‘How do you know the moment when you cease to be human?’
What level of horrors can a person withstand or what amount of horrors can a person deliver u‘How do you know the moment when you cease to be human?’
What level of horrors can a person withstand or what amount of horrors can a person deliver upon others before that barrier is breached? Violence—be it deemed vengeance or venerable—drips from every page of Evenson’s Last Days as former detective Kline questions the proximity to remaining human while navigate the waking nightmare of a cult that believes in self-amputations as access to the divine. A literary horror housed inside a noir thriller and bursting with brutality, Evenson tempers the grotesque with dark comedy while plunging Kline—and the reader—into a Kafkaequse hellscape of opaque demands and cult bureaucracy with absurdity around every corner. Last Days features prose that slashes like a sharp knife, blending uneasy horror with noir drenched in existential anxiety and sinister surrealism that make this a ferocious and grisly read that is nearly impossible to turn your eyes away from. At least while you still have them…
‘It was only later that he realized the reason they had called him, but by then it was too late for the information to do him any good.’
Chosen by the American Library Association's award for Best Horror Novel of 2009, Last Days is a non-stop wave of mutilation. No, not like the Pixies sang about, think more blood. Like big barrels of it, like enough to not only soak Carrie at prom but drown that whole stupid school. The first part, Brotherhood of Mutilation, had previously been published as a standalone novella though the inclusion of the second half brings the story to a notably intense and shocking conclusion. While the two parts each have their own arc and tone, as Peter Straub explains in the introduction ‘when one ends, the other begins, and we are within a new fictional body, one that perfectly remembers all that took place in the body we just left.’ It is a fitting structure for a story about severance of limbs, a ritualistic practice within the cult where the number of amputations not only denotes devotion but also rank within the order. There is also a sense of rhyming to the narrative, with imagery or events similarly repeated ( Kline waking Ramse in his bed as an inverse to the beginning, for instance) as well as the duality of the two rival cults brotherhoods.
‘A profoundly moral act in a kind of moral, biblical, old testament sense: an eye for a hand, and a bag of money thrown in.’
The idea of “schisms” is thematically central to Last Days. We have the two brotherhoods, the “mutilates” and the Pauls—named as much for the apostle (who had his own schism with himself on the road to Damascus) as for Paul Wittgenstein, the brother of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who commissioned piano compositions to be played with only the left hand following the amputation of his right arm due to an injury sustained in World War I—who split over theological disputes. But the introduction of Kline into their world threatens a new schism. As we learn in the first paragraph of the book (Evenson always comes hard right out of the gate), Kline has been selected (see also: forced) to investigate within the brotherhood when he makes the newspapers for having his right hand cut off by a cleaver during an undercover operation and proceeding to self-cauterize it before shooting his assailant through the eye with his non-dominant hand. A rather honorable act for a group who self-amputates, though his act of self-cauterization threatens to form a schism in the group in arguments over it being plausibly more devout. For the Pauls we see Kline being groomed as a holy figure or ‘Angel of destruction’—imagine the chants of ‘Lisan al Gaib’ from men with no right hand instead of space warriors—arriving ‘like a thief in the night. He cometh not with an olive branch but with a sword. He smiteth’ Kline, who has certainly severed some lives from their bodies by hand or gun, might just be their savior. Or a martyr...
‘But even God sometimes becomes impatient.’
The noir elements really make this a riveting read. Likely due to their shared love of noir, Last Days made me nostalgic for reading Roberto Bolaño, particularly how the hilarious interplay of Gous and Ramse at the start reminded me of Mr. Raef and Mr. Etah from By Night in Chile, and the way these two characters start off denoted by their monikers that then get stripped away to reveal their true names is a bit of a fun detective element. The dialogue in the novel is deadpan, taking a hard-boiled flair akin to Raymond Chandler but elevating it into satirically surreal and comically absurd levels that give off shades of Samuel Beckett. There is a sense of profound duality everywhere:
"Would you mind putting Mlinko on?" "Mlinko seems to be dead," said Kline. "Appears or is?" "Both," said Kline”
This rather humorous response directly following a viscerally violent scene, echoing early comically deadpan dialogue where ‘Aline is either dead or not dead,’ is signature to the novel and keeps things light despite the otherwise immense darkness of the tale. But it also nudges the dualities present everywhere in the novel. For instance, while there is no clear religious model for these brotherhoods beyond a general amalgamation that centers a rather gnostic belief about the dichotomy of the physical and spiritual world with a valuation towards the spiritual. Side note: Evenson was raised in the Mormon church though he left in 2000 following his resignation from Brigham Young University over their distaste for his first book, Altmann's Tongue: Stories and a Novella and this novel’s criticisms of religious fervor is likely not not influenced by that.
‘What was the truth? he wondered. How important was it to know? And once he knew, what then?’
Where Last Days excels most for me are elements of sheer absurdity that strip the detective genre down to its bare parts while also subverting it. Kline is there to investigate a crime, but what crime? A robbery? A smuggling operation? A murder? Everyone tells him a different thing, and if it is a murder, is the victim dead or still alive? He must solve the case but is not allowed to question anyone (at least not above his rank, a 1 for his removed hand though a few more amputations could give him access to low level members…) and all the information given to him is redacted. Even the crime scene is simply a replica, which is outrageously funny but also brings up, again, the idea of the immaterial world of spirit and idea outweighing physical reality:
‘Mr. Kline, surely you’re enough of an armchair philosopher to realize that everything is a reconstruction of something else? Reality is a desperate and evasive creature.’
It’s pure surreal absurdism at its finest and almost feels like an inverse of Edgar Allan Poe’s detective C. Auguste Dupin. Poe’s character was the basis for the creation of the detective genre, even Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock was inspired by him, and his narratives played out on the idea of logic, on abductive reasoning. Here it is more like absurdist reasoning, with the absurdity functioning not unlike the foggy dark alleyways of noir. And everywhere a knife or gun ready to blow a skull wide open as the author simultaneously blows your mind.
An absolute knockout of a brief novel, Last Days is Evenson at his finest. Big thanks to Hope for recommending this one. I’ve long loved Evenson’s horror short stories but this manages to rise above even those perfect gems of prose. Scathingly satirical, frightfully surreal and comically absurd in a story that is so blood-spattered and gruesome it could make even hardened readers flinch, this is a novel you’ll find yourself flipping pages long after bedtime unable to turn away.
