Continuing with my modern Gothic reading, Wakenhyrst is one of those joyful books that combines contemporary themes and genre awareness with a totally traditional setting. Like Sarah Water’s wonderful historical novels, it manages to give an authentic presentation of complex lives that are relevant and compatible with modern sensibilities, while remaining convincingly entrenched in an earlier time period. In Wakenhyrst, the modern element is set up through the most traditional of gothic conventions. A smug 1966 article ‘Only in The Sunday Explorer Magazine’ introduces us to a ‘witch’s lair ..read more

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone. So begins Shirley Jackson’s pitch-perfect horror story – in my opinion an opening that ranks ..read more

A huge thank you is owed to the #1930 club, hosted by Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon at Stuck in a Book, for inspiring me to re-read one of my favourite novels from the last century.  ‘As I Lay Dying’ is a demented story about America, family, bereavement, faith and lots more; none of these concepts can be logically understood – to be honest, I’m not sure any of them really make sense – but then neither does the book itself. As shown in the 1963 Penguin book cover, the story concerns a woman who is watched over, in her coffin, by her family.  ..read more

Mary’s Shelly’s ‘Frankenstein‘ tells of a monster created by a hubristic scientist out of scavenged, beautiful body parts in a doomed attempt to demonstrate human ingenuity.  The result was an abomination who has nonetheless gone on to capture the hearts of readers for over two centuries, revealing as he does his own tortured humanity in contrast to his apparently admirable and ambitious creator. From Boris Karloff to Tim Burton, new generations have interpreted the monster for their own times, but it’s hard to find a more accomplished recreation than Saadawi’s utterly up-to-date Iraqi r ..read more

My first experience of reading Cormac McCarthy was with ‘The Road,’ a book I picked up after hearing that the author was a Great American Novelist, not realising that I was letting myself in for several hundred pages of apocalyptic grimness. ‘The Road’ is about a father and his son walking through a sparsely populated wasteland, with a lot of unspecified terror and very little in the way of hope. ‘The Road’ was published in 2006 and I remember feeling that it spoke to a very 21st century fear for the current state and future of the human race.  It’s taken me more than a decade to see wha ..read more

I read this book on my Kindle and I think the only print edition I’ve ever seen is the no doubt excellent but very drab looking Penguin Classic paperback.  Overall, I was completely unprepared for the gothic splendour and psychological torment of Hogg’s classic horror story. To explain the title, it comes from a religious belief in predestination – specifically, that those who are destined to be ‘saved’ have no reason to avoid sin. As Rabina, a fanatical follower of this theory, exclaims to the Reverent Wringhim, her favourite minister, ‘How delightful it is to think that a justified per ..read more

Last year I was genuinely terrified by Ira Levin’s ‘The Stepford Wives‘ and I decided that, taken in moderation, Levin could become my new favourite horror writer.  ‘The Stepford Wives’ was entirely without fireworks, but the depiction of the hidden evil within conventional relationships and idealised suburbia had me metaphorically looking over my shoulder for months. I was both hoping and fearing that ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ would have the same effect.  In the case of this Levin classic, I did know the ending of the film, but then a vague knowledge of the ultimate horror in Stepford ..read more

I should probably begin this post with a disclaimer.  I’ve never been a fan of ‘Wuthering Heights.’  I first read it as a teenager, looking for another fiction hero to fall in love with and I was, simply, disgusted.  As far as I could see, Heathcliff was an abusive puppy-murdering sadist.* I was angry at the novel and I was really really angry that it was being sold to young girls as a model for ideal relationships.  I re-read it a bit later, in a slightly more accepting mind frame (this time I knew what to expect) and was willing to concede that it had some powerful gothi ..read more

A general cry out to the world: how can I have lived for so long without knowing about ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ by Shirley Jackson? This book is older than I am, so there is something seriously wrong with the way I receive (or possibly selectively manage not to hear) book recommendations. In an attempt to remedy the fault, and to assuage my guilt and frustration, my final review post of the year will be dedicated to unpicking the joys of the wonderful, misanthropic, modern classic. As always, when I start babbling with enthusiasm, it’s best to try and impose some kind of order on ..read more

As we hit the winter solstice I feel there are two possible reading responses.  You can try escapism, reading about hot weather and endless summer days, or you can embrace the bleakness and go Gothic.  For me, it’s never really a choice. ‘The Loney’, with its very title suggesting isolation and madness, has make its way onto lots of ‘best of’ lists for 2015.  It’s currently on the shortlist for the Costa First Novel award and was one of the last novels I was determined to squeeze into this year’s reading. The book begins ambitiously, with quotations from Matthew (about the ‘prin ..read more