sophia_sol | Entries tagged with book theme: gothic

I read this as Frankenstein Weekly, a book club email list that was set up after the popularity of Dracula Daily last year. I'm glad, because I’ve been meaning to read this book for years but never got round to it, and having it show up in my inbox by chapter was very convenient.

And certainly the book is an interesting read. But one I enjoyed more as a historical artifact than as a novel to my tastes, honestly.

I genuinely enjoyed the part from the Creature’s pov; he was sympathetic, even if he made bad choices in the end. But the vast majority of the narrative is from Frankenstein's pov and I find him just irritating tbh. He has no drive to take responsibility for his actions ever, and not even in an interesting way! And yet Walton is entirely admiring of Frankenstein, and Frankenstein seems to be presented to the reader as a guy you’re supposed to sympathize with.

BUT. Despite all the pro-Frankenstein content, the Creature gets the last word in the book, in the end! I love that.

It strikes me that in the context this book was written, when sff didn’t exist as a genre yet, expecting the reader to sympathize with a monstrous and unnatural being was likely a big ask, and so what the book is doing is trying to show that even when people with many admirable virtues hate a being they see as a monster, that monster can still have virtues of its own and a reasonable perspective worth listening to, and shouldn’t be shunned without question. Which, hey, a moral that continues to be relevant!

I read this book on the sales pitch that it's a Jane Eyre retelling featuring Jane/Bertha, which like, obviously I was all over that! In practice, although there are many things about this book that are delightful, there are aspects that make it not quiiiiiite all hang together as a coherent narrative to me, but it's still definitely worth the read..

( this will require spoilers to discuss )

This book has been on my mind for a while to give a try to, since

genarti said she thought I might enjoy it, and then Dracula Daily happened to tumblr and I signed up for it. And then a few days into it I was like "actually I don't like the slow route, I need to read this all at once" so then I did! A fascinating experience. I liked it a lot more than Carmilla, which I read relatively recently and found enormously boring. Dracula has more interest in developing characters, and in having a plot, and so forth, so despite Dracula being far longer, I found it the easier read of the two. (I'm still sad about Carmilla not being as appealing to me as I wanted it to be!)

Dracula is one of those books that's had a perhaps outsized impact on popular culture. A lot of vampire tropes started here! But living in a culture having been shaped by Dracula, it's amazing to see in the original how very long it takes to get to the vampire reveal, since vampires weren't a known staple of the supernatural genre. You'd never hold off the "he's a vampire" so long in a modern vampire book!

Due to the pop culture pervasiveness, one thinks one knows what to expect from the book even before having read it. And....one would be wrong. Or at least I was! I've never actually directly consumed any Dracula adaptations before, and it turns out I knew basically nothing about any of the plot or the characters.

( Read more... )

This is, famously, one of the earliest works of vampire fiction, and one with strong f/f overtones. The ur literature of predatory lesbian vampires! It's a short work, novella-length, and a quick read. And, unfortunately, I found it kinda boring.

The thing is, the main draw this work uses to compel the reader forward is the ~mystery~ of what's going on. Characters are flat, plot relatively nonexistent, and not much success in creating a tone of creepiness. And I already know the answer to the mystery, so there's not much else!

I was also disappointed in the lesbian aspect. Yes, Carmilla's very obviously into Laura, and Laura into her, but from the very beginning and then throughout, Laura finds Carmilla off-putting as well as attractive. I personally think it would have been more interesting if Laura had just been 100% into Carmilla; it would provide more space for her to have complicated emotions after she discovers the truth about Carmilla, instead of being able to console herself that she knew all along that something was wrong.

Also it's definitely doing a "lesbian desire is dangerous and wrong" thing, which like, unsurprising for its era but I was still hoping it would be able to subvert that a LITTLE somehow!

But ALSO it's doing all this from the plausibly deniable distance of "oh this is what intense romantic friendships are like, that's a perfectly normal thing for girls to do" so you don't get like, any kind of acknowledgement of what's going on.

Are all of these layers of historical interest? Absolutely! But that was about the only level on which I cared about this stuff, because the relationship as portrayed just didn't interest me.

On another note: the book makes ZERO effort to explain the older woman who travels with Carmilla to help ingratiate her with her prey! I do actually want to know what was up with her! Tell me more!

This book probably does hold more interest for people who unlike me are actually into vampire stories, as it gives an introduction to the earliest forms of the genre. (Caitlin Doughty of Ask A Mortician apparently loves it, which is on brand for her!) But me, I wasn't particularly drawn in by the experience. Oh well, at least it's short enough that it didn't take me much time!

My! Cousin! Rachel! My gosh what a BOOK. Recommended to me by

lirazel in the comments to my post on Rebecca, for which I'm very grateful! I'd never even heard of this one before.

Let me start with what's obviously the most important thing, which is that du Maurier has learned about more birds in the years since she wrote Rebecca :P Nicely done, du Maurier, keep up the good work!

