Jeanette Winterson is a wonderful writer, but Frankissstein left me unsatisfied. Half dramatization of Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein in the early Jeanette Winterson is a wonderful writer, but Frankissstein left me unsatisfied. Half dramatization of Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein in the early 19th century, half contemporary Frankenstein retelling—but neither half stands up to the original’s beauty, imagination, or daring.
Literary writers dabbling in science fiction are dangerously liable to try on for novelty the oldest of old hats. Although I rather enjoyed the romance, and there were a few beautifully drawn scenes, on the whole, the contemporary half of Frankissstein felt like third rate science fiction, weighed down by paper-thin characters and tech-industry satire that mostly doesn’t land, with little to add to the conversations on artificial intelligence, robotics, or the post-human that scifi writers have been engaging since the 50s.
The 19th-century chapters are more compelling. Historical fiction with a touch of magic, a touch of philosophy, a queer sensibility and a deep concern for the intertwining of passion and grief—this is Winterson’s bread and butter. Winterson’s use of Shelley’s words is effective, and I enjoyed how her somewhat arch tone bounced off of Shelley’s Romantic sensibility. That said, much of the force of the story comes from the wondrous impossibility and promise of Mary Shelley’s actual life. Many of the best moments I had, quite literally in some cases, just read—either in Frankenstein itself, in the essays about Frankenstein appended to my copy of that novel, or on Mary and Percy Shelley’s wikipedia pages. The novel’s opening image, of Mary Shelley leaving the house naked in the early morning rain and glimpsing her monster in the mist, promised something magical from this material; alas, it may be the book’s finest moment.
That said, the novel is elevated by Winterson’s sheer skill as a writer. Despite all that didn’t work for me, at least once a chapter she pulled out a line or paragraph brilliant enough to keep me turning pages:
”By consent, the majority of us live and die as though the world around us is solid, even though each day disappears without a trace.”
“I want his love to have enough salt in it to float me.”
“I am a woman. And I am a man. That’s how it is for me. I am in the body that I prefer. But the past, my past, isn’t subject to surgery. I didn’t do it to distance myself from myself. I did it to get nearer to myself.”...more
I thought I knew the story of Frankenstein, more or less. I think I saw the movie as a child (though it’s possible I am misremembering—that rather thaI thought I knew the story of Frankenstein, more or less. I think I saw the movie as a child (though it’s possible I am misremembering—that rather than watching Frankenstein and also Young Frankenstein, I merely saw Young Frankenstein twice). So I was surprised when I opened Mary Shelley’s novel and found myself in St. Petersburg, about to set out on an arctic expedition. Then I was surprised all over again when the story I knew—mad scientist gives life to sewn-together man in laboratory—was more or less dispensed of within the first thirty pages. Wait a second, I thought, what is this book actually about?
Many things, as it turns out. God and Nature. Life and death. The body and the soul. Love and isolation. Ambition and debasement. Self-delusion and truth. Incest.