5/5
‘How many whales do you suppose God will deign send to swallow you? When does God run out of whales?’...more
Brian Evenson is a master of horror in miniature, coiling terror to maximum tension inside just a few short pages. Though his tales never feel confineBrian Evenson is a master of horror in miniature, coiling terror to maximum tension inside just a few short pages. Though his tales never feel confined as the atmosphere seems to pour from the page and utterly engulf you in its finely tuned fitful unease. Such is the case in Evenson’s The Cabin, a icy short story of being lost in the wilderness where what seem like an escape from the elements could just be a doorway to doom. The story also captures another signature element of Evenson that I find particularly impressive: his ability to craft a chilling story that can overtake the reader in horror without need for resolution or even much explanation. Perhaps a conclusive ending would be a sort of comfort compared to the terror of the unknown and this tactic of his never leaves the story feeling unfinished or disappointing. It is the push to the precipice of disaster that holds the highest tension and frights, and Evenson brings you right to the edge and lets you feel his sudden push with the certainty you are in the moment of toppling over…
‘There was once a man who lost himself in a snowstorm,” began the tall man. “He walked in what he thought was a place he knew, but walked in such fashion as to slip into another place altogether.’
The Cabin is a great example of how Evenson manages to infuse fear into the most uncomfortable of places. While the character’s injury in the woods and the gruesome moments of freeing his now gnarled leg from the teeth of a trap are intense, it is all quickly washed away under a the ripples of fear that occur later. But it is precisely that the horror comes from a place that is thought to be one of refuge that really makes this an uneasy read with the cabin not being the safe space he hoped it to be. Evenson has effectively accomplished this before, such as the story Palisades from The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell which I still think of all the time. Yet he manages to always feel fresh and bring new fears. A great little atmospheric story that brings you to the point of terror and leaves you shaking....more
Being inexplicably tired all the time and nobody believing you is a horror story enough in its own right, but in The Night Guest, debut Icelandic noveBeing inexplicably tired all the time and nobody believing you is a horror story enough in its own right, but in The Night Guest, debut Icelandic novelist Hildur Knútsdóttir turns up the tension into something far more terrifying. Quietly atmospheric, The Night Guest moves through the streets of Reykjavik compounding anxieties to a suffocating degree in this story of a woman tormented by troubling sleep habits that could spell doom for all those around her. Though, infusing the creepy with critiques on society, Knútsdóttir shows how the daily life of a woman is drenched in enough dread already. Wonderfully translated here into the the english by Mary Robinette Kowal, it's a quick novel that certainly pulls you along for the ride on foreboding prose that captures the feeling of blood turning to ice in your veins. While the occasional sense that the writing betrays the scaffolding attempting to mesh the themes together and a rather abrupt and fairly unsuccessful ending mar the experience, it still makes for a chilling read with a build-up pushing you to the precipice of terror at every turn. Blending the possibility of a haunting with the daily terrors of being a woman in a patriarchal society and the ways we haunt ourselves through our digital footprints, Knútsdóttir’s The Night Guest affects a slow burn and ponderous panic where sleep is anything but relief.
‘I remember, once, I decided I was going to live life. It was nice while it lasted.’
At a glance, The Night Guest is a story of a body haunting itself trapped in a society that can seem like a daily haunted house, especially for women. Iðunn is troubled by a prevailing sense of exhaustion where sleep never brings rest but, instead, unexplained cuts, bruises and the occasional scent of the ocean. From the start, Iðunn sitting in a doctor’s office wary of the dismissive disbelief of women by men in medicine in the long history of misogyny and gender bias in medicine, readers will be aware this is far more than a standard fair horror thriller. This is the world as a horror show for women where a possible haunting of the body just happens to be cracking open the glossy facade imposed by patriarchal social positioning.
‘Hysterical women. I seriously wanted to lecture him about all the diseases women have had that have been misdiagnosed over the years—and how medication (not to mention everything else in the world) is designed for the male body-but I just didn’t have the energy for it. Or maybe I was chicken. Or maybe that’s the same thing because it’s a lot easier to gather your courage when you’re not dead tired.’
The book is at its best when it seamlessly integrates such social criticisms into the narrative of why a once happy and healthy young woman, beloved by friends and neighborhood cats, suddenly finds herself exhausted and bruised beyond explanation and now a point of terror to her feline friends. And all of her fears are often dismissed as irrational, a major issueGabrielle Jackson discusses in her book Pain and Prejudice: How the Medical System Ignores Women―And What We Can Do About It how ‘women’s accounts of it are often assumed to be an exaggeration….a form of hysteria- called ‘catastrophising’ in modern pain-management parlance,’ making them less likely to be believed or treated. We, the readers, are also then asked to consider how much we believe her which is rather clever in a book where unreliable narration could be a major driver of the story.
Iðunn, concerned over the inability to find a diagnosis or method to curb her nocturnal mysteries, begins to track her steps only to find she’s walked 47,325 steps while asleep, or goes further into GPS tracking her evening strolls. Without divulging too much—this is certainly a novel where the less you know about the plot beyond this initial set-up is likely the better—there becomes a sense that, regardless if a ghost is involved in her struggles, her data is creating its own ghost self that can be tracked, collected, analyzed and bought and sold by tech companies and retailers for targeted ads and, if her conspiracy friends are correct, government control. ‘I’ve read articles about the threats of modern technology to personal security,’ she considers, ‘All the data these devices collect. And who knows who’s sitting at the other end watching.’ Our we our own hauntings, leaving behind our ghostly trail that can target us or be used against us at any moment like an existential threat always eerily looming?
It can be difficult to productively critique a novel such as this where, arguably, the themes and issues are well presented and important to both society and the story, but could be more smoothly blended into the narrative. I can enjoy a good “issues” book and I feel Knútsdóttir integration of the themes into the primary horror of the story make it more than that, but there is a sense of a lot of themes being stacked together without being able to stand as a structure without seeing the scaffolding holding it up. Each is interesting and important in its own regard, though sometimes you can feel the mechanism of theme rather than the theme itself flowing through the story. However, it can be argued that is exactly what being a woman is like: knowing all these things, seeing the fault lines and cracks and hyper aware of the support beams keeping it all from crashing down yet having to carry on as if it isn’t there for the sake of not discomforting others.
‘Centuries of socialization have conditioned us into believing that it’s our responsibility to create a cozy atmosphere and ensure that no one is embarrassed about anything. THat’s why we laugh at jokes that offend us. That’s why we smile at people who pat us on the butt. THat’s why we pretend that it’s just a coincidence when the boss repeatedly brushes against our breasts at work. Because anything else would be just so embarrassing. For everybody.’
‘Before she died, all roads were open to me. After she died there was only one.’
Familial expectations compound upon Iðunn as well and there is also Már, a man who had dated her sister, which triggers the second act of the novel and the ways past trauma informs upon our present actions. How much does the absence of her sister affect the direction of her life, and is that a metaphorical shadow hanging over her or something far more ferocious and frightening?
