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Book reviews Books Fiction

Minor Hauntings: Chilling Tales of Spectral Youth review

The figure of the child has been a perennial presence in horror. Whether it’s the harrowing grief of losing a child – losing a part of ourselves, one intended to continue after our own deaths – that suffuses Don’t Look Now to the use of the child as an avatar of uncanny otherness in The Midwich Cuckoos – where the secret rituals and curious logic of children, often opaque to adults, take on a sinister aspect – children are continually depicted in their role as a threat to the supposed certainties of adulthood.

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Book reviews Books Fiction

Absorbed by Kylie Whitehead review – ‘a tremendous debut’

A tremendous debut novel by Kylie Whitehead, Absorbed is at once a nightmarish body-horror story, the kind of which Cronenberg would be impressed with, and an intimate and often very funny examination of female friendship and modern relationships. 

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Book reviews Books Fiction

The fiction of Joel Lane – ‘To read Lane is to enter into an unforgettable, beautifully ambiguous landscape’

Joel Lane (1963–2013) was surely one of the UK’s best and most distinctive, not to mention underrated, writers of weird fiction. Now, thanks to Influx Press, two of his short story collections – The Earth Wire and Scar City – are back in print, allowing his singular work to reach a whole new audience.

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Book reviews Books Fiction

Later by Stephen King review – new yet comfortingly familiar

There’s a particular sort of magic felt by any Constant Reader who gets their hands on a new Stephen King novel. It’s a hard feeling to describe precisely, but it’s akin to coming home after a long time away. The writing style and characters housed within the novel’s covers amplify this comforting vibe by being completely new yet profoundly familiar. 

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Book reviews Books Non-fiction

Gothic for Girls: Misty and British Comics by Julia Round review

Let’s get an admission out of the way before we begin: I never read Misty as a child. In my defence, I was barely three years old when it was merged into rival comic Tammy, effectively ending its run, but it was also, as the title of this cultural history of the comic defiantly reclaims, “for girls”. In the Lancashire of the late 70s and early 80s that, unfortunately, made it very much “not for boys”.

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Book reviews Books Fiction

Queens of the Abyss review – an insight into the forgotten lineage of weird fiction

In his introduction to this anthology editor Mike Ashley reminds us that “although the history of the ghost story often emphasises the role of male writers … it is all too easily overlooked that the development of the field, helping the weird tale to progress, was as much the territory of women. And that was true from the very start”.

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Book reviews Books Fiction

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi review – ‘a sharp critique of modern epistemology and a cutting-edge reworking of a classic horror tale’

It’s almost a decade since Ahmed Saadawi wrote and published Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013). Yet with its English translation by Jonathan Wright only published in 2018, its impact has been felt belatedly in many Anglo-centric literary circles. One can’t help but wonder at the conjunction of the novel’s publication with the two hundredth anniversary of its predecessor. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was first published in 1818, and it’s tempting to think that the introduction of English-speaking readers to Frankenstein in Baghdad was deliberately timed, however unlikely that may be. In any event, Saadawi’s novel functions not only as a fascinating retelling, but also as a darkly funny and moving story about war, loss, and vengeful bodies.

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Book reviews Books Fiction

The Golem (Dedalus European Classics) by Gustav Meyrink review – ‘grotesque, opulent detail’ in a Prague ‘viscerally evoked’

There are some cities that are entirely transformed by the writers who reproduce them. Dickensian London is a unique entity entirely distinct and yet strangely akin to the real city that spawned it. Dostoevsky’s St Petersburg is a dark mirror of its more tangible yet no less monumental counterpart, filled with strange characters that channel the warped, often fantastical spirit of their surroundings. James Joyce’s Dublin is made up of multiple, unique voices and their own experiences of the city, a tapestry of individual spaces.

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Book reviews Books Non-fiction

Near Dark (BFI Film Classics) by Stacey Abbott review – ‘a rare piece of work…a masterclass’

Embarrassingly, I’d never seen Near Dark before I started writing this review. I don’t know why, it just seemed to pass me by. I take some comfort in the fact that, at least on initial release, this vampire-noir-western hybrid passed a lot of other people by as well.

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Book reviews Books Fiction

Where We Live by Tim Cooke review – the splendour of the natural world collides with urban decay

Where We Live, the debut collection from Tim Cooke, fits into an emergent tradition of writing that blends evocative depictions of landscape with a harder edge: harsh reminders of urban corrosion, intimations of horror.