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Showing posts with label gothic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gothic. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Foxlowe by Eleanor Wasserberg

This atmospheric, creepy novel uses a superb narrative technique. The story is told through the eyes of Green, a young girl who has grown up in an artists commune at Foxlowe.

S
he has no parents and all is shared equally in the family in a pile called the Jumble.  Green thinks, however,  she belongs to Freya Marsh. Freya, the de facto leader, is an affectionate tormentor who loves and tortures Green.

The family's actions are compared to a shoal of fish; none of them wants to be "edged" or ostracized. Green feels being "Edged" is worst than taking the Spike Walk--a horrid punishment that Freya invented.

Though the family think they have retreated into safety, real danger lurks through the halls of the ancestral home. Freya takes a baby away from her mother. The family seems unable to sense the growing moral uncertainty. 

Instead of checking her authority, the family goes along with whatever Freya decides. Thus, when Freya arrives with an infant, the family never questions her origins. They simply welcomes the infant as a new family member. Curiously, Green names the infant Blue.

In order to feel safe from the outside world, the family performs numerous rituals. During the Winter Solstice  they perform the Scattering--a line of salt is poured around the house to protect the house from outsiders. Green, in a fit of jealous, puts the infant outside the salt line, an action that will have serious repercussions . 

Green, Blue, and Toby grow close in the years that follow. The grown believe that they have provided the children with the most magical childhood. They don't go to school and are not subjected to society's rules.

The ungrown are not given access to the most basic things e.g. mirrors and cannot leave the grounds or talk to strangers. Green in never given a chance to leave Foxlowe until a tragedy occurs.

Psychologically damaged, Green may never be able to integrate into society.  One of the growns who became a Leaver is determined to give her a chance. Can he help her or will he only make things worst? 

Green is a fascinating yet unreliable narrator in this novel that is both complex and frightening.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Evil Eye: Four Novellas of Love Gone Wrong by Joyce Carol Oates

The opening novella, "Evil Eye," is a powerful story about a woman who could be on the verge of losing her mind. In a fit of despair, she has married an older man who crushes what is left of her spirit. One of the man's ex-wives tries to warn her to no avail.


The best novella is "So Near Anytime Always." Not only is this a great title, but it perfectly captures what Oates does so well. A highly-vulnerable girl wrongly believes a predator loves her.

Desmond appears charming at first. He is the dapper "boyfriend" that she has always dreamed about. Lizbeth believes a boyfriend as a "passport" to a new country.

Readers, however, can sense something wrong from the beginning. This is how Lizbeth meets Desmond: she looks up from her homework to see a boy staring intensely at her. Whether she realized it or not, he stalks her from that moment onward.

He appears well-educated, rich, and polite but becomes increasingly controlling. Desmond's true character quickly reveals itself after a disastrous violin lesson.  

"The Execution" is less satisfying because the narrator, Bart, is so unlikeable.  In chilling details, "The Execution" depicts an entitled college-aged kid who decides to murder his parents. Nothing unfolds as he plans.

The last novella, "The Flatbed," captures the feelings of a repressed woman. She suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a relative. Perhaps no other author captures the victim's viewpoint as well as Oates. 

Like all the novellas in this collection, "The Flatbed" ends on just the right ironic note. Has her fiance' revenge upon her perpetrator freed Cecilia from her damaging past? Or has she just traded one secret for another?

Monday, December 16, 2013

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Imagine a ruined house, an inheritance, a mysterious set of feral twins, a topiary garden, a murder, a ghost--these are just some of the Gothic elements that permeate The Thirteenth Tale.
 
Vida Winter, a successful novelist, contacts the bookish narrator, Margaret Lea, because she has one more tale to tell--the titular 13th tale. For years she has created falsehoods rather than reveal her past. She tell Margaret Lea she intends to tell the truth, at last, before the "wolf" catches her.

The Thirteenth Tale is a Gothic novel that explores how secrets and dark obsessions can destroy a family. More than that, however, it playfully looks at the slippery notion of self-hood--the small and cataclysmic changes that affect us and shake our identity.

If the novel is about abandonment--there's more than one abandoned child; it is, joyfully, also about reclaiming your family and your place in the world. 

Fans of this novel might enjoy seeing BBC a mini-series adaptation starring Olivia Holman and Lynn Redgrave. Setterfield's latest novel is Bellman and Black: a Ghost Story.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The Doll: The Lost Short Stories by Daphne du Maurier

The Doll: The Lost Short Stories by Daphne du Maurier

Recently, I came across this series of short stories published by HarperCollins. These stories have appeared only once in publication in mostly British literary magazines.
"The Doll" is a strange story about a woman who keeps a life-sized doll in a hidden room in her apartment in London. She's a mysterious woman and in some ways a precursor to DuMaurier's more famous Rebecca. The story falls flat, though, by contemporary standards. The woman in the story seems to be doing something illicit with the doll, named Julio, and this causes the narrator, who loves her, to go mad.

Though this is the title story the first story in the collection, "East Wind" is much more interesting. The contamination of a protected culture, the inhabitants of St. Hilda, and the resulting madness are the themes of this wonderful story. In isolation the inhabitants are purportedly happy. The East wind, however, brings a ship full of sailors of unknown origin who introduce the islanders to the world beyond the island. They bring music and drink and, most importantly, desire. DuMaurier describes the destruction that desire can bring to a repressed or isolated group.

"Piccadilly" is a dramatic monologue, a narrative technique rarely used among short story writers, but one that Du Maurier uses well. Du Maurier's affiliation with drama and theater is clearly evident in this story.

The antagonist of "Tame Cat" is possibly a thinly disguised reference to J.M. Barrie whom DuMaurier knew well. For more information on the J.M. Barrie connection, see my post on Piers Dudgeon's Neverland.

"Week-End" is a chronicle of the demise of one couple's love. Like a one-act play, we hear the intimate dialogue, the small bickerings, and witness the final dissolution.

Though "East Wind" is the most accomplished story, "Happy Valley" comes in at a close second. A woman has a strange ability to see her future even if she is unable to fully remember or change it.

Review: Chantal

Friday, August 5, 2011

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.


Jacob Portman is a well-to-do teen who is traumatized when he witnesses his grandfather die. Jacob is convinced his grandfather's dying words are portents rather than an old man's ramblings or dementia.

Most intriguing of all, however, are the bizarre photographs of apparently real people that illustrate the book. Ransom Riggs, a film maker who also writes photo essays for magazines, inserts photographs of people doing unusal things e.g. levitating in the air or creating balls of fire.

The photographs become part of the fictional world Riggs creates in Miss Peregrine's School for Peculiar Children. Jacob assumes the photographs his grandfather shows him are fake, as most people would. He concludes that his Grandfather's stories of a war-time escape and a home for peculiar children are fairy tales.

After watching his Grandfather die, however, Jacob begins having nightmares and even believes that he can see monsters. Are his Grandfather's stories true? Jacob travels to Wales with his father to find out and that is only the beginning of his adventures.

Ransom Rigg's first novel is a gothic coming-of-age like no other. The otherwordly setting--a dilapidated house on an isolated Welsh island, time loops, and a school for mysterious students--will immediately capture a reader's interest. Marketed for young adults, this novel also will also appeal to adults who are intrigued by supernatural mysteries.

Review by Chantal Walvoord

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