Man vs. Nature. It’s a conflict at the core of so much of Gothic and horror fiction and takes a myriad of forms. But the most literal iteration of this trope when the story’s protagonists find themselves up against deadly, monstrous plants. From poisonous perfumes to strangling vines to invasions of invasive species, who knows what untold horrors might be hidden in the greenery around you! Below are a few of my favorite examples of people-killing plants throughout horror literature.
I’ve written before about the Vampire Literary Canon—some of the most popular works that cemented the vampire’s place as literature’s favorite monster. But before vampires worked their way into novels (like Bram Stoker’s Dracula), novellas (like J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla), or even short stories (like Polidori’s “The Vampyre”), many of the earliest appearances of these creatures in Western literature occurred in poetry. Below are a few of my favorite examples of early vampire poems:
What if the governess fell in love with … the wife in the attic? This is essentially the premise of Rose Lerner’s new novel The Wife in the Attic, which was just released as an Audible Original last month. I’ve been devouring audiobooks like candy since the start of the pandemic, so what could be better than a queer reimagining of one of my favorite Gothic novels released exclusively in audio? And as someone who has always been way more sympathetic toward Bertha Mason than Mr. Rochester, The Wife in the Attic was everything I could ask for. Continue reading Review of The Wife in the Attic—A Sapphic Jane Eyre
This week I want to continue my series on Gothic vocabulary. You may remember back in November, I wrote about another vocab term—the sublime—which was central to the Romantic era’s conception of the Gothic. This time I want to discuss a twentieth-century term that to this day still crops up frequently in any discussion of the Gothic or of horror more broadly: the uncanny.
A music teacher who moonlights as a sneak thief and a penniless gentleman with a knack for uncovering secrets—what could possibly go wrong? The Gentleman and the Thief by Sarah M. Eden is the sequel to The Lady and the Highwayman, one of my favorite books from 2019. I’ve been keeping this cozy historical romance at the ready to serve as a comfort read during this dark and dreary winter, and I’m so glad I did. This book had everything I’ve come to expect from the Dread Penny Society series: an abundance of mystery, a sweet courtship between two lovable protagonists, and a clever interplay with the uniquely Victorian literary phenomenon of the penny dreadful. If you need to keep the love going post–Valentine’s Day, I can’t recommend this series enough! Continue reading The Gentleman and the Thief Review
Usually, when discussing tropes in Gothic literature, I talk about certain recurring themes and plot elements (such as madness, prophecies, or burning houses) or character types (like the Creepy Housekeeper, Corrupted Clergy, or First Wife). But the genre also makes use of particular structural or stylistic techniques. One of my favorite stylistic tropes in Gothic literature is the found document framing device.
Continue reading Gothic Tropes: Found Document Framing Device
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson has been adapted many times. It has become, in popular culture, the quintessential haunted house story, although Shirley Jackson’s novel leaves the veracity of the haunting intentionally ambiguous. One thing many adaptations struggle with is how to maintain that ambiguity while still evoking horror. The recent Netflix series, directed by Mike Flanagan, accomplishes this balance by diverging from the source material significantly while preserving its central themes. This series arrived on Netflix in 2018, so I’m a little late to the bandwagon. But I finally finished watching it and wanted to share a few of my thoughts with you. Continue reading Review of Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House
So many stories focus on the great romance between a human and a vampire and end with that human joining the undead in a happily ever after. But when you’re immortal, that “ever after” is a long, long time. What happens to a relationship over the course of centuries? And what if the immortal being you’ve tied yourself to isn’t the perfect romantic partner after all? S. T. Gibson explores these themes and more in her new adult fantasy novel A Dowry of Blood, which comes out on Sunday, January 31. Continue reading Review of A Dowry of Blood–Vampires and Toxic Relationships
“Vampires are dead.” People have been saying this ever since the overwhelming popularity of the Twilight series led to an explosion of young adult paranormal fantasy in the mid-2000s that saturated the market. But as a life-long vampire fan, I’ve always felt that these denizens of the undead still have more to teach us. There is something universally appealing about the vampire that isn’t going away anytime soon, and there are still infinite new angles from which the topic can be approached. Instead of telling everyone that the genre has been done to death already, why not open it up to a diversity of fresh new voices that haven’t yet had the chance to tell their story? That’s exactly what Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker do in their new anthology Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite, which came out back in September. Continue reading Review of Vampires Never Get Old—Giving the Genre New Life
Our favorite lesbian necromancer is back! Gideon the Ninth was one of my favorite books that I read in 2020, so it’s only fitting that I would start off the new year by finishing the sequel. Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir came out last August, and is the perfect thing to soothe the wound of having your heart ripped out at the end of the first book. Well, after it pokes that wound a few times first, for good measure. Continue reading Harrow the Ninth Review
