Were I the authorized representative of the Shirley Jackson estate, I would perhaps have asked myself a few pertinent questions before signing off on Were I the authorized representative of the Shirley Jackson estate, I would perhaps have asked myself a few pertinent questions before signing off on Elizabeth Hand's A Haunting on the Hill as an official sequel to Jackson's absolutely iconic The Haunting of Hill House:
Is this book necessary? (No.)
Is this book scary? (No.)
Is this book going to seem like a shameless cash grab? (Yes.)
As far as I can tell, the only thing Hand brings to her tale - in which yet another group of people who should know better wander into Hill House and then stay for reasons that are absolutely incomprehensible - is that she's willing to make the subtextual queerness of the original actual text in her version. The rest is just bad paint by numbers attempts at horror, much of which results in silly set pieces (tiny doors full of colored light? fucking really?) rather than any actual scares.
It's damn shame. And you can choose whether I mean that Hand wasted the premise of a spooky play being workshopped in a real haunted house or that the estate signed off on this to begin with....more
I've read a handful of Rebecca retellings over the past few ears - there must be something gothic in the water - and one of the things I've noticed isI've read a handful of Rebecca retellings over the past few ears - there must be something gothic in the water - and one of the things I've noticed is that most of them fail to convey the appeal of their Maxim De Winter, or why any woman in their right mind would stick around him when shit starts to get weird.
The Fiction Writer in particular falls victim to this trap; Cantor over and over tells us her Maxim - er, sorry, Ash - is rich as Croesus and People's Sexiest Man Alive several times over, but she writes him with all the appeal of chewed gum. Given the sketchiness of the circumstances, Olivia would be incredibly dim to stay for anything less than Paul Newman-level sex appeal...which, come to think of it, the plot makes clear she is.
Ah well. At least it's got a banger opening line, right?...more
A little Jane Eyre, a little Turn of the Screw, a little something new, but all Gothic all the time. I think I respected the attempt more than I actuaA little Jane Eyre, a little Turn of the Screw, a little something new, but all Gothic all the time. I think I respected the attempt more than I actually liked it, but that's not nothing....more
An incredibly promising Gothic set against the unique and fascinating backdrop of Mexico's War of Independence takes a disappointing turn towards The An incredibly promising Gothic set against the unique and fascinating backdrop of Mexico's War of Independence takes a disappointing turn towards The Thornbirds in Isabel Cañas's The Hacienda.
Beatriz knows the bargain she's making when she marries Don Rodolfo Eligio Solorzano Ibarra; her pretty face and determined good humor in return for the security of a position as the wife of an agave baron - and the management of Haciendo San Isidro. Still recovering from the brutal murder of her father during the final throes of the revolution and nearly a year spent as servant in the house of a distant and disapproving relative, all Beatriz wants is a safe place for herself and her widowed mother. Unfortunately, this one turns out to be haunted. Good thing the local priest is...hot?
The comp I keep seeing for this is that it's a Mexican Rebecca, which I think is only accurate if you cock your head, squint, and forget that the nameless narrator of Du Maurier's classic was actually in love with Maxim. I'd put this a bit closer to a mix of Bluebeard and The Haunting of Hill House with a heaping helping of Richard Chamberlain-style forbidden lust. (I'm old and haven't watched Fleabag yet, guys.) It works, at first; Beatriz's slow realization of how truly wrong her new home is builds masterfully. Unfortunately the build plateaus into wasted opportunities (view spoiler)[Rodolfo, revealed early as a particularly terrifying kind of villain, is summarily dispatched without the chance to make much impact on the narrative (hide spoiler)] and truly silly swooning. Look, I'm all about the swoon, but maybe save it for when your house isn't actively trying to murder you?
