The Uncanny Gastronomic: Strange Tales of the Edible Weird

by Zara-Louise Stubbs (Editor)

‘Well,’ he said, looking at the waiter and giving him a sly wink, ‘all I can tell you is that I think it was pig’s meat.’ ‘You mean you’re not sure?’ ‘One can never be sure.’
A man is tortured by the lurking fear that he lives among a society of cannibals. Visitors to the hottest restaurant in town discover the arcane origins of its sublime soup. A groom’s obsession with the teeth of his betrothed prompts a sickening end to a Gothic romance.
The significance of food and eating in storytelling traditions dates back to fairy tales, folklore and beyond, with the capacity for the edible to transform or to cause otherworldly effects sometimes inspiring wonder, but often touching on a deep-rooted fear. Exploring themes of body horror, consumption and myriad forms of strange eating, this new collection includes a feast of bitesize tales from masters of the macabre such as Shirley Jackson and Roald Dahl – alongside lesser-known oddities from the British Library’s collections – to digest the significance of the uncanny gastronomic.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Gothic, Food, Weird Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published July 27, 2023

Reviews

[Gabriela Anjos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really delightful collection, had a lot of fun reading it. My favorite one was Shirley Jackson's, I was hysterical at the end.

[George Fowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 ⭐️ An anthology really hit the spot right now in a way that I didn't know I was craving. Having a busy schedule meant an anthology of shorter works gave me plenty to nibble on, dipping in and out as the hunger for them struck. The introduction is really solid and gives you plenty of food for thought that sticks with you like an after taste as you read your way through the phenomenally constructed menu of works. There's a lot of authors here that I've been meaning to read, and the breadth of time periods and nationalities gives you a fair amount to chew on. I admit that my tastes are for that of the more morbid stories, and I would have even liked there to have been more of a flavour for the 'weird' as i have a fairly strong stomach for the grotesque and bizarre, although all the works certainly succeed in being uncanny. It's definitely something that I will be seeking out further to expand my literary palette. (Do you think I got enough food references in there?)

[Tessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took my time with this one (as one does with a full course) but I absolutely loved it!

My favorite stories were:
The Measure of My Powers - M F K Fisher
Like Mother Used to Make - Shirley Jackson
Goblin Market - Christina Rosetti

Great collection, and loved the introductions and brief history about each author before the story. My kind of weird!

[Pierluca Cancellieri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good idea. some stories are better than others, but I liked the theme and some of them are proper artworks. it's also nice of poetry and prosa are both present

[Alex Sarll]

There's an element of selection bias at work here, of course. With a free trial of Kindle Unlimited, I've grabbed at the Tales Of The Weird that are included - and the available selection includes most of them, even really recent releases, with the gaps tending to be ones I already have anyway. Now, on one level this is obviously dead handy. But set against that, it means volumes I read here are the ones that didn't initially leap out at me as worth owning, and that's even before we get into the possibility that old, spooky stories just work better on paper than a screen. Meaning that, even if I continue to steer clear of ones I know I don't fancy (yes, haunted tattoo anthology, I am as ever looking at you), there was always the likelihood that I might enjoy these maybe books less.

Even so...

When I'd glanced at this one in the bookshop, I had if nothing else been impressed by the way Zara-Louise Stubbs had organised it, the contents list broken down into sections like a meal, so that A Main Course: Supernatural Appetites is followed (after a palate-cleanser, of course) by Dessert: A Taste For Human Flesh. Alas, what could have been commendable commitment to the bit turns out to be more an over-adherence to thematic architecture, often expressed in awkward academese with words that seem jammed in as uncomfortably as an unexpected extra guest at a full table: "Much of Rossetti's poetry and stories are characterised as romantic"; Saki wrote novels "in a style that precedes that of Evelyn Waugh". Cannibalism In The Cars apparently shows "Twain's approach to the uncanny gastronomic is to endow it with a sense of mystery and suggestion; it exists in the liminal space between exaggerated truth and reality, working to emphasise the power of a well-told story." Which seems like a very roundabout way to avoid using the simple phrase 'tall tale', and a similarly convoluted evasion of 'satire' follows. Meaning that with a subsequent cannibalism story where I don't already possess equivalent cultural hinterland, Lu Xun's A Madman's Diary, I was left wondering if I was missing something similarly fundamental which a more helpful introduction might have furnished.