What makes The Night Guest really work are the ways it keeps much of the mystery even when pointing towards plausible answers. The unreliability becomes a major theme that keeps the reader guessing and feeling uncertain much the way that women are often told they cannot be reliable in their own feelings. While sometimes the slow burn pace feels like the novel is stalling out while trying to find it’s stride—and a mysterious ending that just didn’t work for me as effectively as the shock value of it hoped to carry through—it is still so eerily excellent in atmosphere and tone. There is also the stifling sense that, for all the aims of feminist resistance and education, the same problems find new methods of oppression while we are all allowing ourselves to be haunted by our own technological usage. A fascinating and often frightening tale of being unable to trust oneself, even in sleep, and a sharp social criticism on the treatment of women, The Night Guest from Hildur Knútsdóttir is a nice little debut that is sure to give you chills.
3.5/5
‘An icy cold certainty pours over me. I do not have to wonder what she would be doing now. I know.’...more
I am a big fan of the Christmas ghost story tradition, and while it is not quite yet the festive season, spooky season is fast approaching and Four GaI am a big fan of the Christmas ghost story tradition, and while it is not quite yet the festive season, spooky season is fast approaching and Four Gathered on Christmas Eve was a nice way to kick it into gear. An anthology of sorts with each story featuring a different art style between Eric Powell, Mike Mignola, Becky Cloonan, and James Harren, this is a fun and eerie little graphic novel framed as a group of friends all gathered for the holiday and each telling a story around the fire.
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While the book provides some quick and exciting little thrills for the reader, each guest is dismayed by the others stories and tensions between them start to build towards a delightfully shocking finale. I really enjoyed the variety of tales, one of which is a graphic novel retelling of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, which is pretty fun. But what I’m really into is that there seems to be a slow return to the christmas horror story in general. Ghosts and other menacing spirits have long been part of yuletide folklore, one of the best known being celebrations of Krampus going all the way back to the 6th or 7th century. But there are many others as well, such as Jólakötturinn the Yule Cat of Iceland that would devour children if they didn’t wear their new holiday outfits, the ogre Bloody Thomas who is said to appear around the winter Solstice in Bavaria, or the Kallikantzari trolls in Greece said to break in and destroy households during the period of the twelve days of Christmas. Pre-Christian traditions around the world had many beliefs of spirits emerging during the winter solstice and these tales were passed down for centuries.
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‘But the ghost story as a phenomenon is a 19th century phenomenon,’ Jeanette Winterson writes in her introduction to Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days. Ghost stories from Christmas, she explains, hit peak popularity during the Victorian Era. While one theory of this rise in popularity is attributed to the printing press and the transfer from oral tradition to printed stories in every home. Authors like Elizabeth Gaskell and Arthur Conan Doyle were quick to move the supernatural stories from small towns and villages into printed works to be read in cities, and in 1819, Washington Irving published one of the first Christmas ghost stories. Winterson explains another theory:
‘ithe spectres and apparitions claimed in so many sightings were a result of low-level carbon-monoxide poisoning from gas lamps (it does cause fuzzy, drowsy hallucinations). Add in the thick fogs and plenty of gin, and it starts to make sense.’
And what goes better with some Christmas cheer than some holiday chills? ‘But there’s a psychological side to this too,’ Winterson explains, ‘The 19th century was haunted by itself,’ and the gothic tradition began to blend with the new struggles around industrialization. This is most notable in one of the best-loved Christmas ghost stories, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol where three ghosts visit a cantankerous old man on Christmas Eve to instill in him a feeling of charity and goodwill and showing the tragic outcomes that would befall himself and his workers if he continues to be ruled by greed. But while this story has persisted and even been adapted by the Muppets, the Christmas ghost story never quite caught on across the ocean in the United States. I think that could change, especially with the renewed interest in horror stories.
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Anyways, lets all embrace christmas horror stories and Four Gathered on Christmas Eve is a great way to do so. A short, but fun little read.
Ever have a real bummer of a roommate situation? Well check this. An unsettling twist on the Greek myth of Pygmalion as an eerie confrontation of loneEver have a real bummer of a roommate situation? Well check this. An unsettling twist on the Greek myth of Pygmalion as an eerie confrontation of loneliness and captive trauma, Lonnie Garcia’s brief graphic novel Putty Pygmalion is a huge success. Trapped in grief, Derryl creates Peter as a companion out of putty and brings him to life, but the rather alarming former kids toy creation is not pleased to find himself brought into existence to be the companion for an adult shut in who seems uncomfortably concerned with keeping him inside…
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This story compounds uneasy weirdness with each flip of the page with queasy moral dilemmas around basically frankenstein-ing a person into existence as a stand-in for an unhealthy obsession with someone else and it just hits. I was rather charmed by the art style, adding cartoonish characters over photos of an old dollhouse the author found on facebook marketplace. It makes for a really eye catching and chilling effect.
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While the conclusion sort of lets Derryl off the hook for some rather fucking depraved behavior, Putty Pygmalion is a delightful read that has a lot of heart amidst all the weirdness. Another fun read from Silver Sprocket. I simply loved this.
The third and final act of The Thing on the Doorstep delivers the promised chills and thrills. A graphic novel retelling of an H.P. Lovecraft story ofThe third and final act of The Thing on the Doorstep delivers the promised chills and thrills. A graphic novel retelling of an H.P. Lovecraft story of the same name brought to life by writer and illustrator duo Simon Birks and Will Roberts, this this volume catches us up to the events in the days preceding the shocking opening from the first volume and sends us spiraling through its aftermath. Creepy and cool, this was a rather fun little series to read that does move at a bit of a slow pace but builds enough eerie atmosphere and delivers amazing artwork that pulls you along for the ride.
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While I’ve never been a big Lovecraft fan—who was a rampant racist for the record and much of his horror functions as a metaphor for such things like his fears of miscegenation as much as they are expressions of his nightmares—this was a lot of fun and has so really creepy and unsettling moments. I liked the whole mind snatching aspects and the titular thing on the doorstep made for an amazing moment. I would love to check out more work by this artist as well as he managed to really make this a visual extravaganza that upheld the rather text heavy moments. A fun and spooky read....more
The tension creaks towards almost certain catastrophe in this second volume of The Thing on the Doorstep, a graphic novel retelling of an H.P. LovecraThe tension creaks towards almost certain catastrophe in this second volume of The Thing on the Doorstep, a graphic novel retelling of an H.P. Lovecraft story of the same name, brought to life by writer and illustrator duo Simon Birks and Will Roberts. A tale of the occult and minds that are either drifting towards madness or being shoved out of the way, this is a delightfully eerie work that really catches its stride in the second volume.
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While The Thing of the Doorstep is a bit of a slow burn, it feels more like walking towards horror with trepidation rather than simply being a slog and the eye popping and chilling artwork really keeps you gripped. It’s a fun story that finally seems to be devoured by darkness after a rather dry first volume (that was sort of a slog) and leaves with quite a cliff hanger that will have me scrambling to read the third and final volume as soon as I post this. While I’ve never been a big Lovecraft fan—who was a rampant racist for the record and much of his horror functions as a metaphor for such things like his fears of miscegenation as much as they are expressions of his nightmares—this is quite the exciting tale and is delivered with some rather fine atmosphere made more frightening by the excellent art. Definitely worth the read.