Cañas's debut has a lot going for it, including a intriguing look at the details of a lesser-represented historical period. I'll be interested to see what she does next - and hopeful that it includes fewer clerics getting hot under the collar....more
This eerie, magical retelling of Jane Eyre features gorgeous world-building, horrific set-pieces, and an anti-colonialist subtext....all of which founThis eerie, magical retelling of Jane Eyre features gorgeous world-building, horrific set-pieces, and an anti-colonialist subtext....all of which founders and sinks once it slams into the story's central 'ship. The attraction between Andromeda, the debtera hired to rid Thorne Manor of a nasty curse, and the manor's handsome young heir Magnus Rochester is truly inexplicable - and that's grading on the curve of the traditional Jane's attraction to Rochester seeming generally inexplicable. I don't know about you, but there's only so many times the narrator can describe the central "hottie" (I want you to hear that in very loud air quotes) as "boyish" or "childlike" before I start feeling squicked out for other reasons than the rooms occasionally flooding with blood. And all the marvelous set dressing in the world can't distract from the couple's awkward dialogue and nonexistent chemistry.
I had extremely high hopes for Within These Wicked Walls, most of which were dashed. Much as I generally love a Bronte reboot, I genuinely think this would have done better as an original fantasy not forced to contort itself around a romantic dynamic that just doesn't work. I'll be sure to keep an eye out for the author's next work, to see how she does when not burdened by Baby!Rochester....more
An absolutely delightful gothic mystery - murdered women in a waxworks! underground sex clubs! a detective with a distinctly Mephistophelian air! - isAn absolutely delightful gothic mystery - murdered women in a waxworks! underground sex clubs! a detective with a distinctly Mephistophelian air! - is somewhat undermined by the tendency of the characters to prefer exposition dumps to action. This early work by Carr is at its best at its creepy opening and propulsive finish, and if the middle sags a bit and narrator Jeff Marle is a sad substitute for the John Watson he's so clearly patterned after, well, there's plenty of atmospheric depictions of interwar Paris to get you through....more
In The Wife Upstairs Rachel Hawkins seamlessly blends two Gothic classics then updates them into a taut tale of love and obsession.
Meet Jane, the favoIn The Wife Upstairs Rachel Hawkins seamlessly blends two Gothic classics then updates them into a taut tale of love and obsession.
Meet Jane, the favored dog-walker of the posh residents of the gated community Thornfield Estates. She's quiet, unassuming, and prone to revenge petty-theft against the snobby housewives who employ her. While on her rounds with a collie one rainy morning, a minor accident results in an acquaintance with Eddie Rochester, the neighborhood's most mysterious resident. Dark, brooding, and still recovering from the recent drowning death of his wife, Eddie draws Jane like a moth to a flame - and the feeling seems to be mutual. But Jane and Eddie are both much more than they seem, and their whirlwind romance may not survive their secrets.
Hawkins takes the general outlines of Jane Eyre and douses them in Du Maurier's Rebecca, with delicious results. Fans of both novels will delight in the references - the nameless narrator ("Jane" is a pseudonym) haunted by the ghost of the perfect first wife, Rochester's ward Adele reappearing as a dog, St. John Rivers being a git in every possible universe - but even those unfamiliar with either book will find themselves drawn in by Jane's struggle to claw her way into security. (Though you may not laugh as hard at "Reader, I fucked him" as Jane Eyre fans will.) Fair warning: there are no heroes here, and that may be the most honest piece of translation Hawkins offers.
Subversive, funny, and strongly feminist in its sensibilities, The Wife Upstairs offers a suspenseful twist on two classics and is easily the best thing to happen to Jane Eyre since The Wide Sargasso Sea....more
In Plain Bad Heroines Emily Danforth takes one very real confessional narrative by a nineteen year old bisexual girl in Montana and twists and spins iIn Plain Bad Heroines Emily Danforth takes one very real confessional narrative by a nineteen year old bisexual girl in Montana and twists and spins it into a ridiculously complex, layered metafictional gothic in which every - and I do mean every - major character is queer. Even the ghosts.
It's 1902, and Mary MacLane's shockingly sexual memoir - whose original, totally reassuring title was I Await the Devil's Coming - is burning its way through the student body of Brookhants School for Girls. Two of them, Flo Hartshorn and Clara Broward, go so far as to start a private club based on the book, the Plain Bad Heroine Society, which meets in a nearby orchard - right up until its founders are killed in a tragic accident which leaves school principal Libbe Brookhants and her lover Alexandra Trills scrambling to save the school and its reputation. Flash forward a hundred years or so and Brookhants, long-abandoned and widely considered cursed, seems like the perfect setting for a metafictional horror movie based on a book about Flo and Clara's death, and an auteur director gathers the wunderkind author, a lesbian starlet, and the daughter of a scream queen on the grounds to recreate the girls' doomed love and grisly deaths.