Frankenstein’s monster is hideous, so hideous that no human being can stand his presence, can even imagine that he might be other than evil. He is not hideous because of his appearance, though surely his is one ugly mug. Nor because of his soul (though it is not entirely clear if he has one, or if such things as souls exist in this universe). Nor because he does evil things. Frankenstein is hideous because he must be. Because how could he be otherwise? Because, in Mary Shelley’s own words (from the novel’s 1831 preface), “supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.” Frankenstein’s monster is not ugly, he is unspeakable. And yet, Mary Shelley shows great sympathy for her monster; more sympathy, by far, than she shows her hero. That tension, between Dr. Frankenstein, the brilliant, visionary fool; the loving, sensitive egomaniac; and his creation, who is as sensitive, as noble, as thoughtful and caring, and as horrible, as guilty, as damned as his creator—that tension fires the novel, which, as Frankenstein chases his monster across the ice, becomes almost a parody of a battle between good and evil. Good and evil? Innocence and guilt? Irrelevant and useless categories, utterly lacking in explanatory power. And yet—what heart, what goodness, what love this terrible novel of contradictions shows....more
A pleasantly creepy little horror novella from 1842, sure to please fans of that sort of thing, if unlikely to inspire converts. The horror here is twA pleasantly creepy little horror novella from 1842, sure to please fans of that sort of thing, if unlikely to inspire converts. The horror here is twofold: the devil, in the guise of a devious green huntsman and terrible black spider, is the terror intended; God, who we are meant to fear in an entirely different way, a comfort that’s curdled with time. Two centuries before, Swiss pastor Jeremias Gotthelf would surely have been burning witches; two centuries after, just as surely railing against the godless women of our own time, with their cursed desire for independent thought and action. Still, it is important, I think, that we continue to read these old books about God, from a world that believed in His power; to reckon with what we lost when we decided that, after all, salvation was to be found in earthly things, and that the heavenly realm, not the world of the senses, was history’s great illusion—and, of course, to reckon with all that we gained. Add to this a vivid sense of place, a lost world on many levels, and a genuinely creepy forebearer of the 20th-century’s myriad literary monsters, and you have a lovely read for an October evening, perfect for fans of Theodor Storm or Adalbert Stifter, of whom I am certain at least a dozen still live....more
There is something about mid-century America that seems perfectly suited to crime. Perhaps it is the cool, matter-of-fact prose in style at the time; There is something about mid-century America that seems perfectly suited to crime. Perhaps it is the cool, matter-of-fact prose in style at the time; perhaps the uneasy coexistence of modern and antediluvian ideas about gender and sexuality; perhaps the sharp way that people dressed, or the state of technology (the phone, but not yet the answering machine); perhaps the impression, liberating and frightening, that it was still possible, then, to skip town in a way that really meant something. To simply be gone.
There is something almost perfect about The Cry of the Owl—my first by Patricia Highsmith (and, I take it, a rather odd place to start). Clearly, Highsmith had a sharp eye for human foibles. She manages to be at once sympathetic and merciless, whimsical and cold, implausible and utterly believable....more
What is great about Hungerstone is what is great about Carmilla, perhaps what is great about all vampire stories—the irresistible tension between fearWhat is great about Hungerstone is what is great about Carmilla, perhaps what is great about all vampire stories—the irresistible tension between fear and desire. At its best, Kat Dunn’s reworking of Carmilla is less an update of Sheridan Le Fenu’s classic for the modern reader than a remarkable heightening of the original’s half-kept promise.
I must admit, even somewhat past the halfway mark, I was feeling mostly underwhelmed. Aside from the narrator, the novel’s characters are one-dimensional. Cold husband. Servile servants. Even Carmilla herself hardly a character. And Clara—Clara, who should mean so much—one lost opportunity after another. But then, this sense that the novel’s people are only half-seen is not entirely ineffective; it contributes to the novel’s claustrophobic air, to a growing sense of dread, isolation, desperation. “I am so furious,” Lenore howls, “at anyone who is not alone.” Then she trips a stranger, sending forth “a stream of beautiful red blood.”
In my case, the novel suffered for being read alongside Nicholas Nickleby, Dunn’s prose dimming in the light of Dickens’ sparkling sentences. (What novel wouldn’t suffer that comparison? But Hungerstone, with its Victorian pretensions, is particularly vulnerable.) And though there are effective moments, Dunn doesn’t always quite pull off the trick, so essential to historical fiction, of dialogue that feels at once of another time and like something someone would really say.
One last complaint, ultimately withdrawn. At first, the subplot about industrialization felt rather obvious; an easy way to create social and political stakes for what is at heart a story personal to the point of selfishness. The equation of bloody industrial accident to bloody supernatural incident felt, as Carmilla herself might say, rather boring. In fact, for a time it seemed that Hungerstone was almost trying to be boring; bending over backwards to provide the straightforward symbolism of the modern feminist novel, complete with elaborate fancies of disordered eating, instagram worthy “you are enough!” affirmation, and rote anti-capitalism straight from the mouths’ of characters taking extravagant pleasure in reaping capitalism’s blessings. In the end, I’m happy to report, the novel utterly fails at being boring. What looked, at first blush, like labored and obvious symbolism utterly refuses to resolve. The novel has a wild heart. It works itself into a frenzy, exhausts itself, works itself up again.