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What horrors lurk amongst us? The Thing on the Doorstep opens abruptly onto an act of extreme violence as a man burst into an asylum, shooting his lifWhat horrors lurk amongst us? The Thing on the Doorstep opens abruptly onto an act of extreme violence as a man burst into an asylum, shooting his lifelong friend in the face while declaring it an act of vengeance on behalf of said friend. So starts the mysterious journey back to the present in Simon Birks’s graphic novel adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story of the same name, brought to life in eerily delightful artwork by Willi Roberts. One of the most famous tales of the Cthulhu mythos and set in familiar Lovecraftian locales such as Innsmouth (my only Lovecraft experience was The Shadow over Innsmouth) and Arkham, this is a creepy little tale of slowly accruing dread and potential body snatching that worked quite well in graphic format. Being the first issue of three, this volume just gets the ball rolling but by the time I reached the end I was definitely hooked and eager for more.
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A bit of a dark academia horror before there was really a label for such things, this story follows the lifelong friendship of Daniel Upton and Edward Derby as the latter gets pulled further into the world of occult studies. A bit of a loner aside from his friendship with Daniel, Edward’s life suddenly changes when he meets Asenath who might be much more than she seems. The story is riveting but this does have quite the slow burn opening before things really get rolling. Still, it is quite creepy and lovely to look at and I can’t wait for more. 3.5/5
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They say authors put their sweat and blood into their art but throw a cursed object into the mix and metaphor bleeds into menace. Lee Mandelo turns upThey say authors put their sweat and blood into their art but throw a cursed object into the mix and metaphor bleeds into menace. Lee Mandelo turns up the tension in The Writ of Years, a darkly delightful tale where an author battling a boozy writers block stumbles upon a mysterious quill pen that opens a world of stories before them, both cautionary fairy tales long passed down and new stories born from malevolent magic. As a pen aficionado myself, I couldn’t resist giving this a read just as much as Mandelo’s narrator cannot resist the call of the pen, particularly as I was just gifted a rather wonderful pen from a rather wonderful person:
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There is a moment in this story where the narrator writes to a library asking for old tales on cursed objects and I can’t tell you how much I want that sort of email to hit my inbox. I will find you your fairy tale needs, friends. Its what I want to do.
‘What would the quill do, if I could circumvent the bloodletting to use it?’
There’s a certain charm to the fiction legend here which begins ‘there was once a quill that could not be held by any hand,’ a legend that appears in many variations, retold through an oral tradition but ultimately immortalized through the act of pen on paper preserving it for generations. Yet the pen in question is one that cannot be held, always ending in tragedies that are ‘gruesome with some variance in execution.’ A resistance to permanence it would seem. Though, as the narrator learns, one can penetrate the cursed defenses and wield it, but at what cost?
‘The moral of the story seemed to be, do look a gift horse in the mouth. The price would be paid, and the price was death.’
Managing to straddle both chilling and cozy in their sturdy, pleasing prose, Mandelo crafts a fun short story that pulls you along on a sense of amalgamating dread that reminds me a bit of Edgar Allan Poe. Particularly with a narrator plunging headlong into a situation that they know has dire consequences but too engorged on the ecstasy of it all to resist. Quick and crisp yet haunting all the same, The Writ of Years is a nice dose of darkness.
Gotta keep your eyes on the prize–especially when your eyes are the prize… A brief but perfectly atmospheric little comic, The Eyes of the Cat is the Gotta keep your eyes on the prize–especially when your eyes are the prize… A brief but perfectly atmospheric little comic, The Eyes of the Cat is the joint vision of director Alejandro Jodorowsky and Jean Giraud, better known by his artist name Mœbius. It is a singular moment expanded into a quiet intensity of sudden violence and unsettling atmosphere, aimed to be what Mœbius once described as ‘an effective horror story.’ It can be read in just a few minutes, yet is a sort of disquieting art that, aided by being nearly contextless, lingers in the mind full of dread to allow your imagination to blend with it and spread it out the way a drop of liquid slowly seeps through a napkin. You may find yourself forever wanting to cover your eyes when a bird passes by…
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This is the sort of little story where the story behind it is just as, if not more, interesting than the book. The duo, who would later, go on to other projects like The Incal, met when Jodorowsky was beginning work on his film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. The film, in which Jodorowsky had contacted Pink Floyd to do the soundtrack and would star his own son with a supporting cast including Orsen Welles, Mick Jagger, Gloria Swanson, David Carradine, and artist Salvador Dalí as the emperor, never got the funding to get off the ground but there is a fascinating documentary about this project that never was. In the intro to The Eyes of the Cat, Jodorowsky talks about how he specifically wanted Mœbius to do the storyboard and was pleased to discover when he was being introduced to Jean Giraud as an option for that role that Giraud was, in fact, THE Mœbius he had been hoping for. During pre-production he did over 3,000 sketches but the project was canceled and the pair redirected to this little comic, which was originally given away for free.
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The artwork here is outstanding and unsettling, and cat lovers beware because it does not go well for the feline friend of the title. I really love the back and forth between the “action” and the repeated image of the boy looking out the window, creating this slow burn atmosphere that conveys a lot of building tension and dread. It feels, to take the obvious comparison, like the direction and pacing of a Jodorowsky film. A bit light on story and over before it really begins, this is still a powerful little scene and a lovely piece of art.
There is such a playfulness to the ways Stephen Graham Jones confronts horror that has the reader nervously giggling ‘This is how you prove a thesis.’
There is such a playfulness to the ways Stephen Graham Jones confronts horror that has the reader nervously giggling through the descent into darkness and dread. Chapter Six is a brief little yarn but one that charmingly knits zombie apocalypse into a satirization of academia as two men, ‘ teacher, student, each working toward a common goal,’ trailing an herd of the undead in order to process their evolutionary theories. Lampooning the monomania of academic pursuits at any cost, Jones presents a fresh take on the classic zombie trope through an anthropological framing while still delivering plenty of chills and thrills.
‘Herd suggests a lack of intelligence, of conscious thought, while horde brings with it aggressiveness. Or, at the very least, a danger to the society naming those invaders.’