Plain Bad Heroines is horror the way Rebecca is horror, which is to say, not actually horror at all - but try telling that to the chills running down your spine. It's one giant, languid mood, and that mood is gloriously creepy and Queer-with-a-capital-Q. Danforth's writing is by turns funny and gorgeous, and the footnotes inserted by her sly omniscient narrator are almost guaranteed to have you snort-laughing. For all its joys, and spooky set-pieces, it's worth noting that not much actually happens in 600+ pages of the narrative, though you'll probably feel like it did once you finish. (Like I said: Rebecca.)
While those seeking horror proper may be disappointed by the lack of true scares, the delightfully queer ultra gothic aesthetic of Danforth's novel is neither plain nor bad, and will leave you more than a little in love with her Heroines....more
A classic Southern Gothic, Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood is widely acclaimed as one of best novels of the 20th century, and sure, I guess, but all thA classic Southern Gothic, Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood is widely acclaimed as one of best novels of the 20th century, and sure, I guess, but all the 20th century critics acclaiming it such had way more patience for disaffected white dudes with self-awareness issues than I do in the year of our Lord 2019.
Hazel Motes returns from WWII with nebulous (and entirely metaphorical) internal damage and a heartful of rage at God which he misinterprets as atheism. With his parents dead and the family home abandoned and decayed, he takes up residence in a nearby town and goes about his days doing just what every real atheist does, namely spending all his time doing things to piss off the God he claims not to believe in: sleeping with loose women, preaching the anti-gospel, and harassing a preacher in the desperate hope he'll attempt to save Hazel's soul. It's more or less exactly the kind of bullshit you'd expect from an angry 22 year old who needs therapy but who is too busy telling everyone else how they Just Can't See The Truth of the World, Man to actually get it - but with a creepy mentally deranged zoo attendant, a falsely-blind ex-prophet, and a disturbingly oversexed 15 year old girl as sideshow freaks at Hazel's carnival of tortured souls.
Wise Blood is largely based on four short stories O'Connor reworked into a novel while at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and oh sweet Jesus does it feel like it. The book is beautifully thick with atmosphere and symbolism, so much so that reading it sort of feels like wading through Southern humidity, but even if you squint and get real generous there's not anything you could call a plot. Reading this, it struck me that I'd very much have enjoyed reading the noir detective novel O'Connor never wrote because she was too busy taking potshots at Protestantism. To each their own, I suppose.
Weirdly, the thing Wise Blood kept reminding me of as I read it was Fight Club. I can't decide if that's due to the bleakness, the grotesquerie, the lead's utter lack of self-awareness, my dislike of every single character in the book - or simply that, as with Palahniuk's work, I feel like my life is too short to spend reading about men working through their bullshit....more
It is a slender book, the third by an author most famous for a novel about an imaginary serpent, and the one in which her doctorate in the GothicLook!
It is a slender book, the third by an author most famous for a novel about an imaginary serpent, and the one in which her doctorate in the Gothic makes itself most felt, which lifts its framework from its Maturinian namesake and its imagery from Hill's The Woman in Black and Sartre's The Flies.
Look!
It's a story of a woman twenty years deep into her penance, living a life deliberately unobtrusive and circumscribed, who comes into sudden possession of a manuscript upon the mysterious disappearance of her friend and becomes increasingly fascinated by the tale of Melmoth, she who walks the world witnessing men's evils and imploring the most lost to walk beside her.
Look!
It's a love-letter to Prague, written during a post-surgical drug-induced fever dream after the author's two-month residency in the city, a seductive evocation which whispers the songs of the streets' musicians in your ears and lands snowflakes on your tongue such that you find yourself suddenly, violently, longing for a place you've never seen.
Look!