And that's just the introductions to individual stories. The one for the whole book makes bold claims such as "It would be difficult to name a fairy tale whose events does not revolve [that singular/plural disjunction again!] around a specific food object - pumpkin, gingerbread, beans, wheat, golden eggs - or themes of hunger and dizzying excess often in paradoxical adjacency". Would it really, though? Was there any food in more than the most background role in Sleeping Beauty? And having drawn her terms of reference so widely that pretty much anything is encompassed within the uncanny gastronomic, Stubbs then tries to have it both ways by identifying deeply arguable ebbs and flows. Do 'Yellow Jackets’ [sic], the deeply dull Fresh, and a few further examples of which I've never heard really represent cannibalism having a cultural moment more than any of the times in recent decades when Hannibal Lecter has loomed large? One of which came pretty close to Alive? But then I suppose we can't expect too much of any cultural chronology from someone who shunts Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris Trilogy to 2020.

Still, having expressed my frustration with the apparatus, what of the actual stories? The reason I didn't pick it up in the first place was that too many of them I already know. Goblin Market I can forgive, being so germane to the topic, ditto Kafka's Hunger Artist (though less so the decision to go with a 1981 translation which changes the title to the rubbish 'A Fasting-Artist', or the introduction saying it "works to break the gendered association between fasting and feminity", thus completely ignoring countless counter-examples, not least the obvious real life parallel of David Blaine). But while admitting that their unconventional diets are part of their horror, did we really need a vampire story and two werewolves? And if we did, were there not other choices for the fuzzy lads than Saki's Gabriel-Ernest and Angela Carter's Company Of Wolves, both absolute bangers, but both also already anthologised to within an inch of their lives? If a classic monster were desired, surely the ghoul, not represented here, is the one whose shudder-factor is most inextricable from its unwholesome appetite? In the final section things collapse entirely, with Poe's Berenice (ubiquitous, and not even about food, only teeth) followed by O Henry's Witches' Loaves (about food, at least - but, like Gift Of The Magi, not remotely uncanny, more a sitcom kerfuffle minus the laughs). Silvina Ocampo and Italo Calvino at least mean we don't end on a sour note - and if Under The Jaguar Sun is another well-known entry, it was always going to fit well for me, not least because I find guacamole far more unsettling than anthropophagy. Still, they can't altogether get rid of the taste of a missed opportunity. The worst of it is that, considered individually and in isolation, the stories are mostly good, sometimes great (although given its reputation, I was surprised by how underwhelming I found Roald Dahl's Pig, which had all the nastiness and none of the joy of his children's books). But then isn't it always more frustrating when a meal doesn't hit the spot even though most of the ingredients were promising?

[p. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5☆

This is perhaps one of the most varied entries in the series, collecting not only poems but also short stories and essays. It takes great lengths to explore different dimensions of what the "uncanny gastronomic" would consist. Stubbs's introduction is also excellent - so much so that it is one of my favourite parts of the book.

Favourites: "A Fasting-Artist" by Franz Kafka, "Like Mother Used to Make" by Shirley Jackson, "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti, "Gabriel-Ernest" by Saki, "The Company of Wolves" by Angela Carter (already a favourite), "A Madman's Diary" by Lu Xun, "Pig" by Roald Dahl and "Under the Jaguar Sun" by Italo Calvino

[Joely · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

don’t usually read short story anthologies but I’ve been sooo excited to read this and some of the stories were great! My favourites were ‘Like Mother Used to Make’ by Shirley Jackson, ‘To Serve Man’ by Damon Knight, ‘Cannibalism in the Cars’ by Mark Twain and ‘Pig’ by Roald Dahl. What I’ve learnt is that I think I enjoy reading about humans being eaten more than I should.

