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Books Fiction

Overlook Abbey: Whispers of the Female Gothic in Stephen King’s The Shining

Stephen King’s The Shining is a modern gothic masterpiece, containing many of the core aspects which constitute gothic literature’s skeleton. The Overlook hotel is the monolithic, ruined castle riddled with malicious spirits; Jack Torrance succumbs to madness, ultimately becoming a doppelgänger of himself; monstrosity overtakes the mundane, particularly to Danny Torrance; Jack holds a quasi-religious reverence for historical items and locations, and also feels a sense of fallen society. While these attributes have been discussed at length, there is less discussion about its Female Gothic qualities.

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Book reviews Books Fiction

If It Bleeds by Stephen King review – a return to vintage King?

If It Bleeds is Stephen King’s most recent collection of the macabre, released earlier than originally planned this year in response to the desire to escape into new Stephen King fiction felt by many Constant Readers practising social distancing. Each of the four novellas within this collection – including “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone”, “The Life of Chuck“, the titular “If It Bleeds”, and “Rat” – feel like a return to vintage King, though each accomplishes this feat through very different means.

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Book reviews Books Fiction

The Balance by Kev Harrison review – a timeless cautionary tale of tolerance

Kev Harrison’s debut novella delivers an enchanting folkloric story with an eco-warning sting in its tail: be kind to nature, or destroy it at your peril.

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Games

‘A Ruined and Drowning World’: The pertinence of Dishonored’s psychological horror

If there’s anything Bethesda’s Dishonored franchise is known for, it’s whiskey, whales, and brilliant stealth mechanics.

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Book reviews Books Fiction

Velocities: Stories by Kathe Koja review – weird from the inside out

Kathe Koja has been writing in multiple genres since the publication of her first novel, The Cipher, in 1991, but a consistent thread within her work – whether it’s in a dark fantasy vein, veering towards gothic historical fiction, or exploring the more surreal edges of horror – is its focus on characters who are fragmented, driven, and obsessive. In contrast to horror and weird fiction that involves fairly normal individuals being confronted with forms of the unknown, Koja’s characters frequently seem to harbour something strange and unsettling within themselves. The weird, in many of Koja’s tales, works from the inside out, not just the outside in. And her new book, Velocities: Stories (Meerkat Press), continues this theme.

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Book reviews Books Fiction

Boy In The Box by Marc E. Fitch review – suspense and creeping dread

Boy In The Box opens with the main protagonist, Jonathan Hollis, waiting in line to kneel before the coffin of his former friend, Gene Hendrickson. Two other mourners, the Braddock brothers, share a dark secret with Jonathan, one which led Gene to take his own life. The four men, friends since childhood, lost touch with each other following a hunting trip a decade earlier. A trip intended to be a stag party turned into something altogether darker, ending in tragedy and leaving each of them haunted in their own separate ways by memories and overwhelming guilt. Now the three survivors must return to the Gulch or their deed a decade ago will be discovered, destroying each of their lives and families futures forever.

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TV

The Monstrous-Feminine in FX’s American Horror Story

American Horror Story is full of monsters: Murder House’s Tate, Asylum’s aliens, Roanoke’s The Butcher. For me, however, two monsters that stand out more than most in the horror anthology series are Coven’s Black Voudou Priestess Marie Laveau, and Hotel’s vampiric starlet The Countess. Why? Because they are more than just monsters; they are Monstrous-Feminine.

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Book reviews Books Fiction

Grotesque: Monster Tales by Lee Murray review – a compelling collection of diverse, thought-provoking worlds

From ancient myths to Victorian serials to Hammer Horror: monster stories have had a lifespan almost as long as the weird, unearthly creatures that are their subject. And if monsters, as many readers and critics have discovered, embody moments of cultural upheaval, then it’s unsurprising that they continue to populate every culture of the world.

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Reviews TV

La Guerre des Mondes (War of the Worlds) review – ‘rarely has a piece of science fiction held me so terrified’

No one would have believed in the last months of 2019 that two episodic adaptations of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds could be released onto the world’s televisions screens. One, a period-accurate adaptation from the BBC, landed with as much fanfare as a meteorite landing on Horsell Common and was almost as well-received. The other, a bilingual co-production from Fox and Canal+ set in the present day, crept out to little notice due to its awkwardly staggered release pattern across France and the US, eventually reaching the UK in March of 2020.

Will the invasion of La Guerre des Mondes, to distinguish it with the French title, be more successful or will it be “slain as the red weed was being slain”?

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Book reviews Books Fiction

A Phantom Lover: and other Dark Tales by Vernon Lee review – a writer ahead of her time

Vernon Lee was the pseudonym of Violet Paget (1856–1935), an extraordinarily prolific and versatile writer who published essays, novels, stories and pamphlets on topics including aesthetics, travel, music and the art of writing. A lesbian who, as her Wikipedia entry delightfully puts it, “always dressed à la garçonne”, she was a feminist, a pacifist, spoke four languages (and wrote in three), and is credited with introducing the concept of empathy – then a newly translated word – to the British Aesthetic Movement. Much of Lee’s work is concerned with ideas of beauty, art and aesthetic experience, but she is also known for her supernatural short fiction – work this new British Library volume sets out to introduce to a new audience.