For those interested, you can read the entirety of the story HERE from Rector Magazine. I’ve always enjoyed the way Jones crafts horror through literary aims, examining tropes in ways that open up conversations on their philosophical underpinnings and exploring the gritty nature of humanity through the juxtaposition of the not-quite-human. He also excels at plunging the reader into the treacherous landscapes and suffocating dread of atmosphere, here with two academics ‘eighty miles from campus, if miles still mattered’ as societal collapse has dissolved our common constructs as the world is now populated by the ‘all-too-human horde, exhausting the landscape’ that is merely a bloodstained wasteland of ‘concrete and asphalt, stretched tight like an eardrum.’ This story is short but it crackles with engaging prose and forward moving tension even though the dialog is an academic discourse that feels all the more absurd and surreal in such a crumbling world. We follow the two academics as they follow the zombies like some sort of fucked up episode of Planet Earth but without David Attenborough to comfort us into the darkness. It is a dark humor of etymological insights of the past as a map towards the understanding of a future where the social codes of the present begin to have no meaning and primal instinct regain the throne.
‘Crain tried to frame their situation as a return to more primitive times. What the plague was doing, it was resetting humanity. Hunting and gathering were the order of the day, now, not books or degrees on the wall. Survival had become hand-to-mouth again. There was to be no luxury time for a generation or two, there would be no specializing, no social stratification. The idea of a barter economy springing up anytime soon was a lark; tooth and nail was going to be the dominant mode for a while, and only the especially strong would make it through to breed, keep the species going.’
Stephen Graham Jones is such a delightful writer who is a true champion of modern horror and Chapter Six is yet again another fine example of his literary prowess. Short but sinister and fun, Jones never lets me down.
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‘This was his thesis in action. His final proof.’...more
The pressure to perform and achieve perfection builds in uneasy tension towards terror in Flo Wooley’s Skin Deep. This gorgeously illustrated graphic The pressure to perform and achieve perfection builds in uneasy tension towards terror in Flo Wooley’s Skin Deep. This gorgeously illustrated graphic novel is brief but drenched in dread, body horror and eerie atmosphere as it recounts the past few weeks in a dance house leading up to the disappearance of the lead dancer. Jealousy and subtle queer desire burns through these pages that that crackle and pop with Wooley’s artwork primarily colored in blue and green for a creepy and sinister little read.
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I really love these short comics coming out from Silver Sprocket and Skin Deep is another little gem combining surreal sci-fi vibes with horror and queer characters. This one builds pretty quickly but is just soaked in dread the whole way as the first quick flash of memory foreshadows a gruesome conclusion to come. I loved the eerie nighttime dance hall and the sinister weight of competition that fuels this tiny tale.
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Most of all, I loved Flo Wooley’s artwork and I hope we get a full length graphic novel from them soon. Quick but satisfying.
Classic horror comes alive sharp and bloodsoaked in this new graphic novel adaptation of Dracula, written by horror veteran James Tynion IV and spectaClassic horror comes alive sharp and bloodsoaked in this new graphic novel adaptation of Dracula, written by horror veteran James Tynion IV and spectacularly illustrated by Martin Simmonds for some truly visceral visual terror. Dread descends upon a dreary London in an adaptation that zooms in on the local intrigue around Renfield as he confounds doctors at the sanatorium with his ravings and ravenous blood disorder, presenting a more intimate narrative of this piece of the larger story that gives more spotlight to smaller characters like Renfield and Lucy others like Johnathan Harker move around their peripheries. Those who have a particular adherence to a purity of plot in Bram Stoker orignal may find themselves frustrated that this deviates in many ways, yet this shuffled remix gives Tynion IV fresh space to explore the symbolism of Dracula for a modern audience and the artwork is so unsettlingly brilliant that one will hardly mind while being so devilishly dazzled. A bit short with a rather rushed ending, this first, full installment of the upcoming Universal Monsters series is a strong start that brings us back to the monster who has been terrorizing the imagination for hundreds of years.
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Truthfully, when I first saw there was a suspiciously slim, new graphic novel of Dracula I thought “do we really need another version?” Though upon looking at the writing and art team, I suddenly realizes that it’s me, I’m the one who wants and needs another version if it means Tynion IV is behind it. This was an eerie stunner of a work that rides high on its astonishingly engaging artwork. I mean, look at this:
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The colors, the blood, the moon shining pure dread into reader’s hearts. Simmonds went off on this one and we are all better for it. And perhaps all a little more scared… It brings this story to life and the monsters so boldly into our minds, playing well into Renfield’s own words about his ‘master’ that ‘you’ll like what he does to your world. The color he brings to it.’ Because the dark and drab streets of London depicted in the book with somber, earthy colors
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Comes blazing into violence in terms of both casualties and color when the Transylvanian Count appears
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LOOK AT THAT THOUGH
‘Hell is closing in on you from every corner, and you still refuse to see it.’
This is a rather truncated story, though the intimacy with the sections it portrays bring a lot of intrigue. Drawing less from the Bram Stoker novel and more from the 1931 film adaptation staring Bela Lugosi, which itself drew primarily upon a stage adaptation, both making fairly significant changes to Stoker’s plot and characters. The film and it’s variant of the Dracula narrative would largely influence many of the other Dracula medias to follow, with Lugosi having a rather lasting cultural presence as the image of Dracula himself. Those who have a particular adherence to a purity of plot in Stoker’s image may find themselves frustrated that this graphic novel adaptation deviates in many ways, but I rather enjoyed what Tynion IV does with it. Van Helsing’s speech on Dracula capitalizing on ‘rot’ in London and that ‘the city has invited this darkness upon it’ is a universal fear during any hard times, especially when, say, rampant culture wars and divisive rhetoric with accusations on morality are common. Tynion depicts Dracula as symbolic of the dark urges in humankind and tempts us to embrace our vileness as a source of strength. Or to follow him because, as Renfield states ‘he would give me purpose, he would give me power’
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‘The Master makes me more powerful…’
Simmond’s Renfield—who usurps not only Harker’s Transylvannia narrative (in keeping with the 1931 film) but also space in the story itself—is wonderfully disquieting, looking a bit like he walked off the stage at a My Chemical Romance show, but also has a visual fluidity that descends into the abstract in times of high emotion, particularly when his master’s will over him is challenged. It works well to show the fleeting power that ends up just a thirst for blood that never serves our best interests, only the symbol of evil who would discard us anyways.Yet, ultimately, this adaptation also centers on a hope that compassion and love reside in us too and can overcome such darkness. It looks at the dualities of people, accepts us as a mixture of dark and light, and pleas that we do not let our darkness snuff out our light.
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‘The fear is not that the world has gone mad around me. It’s that all this strangeness has peeled back the skin of London and revealed the true madness lurking just under the surface.’
Really my only gripe, and a small one at that, is this could have easily been expanded to its benefit. The scenes could breathe more and the last quarter moves too quickly before ending rather abruptly (while also using callbacks as evidence without having let the reader be present for those moments). Still, this is a fun and frighteningly gorgeous graphic adaptation and is definitely worth the read.