[Grace Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured this, it was delicious!

[Manicpaperclip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love the idea of tales of the weird from the British library and this did not dissapoint. A fantastic 'tasting menu' to explore authors allowing you to dip your toe into stories and poems that span 160 years. I would list my favorites but there are too many.

[Pieter · Rating 3 out of 5]

A neat collection of stories, some pretty good ones, some a bit less so but still decent.

The last story is just vore though.

[Leila Anani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another excellent anthology from the British Library Tales of the Weird collection - This one with all the stories themed around Eating and food.

What struck me particularly about this anthology is the wide range of writers: Robert Browning, Christina Rosetti, Franz Kafka, Angela Carter, Shirley Jackson, Virginia Woolf, Roald Dahl, Saki, Mark Twain feature here along with the tales of the weird staples of Poe and Blackwood. This is an excellent introduction to many literary authors I've been meaning to try but never got round to as well as easily digested bite sized chunks of writers (such as Woolf) I've struggled with.

You've got familiar classics here such as Rosetti's Goblin Market, Poe's Berenice and Carter's The Company of Wolves - which I won't bother going into (read them! they are great for a reason)
However there are some other highlights here which surprised me. Roald Dahl's pig is particularly nasty and I loved Mark Twain's cannibal tale 'Cannibalism in the cars' - Damon Knight's sci-fi offering 'To Serve Man' is excellent (i definitely need to check out more of him), Franz Kafka's A fasting-artist is fun. I also enjoyed Italo Calvino's Under the Jaguar Sun and #54 by Jim Crace (another one I need to read more of).

I found this anthology far more wide ranging and diverse than many of the other books in the series - It's less Victorian gothic and more worldly and modern. Recommended.

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was great fun to read, and I’m totally convinced by the editor’s concept of the Uncanny Gastronomic. I loved how the collection was organised to guide the reader through the different aspects of the concept, like a dinner menu. Some stories/ courses epitomise the Uncanny Gastronomic better than others - interestingly, for a “weird” collection, I thought the more supernatural stories stretched or diluted the theme. After all, any number of vampire or werewolf stories involve a hunger for humans. The tales told in a realist mode felt more effective, but all were good, at the very least. This is easily the best of these BL Tales of the Weird collections I’ve read so far, in part because it doesn’t favour obscurity over enjoyment. Indeed it contains a story by one of the world’s most popular authors, Roald Dahl, with his infamous tale for adults, ‘Pig’. It has been a long time since I last read this story, I’d forgotten how it shows Dahl to be an antisemite on the page as well as off, with its grotesque caricature of a venal Jewish lawyer Mr. Zuckermann. These BL books come with a disclaimer that says some stories may contain offensive language or opinions from their time, but this story was published in 1960, when many writers had dispensed with antisemitic stereotypes (all the rage with the modernists), post-Holocaust. In any case, it certainly fits the theme, as do many of Dahl’s tales, but nevertheless leaves a sour taste.

[Andrin Albrecht · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection was a delight from start to finish (though I realize that’s maybe not an ideal thing to say, given that the majority of stories revolve around human beings being murdered and/or consumed in one way or another) … It’s expertly curated, with stories arranged thematically like courses as a meal. There is a starter of intoxicating fruit and mushrooms, a cannibalistic main course, a palette cleanser centered around water, and a dessert steeped in Mexican spices. Some inclusions were already familiar (e.g., Christina Rosetti’s “Goblin Market” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “Berenice”) whereas others were impressively niche, but not a single one fell off in any shape or form. Editor Zara-Louise Stubbs has clearly put considerable effort into this collection, writing a lengthy introduction for each story that never spoils its contents but provides plenty of additional context and connection points. Despite what you might expect from the title, there’s nothing truly revolting in here, either, just a whole range of gems I newly discovered and, I admit it, even one or two recipes that I would very much like to try myself.