I devoured the last third and finished the book utterly satisfied with the meal....more
A rich and troubling minor masterpiece of a horror novel. “I first came to live with Grandmother about a year ago,” 14-year-old Elizabeth says at the A rich and troubling minor masterpiece of a horror novel. “I first came to live with Grandmother about a year ago,” 14-year-old Elizabeth says at the beginning, “after I killed my parents. I don’t mean to sound callous. Let me explain.”
Elizabeth’s explanation (to paraphrase): my parents were mildly annoying, and I wanted them gone. Pure evil, surely—but Elizabeth the novel is far too good for that. Nothing is pure here. Not childhood, not love, and certainly not evil.
Elizabeth’s voice is unforgettable. The novel is no more about a battle between good and evil than were the 16th-century witchcraft trials from which it draws its mythology. Like those very real trials, it is far more about agency than about evil, far more about dependence and independence, money and power, than about God and the devil.
Elizabeth dances a line between desire and revulsion, innocence and experience, violence and care. Fair warning: among other things, this is a disturbing account of child sexual abuse. But it didn’t feel exploitative, just uncomfortable. Likewise, the novel’s ambivalence about queer desire. No one would confuse this book with an empowering text. But it is not disempowering, either. There is a wild beauty to it, and an earned darkness....more
Anna Biller is one of the great filmmakers of our time. Her first feature, Viva, is hilarious and devastating and vastly underrated. Her follow up, ThAnna Biller is one of the great filmmakers of our time. Her first feature, Viva, is hilarious and devastating and vastly underrated. Her follow up, The Love Witch, is a cult classic that invites repeat viewing—I’ve seen it three or four times at least. So when I heard that her long-promised “Bluebeard” movie was coming out as a novel, I was simultaneously thrilled and disappointed. Thrilled because an Anna Biller novel!! Disappointed because this was a movie I had been waiting on for years.
Biller is not the master of prose that she is of celluloid. She has a tendency to describe her scenes, well, like a filmmaker might, placing everyone very precisely in space and surrounding them with props. At first, this style came off as almost naive or untrained. But once I got used to it, I found it quite effective. This is a very visual novel; a novel attentive on multiple levels to the surfaces of things—to the narratives we impose and consume and the myriad objects (and products) around which they accrete.
The novel is very direct. The symbolism is obvious. The moral is stated and restated. Some readers seem to have taken this for lack of sophistication. But it is not. At least in my reading, what Biller is really interested in is how the narratives and stories we tell somehow both create our reality, and yet, even as they do, utterly fail to explain it. How images and objects—a candelabra, a painting, a pair of underwear, a piece of fruit or ring or photograph—have their own center of gravity, bending our lives as they work on our desire and as our desire calls them into being. And how powerless human beings can be in the face of the objects we surround ourselves with and stories we tell ourselves. How utterly useless it is that we know the ending....more
Gahan Wilson is one of my favorite cartoonists (if you’re not familiar, think something like The Far Side as drawn by Edward Gorey), and the illustratGahan Wilson is one of my favorite cartoonists (if you’re not familiar, think something like The Far Side as drawn by Edward Gorey), and the illustrations were a large part of why I picked this one up. They didn’t disappoint, but the whole book is something special. It’s obvious that Zelazny had a blast writing this, and the fun is infectious.
