The dogs of Rowan's Glen are going missing. The same thing happened years ago, just before the night Terra MacAvoy was voted May Queen and then murderThe dogs of Rowan's Glen are going missing. The same thing happened years ago, just before the night Terra MacAvoy was voted May Queen and then murdered by mad Birch Mirkle. The people of the Glen never caught Mirkle, who ran into the woods and hid, and whose howls can be heard on quiet nights to this day.
That's a hell of a campfire tale, and a solid set up for a gothic horror novel set in an insular Southern community. Unfortunately, while Jude delivers atmosphere in spades, that's all she delivers. Ivy Templeton, a shy, stuttering girl who lives in the shadow of her beautiful cousin Heather until Heather disappears mysteriously after becoming the newest May Queen, never develops a personality strong enough to hold this story together. She's less a person than a place, a physical manifestation of the beliefs and superstitions of Rowan's Glen itself. That kind of thing works for Rebecca and Manderley, but Rebecca's a ghost by the time duMaurier's action starts; Ivy's supposedly alive, but just as much a shade and an absent center. Her efforts to track down Birch Mirkle, the local Boo Radley boogeyman, are desultory and unconvincing, and hamstrung by the gothic trappings with which Jude weighs her story down.
More of a tone-poem than a horror or a mystery, Jude's Murders are unsatisfying even before the multiple fake outs she mistakes for an ending. The South loves a good gothic, but sadly this is not it....more
The Woman in White meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in John Harwood's The Asylum, a book that is working very hard to be the most gothicky GothicThe Woman in White meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in John Harwood's The Asylum, a book that is working very hard to be the most gothicky Gothic that ever gothicked and doing a better than fair job at it.
Georgina Ferrars awakes in a private asylum, confused and unable to remember the last few weeks, only to be told she'd admitted herself under a different name. When the telegram she sends to her uncle to establish her identity comes back with a reply that the real Georgina Ferrars is safe at home, her commitment becomes involuntary, and recalling those lost week becomes her only possible path to freedom.
Harwood's novel, which may seem a bit of a slow boil to anyone not used to 19th century fiction, trots out all the tropes of the genre: the three volume structure, the narrative through letters and journals, the threat of impending madness, the mirror-image women, and (of course) just a little bit of incest and homoeroticism. It's all good fun if you're in the mood for a solid Victorian throwback, but probably less satisfying if you somehow mistook this for a thriller.
I enjoyed The Asylum, though that may be because someone in the middle I decided that this was the book Edith Cushing was writing in Crimson Peak. If you're enough of a fan of a genre to get that reference, you'll probably like it as well.
The Dark Horse Book of Hauntings is dedicated to Hans Holzer, Edward Gorey, and the Fox sisters, which tells you everything you need to know about itsThe Dark Horse Book of Hauntings is dedicated to Hans Holzer, Edward Gorey, and the Fox sisters, which tells you everything you need to know about its sensibilities. Only 92 pages, the volume contains nine separate entries - eight stories, and one interview with a real-life medium - of varying styles and quality. Most are graphic stories, but not all: my favorite (the traditional English-gothic "Thurnley Abbey") and least favorite (the interview with L.L. Dreller, which bored me enough that it took me a couple of weeks to bother to finish it) pieces were both text-only.
The most famous contributor here is Mike Mignola, who gets top-billing for a Hellboy story that's prettier than it is interesting. I was more drawn to Oesterle's short and brutal haunted tattoo tale, "Forever," and to Dorkin and Thompson's "Stray," which tweaks the genre by envisioning the haunted house as a haunted doghouse.
Fans of hauntings will appreciate the breadth of the offerings here, though some of them may seem a bit slight - one of the reasons Landon's "Abbey" tops my list is that the relative lack of illustrations meant that they had enough room for text to spin a full story rather than just offer a snapshot. So consider it more a sampler, a horror aperitif if you will, than something to make a meal of, and enjoy accordingly....more
There is perhaps nothing worse than a Spanish neo-gothic gone awry.