Personally I think nothing says bad idea like camping in a mysteriously slurpy forest with no phone signal, but hey if your car is out of gas why not Personally I think nothing says bad idea like camping in a mysteriously slurpy forest with no phone signal, but hey if your car is out of gas why not sit a spell and invite the equally mysterious stranger you find to join you. But what do I know. Fruiting Bodies by artist and author Ashley Robin Franklin is a thrilling little horror comic of queer desires, decaying damsels and fungal fun when Frances tags along on a road trip with her brother and his absolute shit of a friend named Trent so she can move across the country to live with the woman she met online. But when all the horror tropes of wrong turns and wicked wilderness suddenly befall them they are in for a lovely evening of heartfelt bonding. Haha just kidding, this crew is fucked. Plus we learn the important moral lesson: if you’re not a fun guy you end up as fungi. A bit too brief to really land any of its blows, this is still a good way to pass 15 minutes and give yourself some mental images to try and block out next time you are camping in the woods. GREAT FUN!
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YEA invite her over, seems totally legit! It’s not like you are in literal horror trope conditions right now!
While Fruiting Bodies never feels fleshed out enough, at least the flesh we do get rots before our eyes and goes on a murder rampage. The seemingly normal woman lost in the woods trying to seduce everyone is…somehow part fungus and on a mission to rot everyone into her mycelium mates or…something? And it’s pretty entertaining and wildly creepy for what its worth. You don’t really have enough to bond with the characters to really root for them beyond like…yea I don’t want anyone to face a fungus finale but—scratch that, actually Trent has that shit coming. This isn’t a book to root for survival but one to root for Trent getting the nightmarish horror death that, lets face it, we watch or read horror for. Sorry not sorry Trent.
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Oh look, pure body horror, who could have seen this coming?!
This is worth the quick read but isn’t much to write home about (I say as I write too much on a goodreads review) though I will definitely check out more of Ashley Robin Franklin’s works. Fans of media like The Last Of Us or anything zombie related will get a kick out of this and it is pretty exciting seeing nature take over some people in gross ways. Fuckin’ fungus.
A dark and stormy night confined within the castle walls belonging to a sinister seductress creates the gruesome yet gorgeous gothic vibes in Emily CaA dark and stormy night confined within the castle walls belonging to a sinister seductress creates the gruesome yet gorgeous gothic vibes in Emily Carroll’s When I Arrived at the Castle. A crisp yet fairly obfusticating horror story constructed out of various short tales weaved into the larger picture, Carroll’s delightfully dark artwork drags us into the mind of an anthropomorphic cat that has arrived at the Countess’ castle with murder in her heart. The specifics of the tale are shrouded in mystery that can be abstractly gleaned through the various short stories lurking behind every door, though this is certainly a story that thrives of atmosphere, eerie desire and creeping dread rather than narrative clarity. Drawing from gothic classics and feeling like a queer embodiment of the wicked wildness found in Emily Brontë, When I Arrived at the Castle captures a disquieting collision between eroticism and violence and is a frightfully fun—even if a bit frustratingly vague—gothic graphic novel.
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Carroll has earned quite wonderful reputation for a dexterity with dark graphic novels, having written books for adults (such as this one), YA audiences with their best known book, Through the Woods, being a collection of short stories, and even younger readers such as providing the wonderful art for Baba Yaga's Assistant. The art is excellent, mostly bathed in darkness and emphasized with a bold, bloody red as the only color against the black and white images, it affects a surreal and threatening atmosphere at the best of times and bursts into moments of body horror and violence at the turn of a page. There is some great framework here including a well crafted jump-scare type moment that likely worked better through the single-frame flipping of an ebook than it would on a page. This is short, yet a feast of frightening vibes and visuals.
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The story itself leaves a bit to be desired. Intentionally vague and rather obfuscating for the first half, we watch this cat woman come to the castle and be lead along through a series of doors, each with their own story inside. While perhaps a hazy, half-understanding is part of the desired effect, one might find themselves uncertain what is going on and wondering if they had picked up part 2 of a comic series without having read the earlier volume. By the end it is mostly understood, yet unsettlingly still just out of reach and leaves you with further questions to pile upon those you’ll already have. Still it has a strong effect and the blend of the erotic with the violent—especially in a scene where a struggle for murder is also a consensual sexual encounter. Or at least I think it is? One will find shades of classic vampire tales like Dracula or Carmilla permeating this story and a sense that the desire is mixed up in shame for the cat woman’s role in the Countess’ victims.
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An eerie little tale brought to life in sinister artwork, When I Arrived at the Castle is a fun little romp. A bit confusing but creepy and cool and I quite enjoyed the way it weaves in other tales almost as in celebration of the way fairy tales build such worlds of wicked wonder. So enter the castle…if you dare… 3/5
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Picked this up as it was a free Hoopla download for the month—shoutout to libraries—and while I really enjoyed the art and the super creepy vibes…I haPicked this up as it was a free Hoopla download for the month—shoutout to libraries—and while I really enjoyed the art and the super creepy vibes…I have no idea what was going on. Turns out it’s based on a video game but even then it is sort of a fever dream of half-narratives and so jumbled together it never feels like it gets into any sort of groove. I does, however, really make me want to play the game and the art and horror elements are cool: [image] Do I have any context for that though? I sure don’t. It all seemed like the montage credits scene of a tv show but without the actual episode following. It’s probably cool if you have a lot of background on the games but even the longer scenes were difficult to follow. Oh well. Shoutout to the artists though. [image]...more
An unfathomable terror awaits In the wreckage of a massive and deadly explosion 12 years prior in Chris Gooch’s sci-fi horror In Utero. The story follAn unfathomable terror awaits In the wreckage of a massive and deadly explosion 12 years prior in Chris Gooch’s sci-fi horror In Utero. The story follows 12 year old Hailey as she sneaks away from her chaotic daycare inside a closed-down shopping mall and befriends Jen, who turns out to be far more than anyone could ever imagine and needs a companion before the great horrors beneath the mall begin to rise. While the artwork is breathtaking and conveys some seriously creepy sights and vibes, the monster plot falls a bit flat through a rather cumbersome execution and unfortunate lack of context. In Utero delivers surreal thrills and mind-bending concepts making it a worthwhile read though riding along the story feels like being jostled along a bumpy road too quickly to enjoy the scenery and left in the dark about where you are going or why.
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Okay, but for real the art is amazing
There’s a lot to enjoy in In Utero. The characters are pretty fun like the frazzled head of the daycare who is more concerned with confrontation than caregiving, or Hailey and her habit of rattling off random facts. There’s a great bit too with the frustration of the scientists trying to study the specimens and the general who is ready to go in guns blazing and kills some monsters. Or be killed. It doesn’t go very well for anyone and this has some great action moments.