It's an excoriation of man's inhumanity to man in times past and present, told with a brutality more jarring for keeping its violence ever-offstage; a reminder of how little sins often cut our conscience deepest; an invocation to witness; and a suggestion that there can be forgiveness for those who cease their endless watching and take action.
Look!
It's Sarah Perry's Melmoth, one of the best books of the year.
More properly titled Horror: A Limited Literary History, this collection of seven essays edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes covers the development of horroMore properly titled Horror: A Limited Literary History, this collection of seven essays edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes covers the development of horror as a literary genre from the 18th century until today - but only in Britain and America.
Opening with an introduction by Reyes which outlines the collection's working definition of horror, the potential social and psychological underpinnings of horror, and the general organization of the book's examination of the form, this History then gets down to the promised business of its title, starting with an essay by Dale Townshend on the development of the Gothic in Britain. From there it hops the pond for Agnieszka Monnet's examination of how that Gothic tradition translated itself into American fiction, then settles into a series of mostly chronological essays covering the rise of 19th and 20th century horror, what the genre looked like after the decline of Universal monster movie horror, the peak of the genre's popularity toward the close of the 20th century, and what fear looks like in the new millennium.
As with any collection, the whole is sometimes greater than the sum of its parts, though the weakest link here is Reyes' introduction, which spends an amusingly large amount of time promising how generally accessible the book will be while being itself a fairly excellent example of inaccessibly academic writing. Overall, though, I found the essays well-written, though my preference for Mahawaite's essay on horror in the 19th century and Luckhurst's piece on the transition from Victorian Gothic to modern horror (which, interestingly enough, is structured around Arthur Machen's career) is probably more due to my particular area of interest rather than any particular quality of their writing.
As previously mentioned, this collection narrowly focuses on horror in Britain and America, which the editor describes as a necessary limiter given international horror's roots in specific historical and cultural conditions which would require more explanation that this volume has room for. I don't know about you, but that seems a bit too pat an answer, particularly when paired with the book's strange omission of any discussion of how YA fiction aimed at young women helped keep the genre alive in the 1990s, or how Reyes manages to have an entire discussion on the New Weird that doesn't once mention that the most interesting work in that genre is being done by people of color who are reclaiming and subverting the work of Howard "The P actually stands for Problematic" Lovecraft.
As a general introductory survey, Horror definitely does what it says on the tin, and deserves particular praise for the inclusion at the end of every chapter of not just bibliographic resources but a suggested reading list for further study. Still, those of us who've read a bit on the genre and are looking for something a bit more in-depth might be forgiven for wishing the editorial staff had just said "Fuck it" and given us the more-inclusive, thousand page deep-dive version of this relatively limited literary history. ...more
Wings of the Falcon is what happens when a woman with a Ph.D. in Egyptology gets curious about the Etruscans and then uses her fun-time research as anWings of the Falcon is what happens when a woman with a Ph.D. in Egyptology gets curious about the Etruscans and then uses her fun-time research as an excuse to re-write The Scarlet Pimpernel set in 19th century Italy. That's my headcanon for how this classic piece of romantic suspense came to be, anyway, and no one but the ghost of Barbara Mertz herself will ever tell me different.
Raised on romantic tales of her parents' star-crossed romance and sheltered from the harsh realities of the world by her dying father, Francesca Fairborn is ill-equipped to cope when she finds herself at the mercy of a just-this-side-of-mustache-twirling peer of the realm mere hours after her beloved father's burial. Happily for her, a cousin from her mother's estranged family arrives just in time to prevent anything worse than a literal bodice ripping, and at his behest she soon finds herself - along with her companion, the magnificent Miss Perkins, a middle-aged lady of decidely Mertzian aspect - traveling to Italy to meet her long lost relatives. Upon arriving, she meets her unexpectedly affectionate grandfather and her decidedly-cool cousin Stefano and discovers she's walked right into the middle of Italy's battle for unification, lead locally by a mysterious man known only as Il Falcone.