At this point I feel like I've read enough Arturo Perez Reverte and Carlos Ruiz ZafThere is perhaps nothing worse than a Spanish neo-gothic gone awry.
At this point I feel like I've read enough Arturo Perez Reverte and Carlos Ruiz Zafon to appreciate the heavily stylized genre, which for some reason always seems to involve fires and disfigurement, but Gustavo Faveron Patriau abuses his Gothic privileges by drowning what could have been a fantastic narrative (three year old murder mystery! antiquarian books! life in an asylum!) in pretension and overly-wrought prose.
What's worse, to my mind, is that this supposedly "literary" novel seems to have very little to do with literature - this antiquarian could have been trafficking snuff boxes for about as much as it would have mattered to the plot, and the author preferred to make his own tales up rather than referencing existing works. In fact, about the closest thing there is to a literary allusion is a fairy tale of six sons where the sons names seemed to be taken from major Spanish language writers (Borges, Llosa, Cortazar, Marquez, etc.), and honestly that could have been a coincidence.
The Antiquarian clocks in at 209 pages, which is almost absurdly short for a novel, but believe me when I say I felt the dead weight of each of those pages as I dragged my way through. I suggest you save yourself the effort, unless you're looking for an over the counter equivalent for Lunestra. ...more
A masterful exercise in the neo-Gothic, Ruiz Zafon's Shadow is unfortunately almost completely undone by the spinelessness of its narrator and the silA masterful exercise in the neo-Gothic, Ruiz Zafon's Shadow is unfortunately almost completely undone by the spinelessness of its narrator and the silliness of a denouement that renders the events of approximately the first third of the book extraneous. But, oh, the atmosphere of Franco's Barcelona - the romance of the streets, the beautifully drawn mustiness of a secret library of lost books, and the terror of a devil pulled from fiction who walks the night destroying the novels of a man tortured by fate. These things, plus the sheer beauty that is the character Fermin, should be enough to make you forgiving of the novel's inability to come to a strong close. Shadow delights, but does not by any stretch satisfy....more
Creepy automatons. A cliff-side mansion whose second story is forbidden ground. A decades-old mystery. There's so much awesome going on here that it'sCreepy automatons. A cliff-side mansion whose second story is forbidden ground. A decades-old mystery. There's so much awesome going on here that it's hard to see how it can misfire, yet that's precisely what The Watcher in Shadows does. I suspect it's because Ruiz Zafon was not writing a young adult novel but simply an adult Gothic novel that he scaled down, which results in something that reads as gutted of the creeping horror necessary for this kind of tale. (Don't believe me? Take a look at the epistolary framing device and tell me that doesn't belong in a story two hundred pages longer for people twenty years' older.) There's nothing wrong with Watcher per se, it just never quite manages to be right, which is a true pity for a tale this packed with potential. ...more
Apologies to the other reviewer of this book, but a few shared Gothic fixtures do not a Jane Eyre rip-off make. What they do make - with a dash of th Apologies to the other reviewer of this book, but a few shared Gothic fixtures do not a Jane Eyre rip-off make. What they do make - with a dash of that classic Michaels/Peters humor - is a cracking good read. Not deep by any means (nor meant to be!), this remains a perfect gem of the genre....more
I feel as if I should be more in love with Maxim de Winter at the end of this book than I am, given that he's the grandfather of every Gothic hero I'vI feel as if I should be more in love with Maxim de Winter at the end of this book than I am, given that he's the grandfather of every Gothic hero I've ever lusted after. Or perhaps more in love with Manderley, which is, after all, more real a character in the novel than either Maxim or his nameless, spineless second bride. It's no wonder Manderley and Mrs. Danvers are what one remembers about Rebecca - the one's omnipresent, and the other so striking on her occasional appearances as to put the other characters in the shade. I remember being given this book to read when I was ten and ending the whole thing with a terror of red rhododendrons....more
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