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Notes
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Previously published as The Grinding House (2005), The Glass Woman contains one additional story, 'In the Drawback,' but does not include Donna Marie Hanson's introductory essay.
Contents
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Fresh Young Widow,
single work
short story
horror
A recently bereaved widow 'holds a revered position in a mythical village: her all-important task is to sheath the newly dead in clay, so that they can be built into the wall that surrounds the village. This morbid but honourable task is reflected in Warren’s own writing: she’s taken a potentially gruesome topic and rendered it in such beautifully crafted prose that it becomes a work of art. Her juxtaposition of the villagers — with their religious fervour and long-held traditions — and her grieving central character’s budding cynicism, creates a poignant, melancholy dichotomy' (Tim Kroenert, Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus).
- The Glass Woman, single work short story horror (p. 26-33)
- The Blue Stream, single work short story fantasy (p. 34-54)
- The Hanging People, single work short story horror (p. 55-63)
- Smoko, single work short story fantasy (p. 73-78)
- A Positive, single work short story horror (p. 79-87)
- The Missing Children, single work short story horror (p. 88-93)
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Al's Iso Bar,
single work
short story
horror
A story about a woman who, when pregnant, is endowed with a peculiar gift, and about her sequence of husbands whose only assignment is to impregnate her.
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The Left Behind,
single work
short story
horror
Following an ecological disaster on Earth, humans take to space in rockets. Plutonium has left many people disabled; these 'misfits' are all left behind on Earth, where they attempt to rebuild society.
The protagonist, a pregnant woman with a blind cobbler husband, works with the judge. A series of infanticides sweeps their community: mothers are killing their 'perfect' children because of the growing arrogance of older, able-bodied children. After the protagonist's husband is assaulted at the school, the protagonist shifts the crime of the infanticides to the judge, who loved the children and wanted them to be perfect, thus protecting the actual murderers.
- Tiger Kill, single work short story horror (p. 134-140)
- The Wrong Seat, single work short story horror (p. 141-145)
- Skin Holes, single work short story horror (p. 146-152)
- The Sameness of Birthdays, single work short story horror (p. 153-160)
- The Speaker of Heaven, single work short story fantasy (p. 161-170)
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The Smell of Mice,
single work
short story
horror
The protagonist comes from a family with angioedema: her father is bed-bound and her younger sister will die in ten years. The protagonist meets a witch who teaches her how to find and steal life from recently dead bodies by burning fetuses, which send up a purple smoke visible only to her.
Years on, the protagonist is running an illegal abortion clinic with her partner, Dr Matthews. They play on pregnant women's fears that their children will be born 'imperfect', with intellectual or physical disabilities, and so convince them to have an abortion instead. The protagonist takes fetuses from these operations and uses them to continue living. Her sister dies as she refuses to help.
- The Grinding House, single work novella horror (p. 184-238)
- Survival of the Last, single work short story fantasy (p. 239-247)
- Salamander, single work short story horror (p. 248-252)
- Working for the God of the Love of Money, single work short story horror (p. 253-259)