If you've read Pimpernel or The Mask of Zorro or any Batman comic ever, you more or less know where this is going, but that's hardly the point. The joy of this thing is in the goofy, high drama journey, which the author takes seriously - but not so much she can't wink at the audience a bit. An older, wiser Francesca narrates the novel, and isn't shy about calling herself out for acting like a ninny during the action, and that and the heroine's clear attempts to become a better person over the course of the novel help ease the itching palms of readers who might otherwise feel the need to seriously smack some sense into such a traditionally bubble-headed gothic heroine. Still, if you've made it this far in life without burning Marguerite St. Just in effigy, you'll make it through this, and Francesca's sillier moments are more than compensated for by the fascinating lesson in Italian history and Etruscan archaeology the novel offers. And, honestly, Miss Perkins is the clearly the real hero of this story, so who cares about little Franny, anyway?
It has been, God help me, almost thirty years since I first read Wings of the Falcon, and it works just as well now as it did then, as perfect a piece of Pimpernel-inspired romantic suspense as exists this side of Percy Blakeney, and a perfect escape for fans of the "We seek him here, we seek him there" genre....more
He's that guy you meet whose life has been utterly golden except for the kind of things that happen to all ofVictor Frankenstein is a class-A jackass.
He's that guy you meet whose life has been utterly golden except for the kind of things that happen to all of us (like say, a parent's death) and who's decided as a result the rules of life are unfair and shouldn't apply to him; the guy who's a bad-tempered mansplainer who ditches his family and friends for months at a time to pursue his creepy hobbies and yet somehow still manages to have a great girlfriend (working theory: Stockholm Syndrome); that guy who's so self-absorbed and secure in his 18th century white-male-privilege that his first thought upon watching an innocent woman take the fall for a crime that's his fault is how traumatic the whole experience has been for him.
Also, he's a deadbeat dad.
Everyone knows Mary Shelley's story, more or less, which appears here in the revised 1831 version, though with extensive notes to show the exact changes the author made to the text of the 1818 edition. What you might forget is the curious framing device of the epistolary narrative of Arctic explorer Robert Walton, who encounters Frankenstein at the tail-end of his pursuit of his monster and who bears witness to the near-dead Victor's tale. Walton, something of a slave to scientific passion himself, who's in the process of forcing his crew to continue on a dangerous expedition despite clear warning signs, listens intently as Frankenstein tells how he scienced up his creature and then freaked the moment it came to life, abandoning it to the not-so-tender mercies of the world. Cruelly treated, the creature becomes cruel himself, killing Frankenstein's youngest brother and bride (and pretty much everyone else indirectly, as they seem to drop like flies from grief), and inspiring Frankenstein to ditch his life, responsibilities, and remaining younger brother (anyone else wonder what happened to poor Ernest?) to follow the creature to literally the end of the earth to seek revenge. All of which, naturally, causes Walton to rethink his life choices.
While my distinct loathing for Dr. Frankenstein keeps me from loving this book, there's no doubt of the strength of its writing or the brilliance of its innovation. As is appropriate for such a seminal classic, the Penguin edition provides excellent supporting material, including a chronology, a fantastic introduction that touches on Shelley's life as well as the themes of her work and the politics and scientific discoveries that influenced it, and appendixes including the other tales the attendees of that house party at Villa Diodati.
Frankenstein is a beautiful creature sprung fully-formed from its author's mind; my only complaint is how frequently pop culture forgets who is its real monster....more
If Catherine Morland had been a product of the 20th rather than the 19th century, her bookshelves would have had Jill Tattersall novels stuffed in betIf Catherine Morland had been a product of the 20th rather than the 19th century, her bookshelves would have had Jill Tattersall novels stuffed in between the various volumes of The Mysteries of Udolpho. Tattersall, who wrote during the 1960s and 1970s, reliably churned out exactly the kind of exotically-set tales featuring naive heroines and castle-dwelling brooding heroes with tragic and/or mysterious pasts swept up in dark plots with supernatural elements that would have had Morland mooning about suspecting her father-in-law of murder.
