A review by mangofandango
When Things Get Dark by Ellen Datlow

4.0

Shirley Jackson is a fave, and some of the authors in this collection are too (Elizabeth Hand! SGJ!) so I was pretty excited to find this one at my library. And it was as enjoyable as I hoped! Sometimes, I find short story collections make me kind of restless, because they're uneven and it's hard to keep momentum going when changing stories frequently, and I start to become preoccupied with how many are left. There were a couple stories in here that didn't really do it for me, but most of them really did, enough that I felt invested even between tales. Some stories were enchanting (the Kelly Link) some haunting (Elizabeth Hand), atmospheric ("Hag", the Seanan McGuire), some skin-crawlingly horrifying ("Tiptoe", oh my god). There's a touch of dystopia ("Special Meal") and a story by Joyce Carol Oates so disturbing and sad that it will stay with me in a horrifying way. They all have a Shirley Jackson-esque thread running through them, despite being extremely different stories.