revenge.
- "Death Dances" takes place in a sprawling Arabian Nights-esque city as four unlucky—or lucky—residents are summoned by Death herself for a fateful boat ride into the next life. Containing a twist I didn't see coming, this story highlights the restrictive nature of traditional gender roles while subverting the usual tropes and imagery associated with personifications of death.
- Still on the subject of death, "Antonius Bequeathed" is a short, strange and poignant story about our complicated relationship with aging. A young woman receives an elderly houseguest whose habits make her frightened and disgusted, but as she herself grows old, the simple joys of her companion's lifestyle reveal themselves to her.
- "The Unrequited Glove" takes readers on a journey to a freewheeling expatriate community in 1920s Corsica, where a mysterious, unassuming artist concocts a plan to get back at the playboy who broke her heart. The spell she weaves has effects both comical and sinister as her hapless ex finds himself driven mad by an unusually animated reminder of his indiscretion.
- "The Kingdoms of the Air" is an homage to the classic Arthurian questing narrative. When a noble knight receives a vision of three Christian relics, he sets off on a long and arduous journey to find their hiding place. Along the way, he faces trials that test his courage, his chivalry and—most importantly—his faith in God's judgment.
Those are just a fraction of the stories waiting for you in this hefty volume. No matter what kind of speculative fiction you prefer, you're sure to find something here that will resonate with you and ignite your imagination. Lee's bibliography is vast, and getting this first taste of it has made me want to explore as much of it as I can. If you haven't read any of her work yet and you're looking for a talented author with memorable, thought-provoking stories, this is a great book to pick up.