Edit: Still thinking about this one. It's a good thing I didn't know what the book was about going in—I'll say that. Because on the face of it, faux-Victorian horror pastiche as narrated by a dog named Snuff sounds about as appealing as a quarter cup of white sugar for dessert. Fortunately, by the time I figured out what I was reading, it was too late, I was hooked. There's an inventiveness, an almost gleeful playfulness here, that somehow manages to overwhelm the ever-looming twee....more
Sentence for sentence, Shirley Jackson is one of the great prose stylists in English literature. To my astonishment, Hangsaman is, if anything, a bettSentence for sentence, Shirley Jackson is one of the great prose stylists in English literature. To my astonishment, Hangsaman is, if anything, a better novel than We Have Always Lived in the Castle or The Haunting of Hill House—stranger, more complete in and of itself, if also more difficult and more distressing. The satire is funnier and truer (no wonder the other faculty wives did not like her!), the humor blacker, the horror and trauma of it somehow at once closer and further from the surface. Jackson's uncanny ability to hold reality itself in a state of suspense reaches a sublime peak, from which we can only look down in giggling horror at the tiny town arrayed beneath us, at the university with its carefully manicured lawns; from which peak we might, like Natalie Waite "pick up one of the houses, any one, and, holding it gently in one hand, pull it carefully apart … with great delicacy taking the pieces of it off one after another: first the door and then, dislodging the slight nails with care, the right front corner of the house, board by board … then the stairs, step by step, and all this while the mannikins inside run screaming from each section of the house to a higher and more concealed room, crushing one another and stumbling and pulling frantically."...more
To my utter surprise, the 1970 Hammer Horror "classic" The Vampire Lovers—the primary innovation of which was to free the nipple, whereas vampire moviTo my utter surprise, the 1970 Hammer Horror "classic" The Vampire Lovers—the primary innovation of which was to free the nipple, whereas vampire movies to that point tended to work strictly with the top half of the breast—turns out to be, in fact, a highly faithful adaptation of Carmilla. This surprising instance of literary fidelity within the canon of 1970s vampire B-movies meant that I knew exactly what was coming at near every turn of Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella—although I suspect that even a careless reader, going in blind, will have the book figured out nearly as quickly.
All in all, this was a disappointment, although it has its pleasures, especially in the scenes Laura and Carmilla spend together. As a landmark in the vampire genre, Carmilla is quick and stylish enough to be worth an October evening. As an examination of queerness, however, I would say the novella is primarily of academic interest, if that....more
Five stars because at worst the author achieved exactly what they were aiming for and at best they achieved considerably more. But this is a brutal noFive stars because at worst the author achieved exactly what they were aiming for and at best they achieved considerably more. But this is a brutal novel and I regret reading it. I found too late that what I wanted from a haunted house story this fall was the bite of fear accompanied by a pleasant warmth. There is nothing warm here. (view spoiler)[Not even the happy ending that isn’t. (hide spoiler)]
It is a great political novel because it is saying something about fascism and identity that couldn't have been said in any other form; something that cannot be summarized or explained. This could never have been an essay. It had to be a novel. The more you think about it, the more any obvious contemporary or straightforwardly liberatory interpretation seems to recede over a swiftly tilting horizon....more
This is an intoxicating and horrific book. At the heart of it all is Mary Katherine's voice—playful and violent, confident and defensive, observant anThis is an intoxicating and horrific book. At the heart of it all is Mary Katherine's voice—playful and violent, confident and defensive, observant and disconnected, honest and endlessly unreliable. I was enticed into sympathizing with her, if not quite into loving her; I could not help but see her enemies as my enemies, no matter how clear it became that she herself was the violent heart of her own brutal little world. And that ease with which Mary Katherine and I became intimate, despite everything, is the magnetic heart not only of the experience of reading the book, but also of the story, itself—for the reader is not the only one who is enticed into lingering in Marykat's world. I did not love this book. I do not think I will want to read it again. Anyway, I suspect that no amount of re-reading could unravel its knots. But there is no question in my mind that it is a small masterpiece, and about as close—as intimate—to evil as I have any desire to bring myself in fiction....more
This book crept under my skin. The reason I found it so scary, I think (and a reason, perhaps, that some readers seem to find the book much scarier thThis book crept under my skin. The reason I found it so scary, I think (and a reason, perhaps, that some readers seem to find the book much scarier than others do), was that I related to it. And this wasn't only the straightforward way of relating to a book where bad things happen, in which you see yourself reflected in a character, and then experience said bad things vicariously through them. Reading Hill House, I found myself relating to the substance of the horror itself. I related to the ways in which the characters became entangled with their environment; the ways the mood and feeling of a place can have such an overwhelming effect on a person—and vice versa. And I related to Eleanor. Eleanor is a deeply unreliable narrator, with whom I have, on the surface, next to nothing in common. And yet what I related to in her was not just her very fundamental fear of being alone (or the related, more concrete fear of feeling left out). It was also her very unreliability as a narrator of her own life. We are all unreliable narrators, after all, fundamentally unable to see the world as it is, outside of the context of our own fears and desires. I felt for Eleanor and I related to Eleanor and I loved Eleanor, and as Hill House worked its horrors, I was there right alongside her. I was scared. I was, dare I say, complicit.