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And then there is Jen. I really enjoyed the aspects of a metaphysical “monster” who can project into the world or draw Hailey into her strange alternative universe (shown above) and the whole idea of rival beasts fighting across space and time and over generations was cool it just never quite came together. The general confusion is a bit fun at first since its all so creepy and surreal, but the tiny bits of context given don’t add up to much and feels less like a creepy feature and more like a flaw. The pacing is also pretty jumpy and while I appreciate the effort of jump-cuts between locations and characters it isn’t always successfully handled. Also the timeline just doesn’t feel natural for the amount of things happening.
‘It's not the ground we're worried about... it's what came out of it.’
That all said, the art here is extraordinary. I really liked the two-tone art with scenes in either all red or a dark blue. The style reminded me a bit of a favorite graphic novelist, Tillie Walden, especially in the architectural aspects and honestly, even if you are confused this is just a great graphic novel to look at. It handles the surrealism quite well and there are some really strange things going on in this book.
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Ultimately, In Utero is a fun and eerie graphic novel that feels like its missing some elements but ultimately is a worthwhile read. Gorgeous art, gory monster battles and just a good time.
Does your town have an urban legend? I’ve always been fascinated by the way a story can, like a snowball rolling down a hill, gain in velocity as it iDoes your town have an urban legend? I’ve always been fascinated by the way a story can, like a snowball rolling down a hill, gain in velocity as it is passed along and grow in menacing mass as details soften into murky dread and possibilities. But what horrors and terrible events lend themselves to legends that perpetuate through the ages? Flyaway from Australian author Kathleen Jennings is a darkly immersive journey into Australian folklore and frights as a young girl discovers that the haunting tales whispered around her town might have such sinister truths at their heart. It is folk horror at its finest and reads like an Australian Gothic as the pain of the past haunt the present. Jennings’ prose spirals through haunting figurative language and surreal imagery that pulls the reader along through this beguiling tale as if the novel were a ferocious fairytale forest instead of words on a page. Full of mystery and surprises with brief stories of folklore interwoven with the main plot, Flyaway is alive with fairytale sensibilities as in this tale about generation trauma and uncovering hard truths that are swept under the rug only to return more frightening than ever.
‘Strange, what chooses to flourish here. Which plants. Which stories.’
I’d like to thank Ceallaigh and her excellent review for guiding me to this eerie tale. The story revolves around teenage Bettina Scott who, with the help of two former friends she sometimes thinks of as enemies, is trying to discover a mystery of her family’s recent past when a threatening message written on her fence is followed by an ominous threat that arrives in the mail. Flyaway is best enjoyed with as little knowledge of the plot as possible going into it, and the narrative does—admittedly—begin rather obfuscating though this is all by design. The book garners comparisons to Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle for a similar gothic atmosphere, ominous dread and unreliable narrator with Bettina being a successful successor to Mericat with her social standoffishness and glaring gaps in personal history while her thoughts are continuously assailed by the voice of her mother chastising her manners and encouraging “ladylike” behavior. It can be tricky to follow at first but hang in there. It is a worthwhile fumbling through the narrative dark because around halfway there is a brilliant moment that suddenly blows aside your confusion like the dispersal of a fog, the seemingly disparate pieces slide into place, and the larger picture comes gloriously into focus. It is like those cartoons where a character walks into the mouth of a beast mistaking the teeth as trees and only gains clarity of their surroundings as the jaws snap shut…
‘I tried to be anxious, but the earth and the grass and the evening breeze surrounded me, as if I had been set into a socket of the world for which I’d been designed.’
Beyond the personal struggles of the teenage cast, there is a larger scope making this just as much a story about this secluded Queensland town and the long feuds, neighborly distrust and legends that linger through generations. Runagate is from a distric ‘somewhere between the Coral Sea and the Indian Ocean but on the way to nowhere, there was a district called – oh, let’s call it Inglewell’ and exist as if in a state of decomposition. The folklore is brought to life through brief tales threaded into the larger narrative, weaving magic and dread into daily reality until it becomes entirely engulfed in the fantastical as a surreal landscape shot through with sorrow. An entire school vanishes into the trees, a bottle might grant wishes, shapeshifters and other terrors with teeth might thrash in the underbrush. It is teeming with Australian folklore and there are some real creepy beasts such as the Megarrity, which I kept misreading in my head as Mega-Gritty though it would make sense if Gritty made his way to Philly after terrorizing the Australian forests for centuries.
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The town itself is framed as ferociously as the folklore with Jennings’ prose crafting the land as a sentient beast and the trees and creatures that crawl amongst them are characters on their own. ‘Trees like lanterns, like candles, ghosts and bones,’ trees bleeding resin, trees that cloy the decaying buildings and rot of Runagate and seem a testament to the permeating sadness of its atmosphere, trees as omnipresent lurking threats that separate the town from the rest of Australia like the mythical forests of fairytales.
‘Trees towered hard as bronze in still sunlight, and stirred like a living hide in the rolling advent of a storm. If you were born to Runagate with all its fragile propriety, its tidy civilisation, its ring-fence of roads and paddocks, wires and blood, there was nothing else in the world beyond but tree.’
The sense of isolation is thick, both literally and figuratively as divisions between neighbors run deep with the three principal characters coming together as if totems for the legacy of these families. Gary Damson is a particularly well-fixed character in this theme coming from a family of fence builders that for generations ‘keep up fences, walk boundaries.’ Bettina, on the other hand is a legacy of disaster juxtaposed to Trish and the Aberdeens who uphold social norms and status quo. As the story descends into dread and weirdness, they begin to realize the legacy of lore might be more than tall tales to chill you around a campfire.
‘Memory bleed and frayed there, where ghosts stood silent by fenceposts.’ Fable and fairytales often exists as warning or guidance through the dark forests of life. As Folklorist Jack Zipes writes ‘Fairy tales since the beginning of recorded time, and perhaps earlier, have been a means to conquer the terrors of mankind through metaphor.’ Here we find that the tales betray dark secrets and a legacy of betrayals and debts, violence and abuse that cannot remain silent in the past. ‘Truth was shifting the way the land had when we drove: trees sliding behind trees.’ writes Jennings and the reader begins to question if Bettina’s narration is confused because she has pushed aside painful memories, and is the truth transforming into terrors that haunt the countryside demanding confrontation. Under the stones of stories we find the violence of patriarchy and colonialism, the sins of greed and grief perpetuating themselves down through generations as trauma grips people's hearts and in turn they commit emotional and physical violence as a sense of control over others. This is a story with teeth and the wails of those who have been bitten.
‘If all those stories mean anything, they mean sometimes people do just disappear. And maybe they can be found.’
An incredible little novella that, while confusing at first, pays off in the end, Flyaway embodies the spirit of fairytales and has a few of its own to tell. There is a familiar story at the heart of this, though which one is a major reveal late in the novel I won’t spoil, and this works as a haunting Australian gothic tale that probes the darkness of the human heart. Sharp and sinister, Flyaway is a real treat.
