protean depravity

High were the hopes for 2021 - after a disastrous pandemic year, tons of confusion, losses, sickness, bush fires, earthquakes and other catastrophes the world was going to enter a new, better era in 2021 with vaccination for all, freedom days everywhere, return to normality... It didn't turn out that way. Having reached the end of this year, having seen that the worst was yet to come, that those vaccines don't really work, 2021 actually feels like an extension of the most unpopular year 2020. The good things about the collective state that we are in can be counted on the fingers of one hand and one of them is certainly that there is much more time for reading compared to the old normal. So much did I read this year that it was seriously difficult to choose the winners for the Protean Depravity Best Books of 2021, but finally here they are!

Editor Ellen Datlow's new collection of short stories inspired by the infamous Shirley Jackson is simply SUBLIME. Believe me, I'm saying this as someone who isn't even an overly great fan of Jackson: each story in this book is magic! In her introduction, Datlow explains the essence of a Shirley Jackson story as "filled with hauntings, dysfunctional families, and domestic pain; simmering rage, loneliness, suspicion of outsiders; sibling rivalry and women trapped psychologically and/or by the supernatural", adding that Jackson embodies the "dark undercurrent of suburban life". And indeed, in each and every one of the 18 stories in this collection there is a piece of good old Shirley - haunted houses bring about madness, poisoning women in abundance, evil mothers, collective guilt, small-town horror... As I already mentioned above, I am not the biggest Jackson-fan but it was a great pleasure to recognize traces of say, "The Lottery" or Haunting o...