Things I did not expect, upon first picking up The Haunting of Hill House: To love this book. To be actually scared by this book. That it would be funny (it is very). That it would be queer (also very). I had not an inkling, going in, that queer sexuality was a key theme of this novel. I guess I can see why the queer women of the world are not necessarily racing to incorporate this into their canon. But I would add 'compelling exploration of queer desire' to the ridiculous list of things this strange little book does unaccountably well. I will be reading this one again....more
On the surface, a charming 19th-century ghost story, more melancholy than scary, wonderfully atmospheric, if not quite rising to the level of creepy. On the surface, a charming 19th-century ghost story, more melancholy than scary, wonderfully atmospheric, if not quite rising to the level of creepy. Just below that surface, a study of bitterly personal small-town politics and the monsters unleashed by local infrastructure development. (Whatever prior experience you may or may not have with dikes or water management, I suspect that if you’re at all familiar with the workings of a local government or school board, you may find something uncomfortably familiar here.) Still closer to the heart of the novella lies a heartwarming, somewhat discomfiting family story—a husband and wife we might nowadays call neurodivergent, their intellectually disabled daughter, and how their love for each other ballasts them in a stormy world—ballasts them, but cannot save them. This story—a love story, of a kind—is juxtaposed, within a kind of moral force field, against a story of individual ambition and internal fortitude on the one hand (what it can accomplish, how it can embitter); and on the other, against the boundless, almost irrational power of nature and of nature’s God....more
I don't read much horror and suspense, for no other reason than that the things I do read take up more space in my life than I really have to give as I don't read much horror and suspense, for no other reason than that the things I do read take up more space in my life than I really have to give as it is. But this fall, back in the Northeast after a year of Southern-California seasonlessness, I found myself craving pumpkin bread and hot cider and, naturally, spooky stories, like never before. Enter a whole bunch of Shirley Jackson, and Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, which I pulled on a whim from a Little Free Library in Brooklyn a few years ago, and which has been waiting patiently near the bottom of a tottering pile of books ever since. These stories hit the spot, each story a new excursion into an endlessly familiar and unfamiliar time (postwar America, rapidly supplanting the pioneer days as the ur-nostalgia of American memory), and an equally familiar and unfamiliar genre (one can't exactly have grown up in America and avoided the crime story, and yet I find that its conventions are only half-familiar). Most of the stories are a little too breezy to lodge into the subconscious very deeply, and yet each one offers its own little ball of pleasure and horror. Like the best old movies, age has only deepened these stories' delights, lending them an elegiac edge in pleasing contrast to their tight plots and twisty endings. And all of this means that when a story does twist the knife into one of our culture's many tender spots around gendered violence and domestic labor, the impact is only heightened. Organizing the stories by the age of the protagonist was a master-stroke. Five stars because it delivers precisely what it promises with style....more
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