I was lucky enough to be sent a copy for review of Stories for Christmas and the festive season which has been published by British Library. It was just what I needed to get me into the festive mood I thought. This anthology consists of seventeen short stories all by female authors, some by well-known authors but also by new to me writers. Some of the stories have been gathered from Christmas editions of women’s magazines of the past, and they’re set out in chronological order with the first one being set in the early part of preparations for Christmas and the second last one The Pantomime by Stella Margetson being set around New Year, that was one of my favourites. The very last story isn’t even a page and a half long.

The first is called The Turkey Season by Alice Munro. The setting is what would nowadays be called a turkey processing plant and I must admit that although this is a well written story it was a distinctly grim read with more than graphic descriptions of turkey gutting, not really what I was expecting, however looking past that it features good characters, particularly the women.

As ever with short story anthologies this book was a bit ‘curate’s eggish’ (good in parts) but on balance there were far more that I enjoyed than stories that for me just didn’t hit the spot.

There’s an interesting introduction by Simon Thomas. My thanks to British Library for sending me a copy of the book for review.