Fantasies are places we briefly visit; we can’t live there. The stories in Widow Fantasies deftly explore the subjugation of women through the often subversive act of fantasizing. From a variety of perspectives, through a symphony of voices, Widow Fantasies immerses the reader in the domestic rural gothic, offering up unforgettable stories from the shadowed lives of girls and women.
"At turns shocking, funny, and heartbreaking, the stories in Hollay Ghadery’s, Widow Fantasies serve up densely packed miniatures embracing the gothic dysfunctions of the nuclear family. Ghadery’s stories take an unflinching look at family life and explode the myths of a bucolic domestica. These sure-footed stories make for compelling reading." — Nancy Jo Cullen, author of The Western Alienation Merit Badge and winner of the 2010 Dayne Ogilvie Prize
“Sparking sudden moments of self-recognition, Hollay Ghadery’s Widow Fantasies is an elegiac collection that lays bare, in flashes of longing and desire, the personal and particular. Ghadery’s distinctive blend of wry humour, wit and sensuality sear the pages, filling them with evocative imagery, lyricism and tenderness. Widow Fantasies will take your breath away with its honesty and elegance.” — Lucy E.M. Black, author of The Brickworks
“Widow Fantasies is a delicious look behind the curtain of female propriety. These succinct, sometimes-connected vignettes of women living and loving in modern times ring with a quiet truth that resonates to our feminine core. Ghadery is expert with language, and weaves action and description with such finesse, we are transported to rooms and private spaces where women share their fears and deep desires for themselves, their futures, and their relationships. The frustration of women in unfulfilling relationships, the burden of beauty standards, and the commodification of the female form drive the narratives forward. This is the manifesto of our shared female rage, and the subtle ways we exist powerfully and purposely despite the burdens of gender. It is the softly voiced battle cry of our times.” — Gina Leola Woolsey, author of Fifteen Thousand Pieces