[Sohxpie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always enjoy reading these anthologies from the British Library. I really enjoy the little introductions to each author and how their story fits into the collection, it's good context for the story and it's always nice to learn about the author, especially if you've never come across them or their work before. I particularly enjoyed Kafka's 'A Fasting Artist', it definitely leaves you thinking. 'A Goblin Market' was my first introduction to Christina Rossetti and I very much enjoyed it, she is a writer that I want to explore further for sure! Jim Crace's #54 was certainly different and actually, I kind of want to read the full collection of The Devil's Larder, it seems odd but entertaining. The wonderful thing about this kind of anthology is being exposed to new writers who you end up enjoying. Although I have only read three books from this vast collection, I think this one is definitely my favourite, I enjoyed the weirdness of it!

[Miss Bookiverse · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an excellent collection! From the arrangement of the stories as dinner courses to the introduction that gives a small insight into the literary studies of food to the actual stories, this anthology is a marvelous feast.

My favorite stories, even if I already knew some of them, were Jackson's Like Mother Used to Make, Rossetti's Goblin Market (my first time reading it and what a joy this poem is!), Saki's Gabriel-Ernest, Knight's To Serve Man (what a twist), Crace's #54 (such eerie descriptions), Dahl's Pig, Poe's Berenice and O. Henry's Witches' Loaves.

I wish all the British Library Tales of the Weird were this good. I've only read From the Depths and Other Strange Tales of the Sea and it was alright. Feel free to recommend your favorites from this series.

[Deepa Nirmal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love short stories and I love food so I couldn’t pass up this collection. I was surprised that of all the stories included here, I had only read Pig by Roald Dahl. There are all the usual greats you’d expect to see- Twain, O. Henry, Saki, Poe, Shirley Jackson (her story was part of the collection that included “The Lottery”). I had read some twee stuff by Christina Rossetti in my childhood, and was genuinely impressed by the creepy impact of The Goblin Market. I had never heard of the sci-fi writer Damon Knight, and can see why his gem “To Serve Man” was dramatized for The Twilight Zone. Having recently read “The Three Body Problem” I am never going to think of aliens as being benevolent ever again, Star Trek be damned.

I got this from the library (they purchased it on my recommendation) but I liked it so much I think I’m going to buy my personal copy.

[Rebecca Derine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am new to reading short stories and enjoyed this introduction to the genre. There is great variety in the collection, the majority written by well-known authors. I would qualify these more as "uncanny" and "macabre" than proper horror, but this is not necessarily a problem as the stories are vivid, some quite complex... my only complaint is that there was way more uncanny than gastronomic! Otherwise very enjoyable.

[Karolina Pałka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading that book was such a pleasure. As a foodie myself, the motif of this anthology was an intriguing encounter. I enjoyed every story. Some of the authors were well known to me, and some I encountered for the first time. The stories 'To Serve Man' and 'Cannibalism in the Cars' were particularly surprising and enjoyable.

[R̷̢̢̨͔̩̲̮͋o̸͍̞̯̖͉͆̄́̔́͘͝ṣ̷̛̲̳̯͇̦̣͛͗̂̽̿̈́̃͛͜ͅę̷̢͔̫̰̳̍ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good mix of familiar names and stuff I hadn’t heard of. There’s a couple of sleepers but otherwise not too shabby. I’ll give it 5 bags of popcorn, and as a bonus I’ll throw in a little vial of antidote (cause of all the poison in the stories.)

[Rebecca Oldfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

A feast!

[Bill Borre]

Witches' Loaves is also printed in the Big Book of the Masters of Horror

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is an anthology made for me! lots of great stories about food and eating re: folklore, cannibalism, love and domesticity and much more!!

[Pei Lin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful!!

[Johanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delicious collection, and a lovely mix of old favourites, and new pleasures, that takes you through the perfect gothic menu for Halloween.

[Daisy Wong · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bought from tender books

[Bridget M · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best collections I've read in years! I adored it from start to finish I cannot reccomend it ENOUGH!