4.5/5
‘Through the soles of her feet and hands, through her skin, the land sang to her: dark and silver, the bones of the world.’
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What lurks beneath the surface of the water, hidden from view, perhaps swimming along right beside us? Tananarive Due delivers an unnerving slow burn What lurks beneath the surface of the water, hidden from view, perhaps swimming along right beside us? Tananarive Due delivers an unnerving slow burn in her story The Lake, one where monsters may lurk just beneath a calm surface of a body of water. Or the calm demeanor of a human body… It’s a slow-burn of a story that creeps through the heat of a Florida summer as Florida newcomer Abbie LaFleur makes the quiet town her new home taking up a teaching job unaware of the whispered rumors about the lake. Though as the story progresses we see how whispered rumors of Abbie could begin to swirl like sharks as she employs a teenage boy for services around her home. Due teases dread and danger in a way that really propels the story, which you can read HERE.
‘Am I truly awake, or is this a dream?’
This is a monster story but often in unexpected ways. There is the slow reveal of the lake and its effects on Abbie, but Due also hints at other possible indiscretions that keep you guessing what the monstrous act will be. ‘Young adults had to make decisions for themselves, especially boys, or how would they learn to be men?’ she thinks at one point adding, ‘that was what she and Mary Kay had always believed. Anyone who thought differently was just being politically correct.’ It is then we can assume the Mary Kay of the story—and the briefly alluded to “trial” that is likely more literal than the metaphorical trial against public opinion Abbie references—is none other than Mary Kay Letourneau who had a sexual relationship with her 12 year old student when she was 34 and later married him after prison. I would have likely missed this but the new film May December about her has been all over the media lately. Yet with the creeping unease over the focus on this sort of predator, the changes of Abbie’s body and obsession with the lake almost seem secondary. Until it might be too late…
A decent little read and thanks to Hope for recommending it. Certainly unsettling and propelled by some excellent writing that makes me realize I need to finally read much more Tananarive Due....more
‘Our bodies hide so many mysteries and they tell so many stories without a single word.’
There are novels about haunted houses and then there are novel‘Our bodies hide so many mysteries and they tell so many stories without a single word.’
There are novels about haunted houses and then there are novels that feel like a haunted house themselves. Mexican Gothic from Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the latter, engulfing the reader in the dark, twisted corridors of plot amidst an almost choking atmosphere of dread and decay. It is a slow-burn of a narrative, not unlike the way one shuffles forward in trepidation through a haunted house, the burning glow of a candle our only light. But beyond that, Mexican Gothic is a horror of history, weaving a bloody legacy of colonialism and the repression of women through this ghastly tale of a house that might be consuming minds and bodies. Drawing on a long history of the gothic tradition but with a fresh and fierce twist, Moreno-Garcia creates a postcolonialist horror that delivers as many social criticisms as it does scares and shrieks.
‘ She wasn't one for believing in things that go bump in the night either, but right that second she firmly felt every spook and demon and evil thing might be crawling about the earth…’
Call me late to the party, but I finally understand all the hype. Having recently been impressed by Moreno-Garcia’s The Lover I was recommended this by emma griffioen! and her wonderful review and found this to be a dark delight. The story moves slowly, picking up dread all along the way and is just a feast of atmosphere and tone. It is also highly cinematic and I’m shocked this isn’t already a film. There are a lot of similarities between this and What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher, something Kingfisher acknowledges in the intro to that book, though they both stand apart quite well and make a very different use of their shared evil.
‘The walls speak to me. They tell me secrets. Don’t listen to them, press your hands against your ears, Noemí. There are ghosts. They’re real.’
I enjoy the way Mexican Gothic superimposes a traditional English gothic narrative trope over a Mexican landscape which, thematically, already implies an aspect of colonialism in the narrative. This is a tale of how the Doyle family legacy is one of violence and power, where even their self-mythologizing about providing the town with jobs and money—at the expense of strapping the town forever in their debt and service—can’t erase the real bodies buried in their wake. Moreno-Garcia touches on the aspects of relying on the aid of indigenous peoples before massacring them to steal their resources and land. One should not be surprised history would return to haunt, though Moreno-Garcia offers an unexpected twist where it isn’t their sins returning to haunt them but instead the sins growing hungrier for more…
‘Loyalty to the family is rewarded, and impertinence is punished.’
The patriarchal legacy is also a source of evil casting a long shadow across the novel as well as a threat of immediate danger in the way it has found to perpetuate itself from generation to generation. It is one shown to rule through violence and repression (and some sci-fi help too), and Noemí—who is an excellent character both capable and feisty—is an excellent counterpoint to it all. ‘Noemí's father said she cared too much about her looks and parties to take school seriously, as if a woman could not do two things at once,’ we are told, and we see how she aims to be able to be the best of both worlds. Though her struggles for education and independence are always beset by the patriarchal forces and we see the clear double standards held against women.
‘She thought that men such as her father could be stern and men could be cold like Virgil, but women needed to be liked or they’d be in trouble. A woman who is not liked is a bitch, and a bitch can hardly do anything: all avenues are closed to her.’
This all plays into a sense of gaslighting that occurs in the novel, with Catalina and Ruth being a sort of play on the “madwoman in the attic” trope of gothic fiction, or, most notably, the way it was addressed as a post-colonial work in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea. Though the yellow mold in Noemí room also seems to hint at another work of feminist fiction: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
‘In a sense all dreams foretell events, but some more clearly than others.’
This book was impossible to put down and offers a lot of legit chills and thrills. It does use dreams fairly heavily as narrative trope which I often don’t particularly enjoy, though it does integrate itself quite well into the story and horror elements and also functions as a vessel to see the way the past and present are haunted by each other.
‘The truth was she was afraid of going to bed, of what nightmares might uncoil in the dark. What did people do after witnessing the horrors they had seen? Was it possible to slip back into normality, to play pretend and go on? She wanted to think this was exactly the case, but she was afraid sleep would prove her wrong.’
This all moves towards a rather incredible ending and the slowburn of the narrative almost feels like foreshadowing for the rather amazing climatic scene. And, in the face of colonialism and violent patriarchy, who hasn’t wanted it all to burn? The novel does turn a bit from the gothic to a more modern style horror in the later sections, though it flows pretty smoothly and the twist is an excellent symbol of the ways patriarchal legacies are parasitical on the communities they repress.
This was quite the ride. The homage to the history of the gothic but in a way that represents a reaction to colonialism and a path to the future—the progressive woman of color valuing education and independence rising over the legacy of a white patriarchy repressing the working class. Mexican Gothic is a haunted house of history where every page lures you deeper into its catacombs and it is a journey I would definitely recommend.
4.5/5
‘The world might indeed be a cursed circle; the snake swallowed its tail and there could be no end, only an eternal ruination and endless devouring.’...more
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