While I devoutly hope I'm not such a ninny as the lead of Northanger Abbey I admit to also having a nostalgic fondness for precisely the kind of gothic that Tattersall specializes in. True, the love stories tend to be something of a fait accompli (I brood, therefore I love/am loved!) and the plots are frequently ridiculous, but that's the macaroni-and-cheese (heavy on the cheese) joy of the things. Case in point, Dark at Noon, wherein a young woman survives a horrific carriage accident only to awake with no memory of who she is, and no way of telling whether she's poor orphan serving girl Mary Ramsey or Victoria Marten, widow of the younger brother of Lucian Marten, Lord Castelmarten. A fair amount of money rests upon the answer, as does the young lady's romantic happiness given the marriage laws at the time, and while the villain and the outcome are both fairly obvious, the insane contortions Tattersall demands of her plot are entertaining to watch.
1970s gothic isn't a bastion of feminism or strong character development, so if your enjoyment is predicated on emotional realism or a lack of falling while looking behind you while running through the woods/mountains/moors, you'd best look elsewhere. But if all you want is interesting locale blah blah creepy castle blah blah scene chewing characters blah blah swept up into his arms and pressed against his waistcoat blah blah, then, my friend, do I have the author and the book for you....more
Any Holmes fan who ever wondered what would happen if Sherlock suddenly found himself dropped into a gothic horror story need look no further than DoyAny Holmes fan who ever wondered what would happen if Sherlock suddenly found himself dropped into a gothic horror story need look no further than Doyle's classic novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Really, it has everything. A family curse. An isolated and empty manor house on the moor. A hint of forbidden romance. And, mostly imporantly, a giant, spectral hound which hunts the unlucky men of the Baskerville line. If Holmes seems largely unmoved by the potentially supernatural shenanigans which threaten the life of his client Sir Henry, the new heir, well, that's only because he's Holmes, and Watson's wild romanticism and sense for the drama of the thing more than make up for it.
The major criticism of Hound is, of course, that Holmes spends half of the novel off-stage. While the in-narrative explanation of why would have more than justified Watson taking a swing at him, the meta-reason makes more sense: to wit, having established his consulting detective as amazingly prescient, it's tough for Doyle to stretch a story out to novel-length without making readers wonder why it's taking so long for Holmes to solve the thing. It's a problem many a pastiche writer since Doyle has struggled with, so it's hard to blame the original author for taking the same way out many of them do, even if it does leave his lead looking like a bit of a jerk.
As always with the BBC tie-in editions, there are no footnotes, endnotes, or annotations to be had, which means the reader is left to contextualize the story as best they can from their own knowledge. What it does have, however, is a charmingly scattered preface from Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch, who briefly discusses dogs in the canon and the show's filming in Dartmoor.
Baskerville's a bit of a tonal outlier in the Holmes canon, but delightfully so, teasing at it does a marriage of Doyle's detective fiction with his more supernatural fiction. I'm not sure whether or not I'm disappointed he never truly crossed the streams; I think I would rather have liked to see Holmes try to explain away a death by crushing by a giant spectral helmet. Even without truly committing to to a change of genre, the howl of Doyle's Hound still echoes today, raising an appreciative shiver from every reader....more
How, how, how has steampunk Frankenstein never been a thing before this?
As soon as you read the synopsis of Mackenzi Lee's debut - a young man namHow, how, how has steampunk Frankenstein never been a thing before this?
As soon as you read the synopsis of Mackenzi Lee's debut - a young man named Alasdair living in an alternate 19th century full of cogs and steam is driven by love and pride to use his highly illegal talents to resurrect his brother Oliver after a terrible accident claims his life - you think, Oh, of course. Steampunk Frankenstein., and then just assume there's a whole genre-full of similar adaptations out there. Which apparently there aren't (at least not so far as my googling can reveal). So, genius move there, Lee. I salute you!
Monstrous has more going for it than just its concept - it's a smart, tautly written thriller that explores the themes of the novel that it's based on in a novel where that novel exists, and is written by Alasdair's kinda-sorta-wanted-her-to-be-his-ex, Mary Shelley. Oh, the meta gothic is strong with this one.
If I have any complaints, it's that the story's big reveal is fairly obvious from page one, and that while the central relationship between Alasdair and his brother Oliver is deliciously complicated and nuanced, the motivations of the female characters of the novel are distinctly less so, falling largely in the realm of I Do It Because the Plot Demands I Do It. Still, Lee's world is so beautifully built and so lovingly rendered as just a half-step to the left of actual history, I'm willing to forgive a certain lightness of being in the secondary characters.