Okay but actually. Brace yourself for too many words, because I have a LOT to say about this book.

So, as with Rebecca, this is a book involving an unreliable narrator, an old estate by the sea that looms large in the lives of the lead characters, unhealthy relationships, and mysterious threats. Well: it's a gothic, of course it does! Gothics might not be a genre I gravitate to, but apparently when they're well done I'm THERE because both du Mauriers I've read now have been highly worthwhile experiences. Maybe du Maurier is just magic or something.

My Cousin Rachel's narrator-protagonist is Philip, a rich young man who has been raised by his much older cousin Ambrose in a context with basically zero women around, because Ambrose is a raging misogynist. And everyone's always talking about how much Philip is like Ambrose!

Anyway Ambrose fucks off to Italy for health reasons, and while there he meets a woman (the titular Rachel), is captivated by her, marries her, sends some paranoid letters home to Philip, and then dies of what the doctors diagnose as a brain tumour.

Philip, understandably given his background, is VERY SUSPICIOUS of Rachel and hates her immediately -- until Rachel appears in person in his life, and the reality of what she's like changes his tune completely. She's small and beautiful and kind and gentle! Obviously he was wrong to suspect her of anything!

Rachel is a fascinating figure, for certain, and there's much that's mysterious about her. She doesn't say much about her past, but what little you hear, it's clear she's been through a lot of trauma, and is doing her best to live her life and move on from it but is still deeply affected by it.

( spoiler time! extensively so! )

Rebecca is a justifiably famous book! Extremely compelling, very more-ish, and with all sorts of interesting complexity going on.

Going into this book for the first time, I actually already knew pretty much what to expect, because I'm familiar with a musical version of Rebecca. Not that I've ever watched the musical! But there's a euro musical about her, and there's a demo album translating that musical into english -- with, and this is key, bits of narration between the songs telling the listener what's happening. So I already knew all the major emotional beats, the characters, and what to expect out of the plot. Because I've listened to that demo a LOT.

And actually the most surprising thing about reading the book was how unsurprising it was? I expected the musical to have taken more liberties with the text! But in fact it hews remarkably close.

The two things the musical does differently:
( both are spoilers I think )

Something that gets lost in the transition to musical from novel is the tenor of the protagonist's narration. She is constantly getting carried away with her imaginings of the future or the past or someone else's internal life, to the degree that she seems almost to live more in her imagined version of the world than in reality. I loved this, and how much it added to both a) the constant feeling of foreboding in the novel, and b) the sense of how young and naive and powerless she is.

She's a fascinating character to see through the eyes of; you're encouraged, as the reader, to get drawn into her point of view, to be on her side, to want what she wants, because she seems like just about the only non-sinister thing in the entire book! (well okay, Mrs Van Hopper doesn't seem sinister, just banal and unpleasant)

( more spoilers )

So yes it turns out the protagonist is a horrible person too, just like most other people in the book, and it's great. And you still care about her!

The other important thing in the book, beyond the protagonist and her narrative perspective on things, is Rebecca and Mrs Danvers being evil lesbians. Because they ARE and it's DELICIOUS.

Actually this is something thing that I think the musical does even better than the book, though the book also does a great job. But musicals are MADE for letting someone take the stage in proper dramatic-evil-lesbian fashion, and Mrs Danvers DELIVERS. Mrs Danvers is all "did u kno Rebecca is a beautiful immortal with magic powers who scorns men, and she loves me very much and would never leave me, and I WILL use this information to bully you to death via song." Amazing.

The song that singlehandedly got me interested in Rebecca back in the day, though, was the Hungarian version of Maxim's confession song, because the actor playing Maxim is just great. (Bereczki Zoltán! He's also great as Mercutio in Rómeó és Júlia, among other things.) There used to be a copy of it on youtube with English subtitles, but at this point unsubtitled Hungarian is your only option, if you want to watch the song.

And if you want to listen to the whole English demo version.......I don't know where to find it online anymore, but uh, I'd be willing to share!!

Besides Evil Lesbians, the other thing I think the musical does better than the book is feeling like it has an ending. The ending of the book is REALLY abrupt. The ability of a musical to do a reprise of a song from the beginning of the story means that it can end in the same place as the book but deliberately point you to think about how the ending ties into the beginning thematically, whereas the book just left me feeling adrift.

Anyway the last thing I have to say about this book is that since becoming interested in birding I have been paying entirely too much attention to what birds authors do and don't mention in their books, and this book has just enough birds to know that du Maurier knows birds exist, but few enough birds that I doubt du Maurier knows anything at all about birds. (There are: blackbirds singing in a flowered valley, one mention of an imagined owl at a dramatic moment, occasional pigeons, and lots and lots of gulls. Did you know gulls are the ONLY kind of bird you get by the sea.)

(the other book that annoyed me recently bird-wise is a reread of The Raven Tower, which contains: ravens and gulls. Did you know gulls are the only kind of bird you get by the sea!!)