STRANGE TRAVELERS
Not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, this collection of Wolfe's stories published in the 1990s contains death by overdose, suicide, Armageddon, cruelty to animals, abuse of children, children willing to falsely accuse fathers of sexual abuse and a plethora of vampiric females figures eager to suck the life out of men. [Individual story critiques--not terribly complimentary--snipped] While Wolfe's prose is exceptional and there are a few gems here, such as "Useful Phrases," which delights in how words lead us to and revel mysteries, there are also several tasteless and misogynistic entries. Chief among them is "The Ziggurat," in which a mother coaches her daughters in the art of false accusation and the father--whose wife leaves him broke--eventually regains all by finding a woman he can dominate and a technology he can steal. All too frequently in this volume, even when women show men 'the pleasures of Hell," biting them till they bleed, men emerge loutish and triumphant.