This Monstrous Thing may be the first of its kind, and it certainly sets a standard. Even better, it's the perfect gateway drug to Shelley's original novel, which - while probably not Lee's primary goal - is a happy side-effect of her gorgeously Monstrous creation....more
Nothing gets me to a book faster than the promise of a ghosty gothic with feminist lit overtones. Unfortunately, in the case of Amy Lukavics second noNothing gets me to a book faster than the promise of a ghosty gothic with feminist lit overtones. Unfortunately, in the case of Amy Lukavics second novel The Women in the Walls, that promise turned out to be empty.
Motherless Lucy Acosta lives in a creeptastic Victorian mansion isolated in the woods with only her distant father, her aunt, and her cousin/bestie Margaret for company. Well, there was a cook, I suppose, but he offs himself on the first page in a spectacularly promising fashion. Soon after, Lucy's aunt disappears into the forest, and her cousin starts hearing voices in the walls. As Margaret becomes increasingly unhinged, Lucy must try to protect her own secrets while unearthing those of her family.
Turns out, however, that Lucy's secrets aren't terribly interesting - if you had "another teen novel that uses cutting to up the emotional ante for no good reason" please collect your prize - and Lukavics takes so long getting to the reveal about the family that you'll very likely have lost interest. Which is a shame, because there really is a slam-bang finish. It just feels like it belongs in an entirely different novel.
I picked this up thinking the author was doing a shout-out to Charlotte Perkins Gilman, but despite Lucy's repeated mentions about the gold-patterned wall paper oppressing or freaking her out, I'm honestly not sure at this point that the reference was intentional. Whether or not it's dealing in shades of The Yellow Wallpaper, The Women in the Walls certainly has something of the Victorian about it - only that "something" is a flat female lead who floats like a ghost through her own narrative, leaving both the book's promise (and this reader) unfulfilled....more
I'd been wanting to read As I Descended since it came out the previous year, and I came to it fresh off a back-to-back Dickens binge of Little DorritI'd been wanting to read As I Descended since it came out the previous year, and I came to it fresh off a back-to-back Dickens binge of Little Dorrit and Bleak House, all of which is to say my body was ready for a YA lesbian Macbeth set in a Southern gothic boarding school. Unfortunately this is one of the rare cases where the flesh is willing but the spirits were weak.
Robin Talley brilliantly recasts the classic Shakespearean tale of ambition, madness, and betrayal in an elite high school housed on an old plantation in Virginia where students compete for the Cawdor Kingsley Prize, a scholarship whose prestige opens as many doors as the dollars it comes with. Maria Lyon needs to win that prize if she's going to follow her roommate, and secret girlfriend, Lily to Stanford in the fall; all that stands between her and her dreams is the reigning queen of Archeron Academy, Delilah Dufrey. And then one night Lily suggests a way to remove that last obstacle, and suddenly there's nothing stopping Maria from taking everything she's ever wanted, if she and Lily can only keep it together until the end of the year.
Descended opens promisingly enough, with Maria and friends consulting a Ouija board rather than stumbling into three witches on a battlefield. It's a smart update that allows for a frisson of horror without trafficking too heavily on the supernatural. Unfortunately, this brilliant and delicate balance is quickly overthrown, and the novel gets sucked into a veritable whirlwind of spirits, which - despite one pointed comment to the contrary at the climax which I suspect an editor of insisting on - have the effect of reducing Maria and Lily's agency in their crimes by providing the possible excuse of possession. I want my badass lesbian murderers in my Dickensian palate cleansers to own their deeds, thanks very much.
Talley gets full points for one of the best concepts I've ever heard, and I can only hope someone picks up the idea for a staging of Macbeth. Unfortunately, Descended reads like the author bit off a bit more concept than she could chew - either that or she and I just really, really disagree about the role of the supernatural in the original play. So despite its high points and its value for washing the self-indulgence of 19th century white Englishmen from one's brain, As I Descended is nothing to prick one's thumbs about....more
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