The Wish Dog and Other Stories takes you into the realm of the unknown, the ghostly and the gothic, in a colourful kaleidoscope of half-glimpsed shades.
The title story, The Wish Dog conjures up a fetch – a lifetime companion much wanted; Harvest is a haunting reworking of Babes in the Wood; Sovay, Sovay tells of a Grand Guignol actress who loses her head to a dream of romance and returns with a thousand stories to tell to her bewitched audience; in Broad Beach a man who has had a close encounter with death has dreams that seem larger than life – what he wants most is to run, like the athlete he watches at the tideline each day.
Other tales feature a ghostly mansion in a Merthyr park, a lonely soldier permanently on guard, the angel of death and a would-be suicide, a lonely Inuit asleep on a mountainside, a row of small wet footprints on floorboards...
Open the pages if you dare, but don't forget to look behind you.
This has been on my radar for a while - it's a collection of short stories from Welsh women writers, all with a ghostly or haunting theme.
Some of the stories I really enjoyed, especially 'Sovay, Sovay', 'Caretakers', 'I, King' and 'Ghosts'.
Some I feel like I missed the point, even though they were beautifully written.
I don’t think anyone loves every story in an anthology, and I’m sure those that I didn’t like as much will resonate with someone else, just as those I loved may not. This is a lovely collection of stories and well worth a read for the hidden gems.