Reading: Rainbow Bouquet

[white_hart]

I saw a few posts on social media last week about a forthcoming anthology of queer-themed love stories from Manifold Press, Rainbow Bouquet (ed. Farah Mendelsohn) and, as it included stories by a couple of people I follow and whose work I generally enjoy I thought it seemed worth a punt. It was released on Valentine's Day, and because it had just appeared on my kindle at the point where I'd finished my last book and I wanted something easy to read I dived straight in.

There are ten stories in Rainbow Bouquet, spanning a variety of genres (space opera, fantasy, historical, ghost story) and settings (from the ancient Mediterranean to a distant planet). Only four of them feature f/f relationships, with the other six being m/m; I was really happy to see one of the f/f stories including an asexual character, because Representation Matters. My favourites were Kathleen Jowitt's 'Stronger than Death', a lovely story about a stately home's ghostly residents helping their descendents; Cheryl Morgan's 'The Poet's Daughter', about Calypso and a shipwrecked woman washed up on the beach of Ogygia long years after Odysseus's departure; and M.J. Logue's 'Firebrand', set in the theatres of Restoration Drury Lane, but there was only one I didn't really like at all, partly because it felt very male and very focused on sex but probably quite a lot because of a totally gratuitous diss of handknitted socks on the very first page.

Comments

[el_staplador]

I finished my copy this morning, and largely agree with you (with the obvious disclaimers!) - I also enjoyed the sci-fi one, though I wasn't entirely sure what was going on, and I thought the one with the Russian gentlemen was a pleasing little pastiche of Tolstoy etc.

[white_hart]

Yes, I think both of those and the Regency one with the Mozart were probably my second-tier favourites.

[cmcmck]

Not heard much from Farah on here recently which is a shame.

[alithea]

Sounds like another one for my TBR pile :)