Gothic Literature Book Reviews

The Aspern Papers by Henry James, first published in 1888 in the Atlantic Monthly. This is an unsettling novella. There are no murders or supernatural events, but the reader is left with the feeling that there could be.  There are three main characters, or four if you count Venice, where the story is set. The city, with its winding canals, palatial houses, gondolas and squares, adds a brooding presence, despite the sunshine and gaiety.  Windows looking out over canals seem to be watching. The narrator is an unnamed American who has come to Venice to search for private papers and letters written by the now dead American poet Jeffrey Aspern. The narrator holds Aspern almost as a god, comparing his poetry to that of Shakespeare, and is obsessed with obtaining the hitherto unseen papers. These papers belong to Juliana Bordereau, a lover of Aspern in her youth. She is now a very old lady, seemingly over a hundred years old. She lives in a dilapidated, palatial mansion in Venice ...

                                           The Unburied  by Charles Palliser, first published in 1999 by Phoenix House (Orion Publishing Group) Although The Unburied is shorter and does not have the same edge as The Quincunx, it is well worth reading if you enjoy traditional Gothic with mystery and complexity. There are three stories running though the book, all set in Thurchester, a cathedral town. The main story is set around Christmas, 1881. Dr Edward Courtine, a university academic, arrives in the town at the request of an old friend, a teacher in Thurchester, whom he hasn't seen for over twenty years. He is naturally suspicious of an invitation after so long, but he has his own reason for travelling to Thurchester. Christmas is usually a time of good cheer, but almost immediately Courtine hears of a murder in the cathedral in the seventeenth century, so far unexplained...

Mexican Gothic by Silva Moreno-Garcia, first published in 2020 by Jo Fletcher Books. This is a traditional Gothic book, with a large twist of Mexican history and culture. It is set in the 1950s and the main character, Noemí is a fun-loving girl. She likes to party, but she also has a good brain in her head and is studying anthropology. The story begins when she is called, prematurely, from a fancy dress party in Mexico City by her father. He has received a disturbing letter from his niece, Catalina, who believes her new husband is trying to poison her. He wants Noemí to investigate, so she sets off to High Place, a remote English-style mansion on a hill, near a small village. The family there are not happy to see her, telling her Catalina is ill, but the family doctor is treating her.  Catalina's husband,Virgil, fits the mould of a Gothic villain; his cousin, Florence, could put the strictest Mother Superior to shame; and Virgil's repulsive father, Howard, is evil incarnate. Th...

First published in 1807 by Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, under the pseudonym Dennis Jasper Murphy. Charles Maturin was an Anglo-Irish clergyman, but this didn't prevent him from taking Gothic writing seriously. His books reveal a dark, sometimes tortured imagination. Perhaps his best known novel is Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), but here we will examine Fatal Revenge. The book was written when Maturin was a relatively young man, in his mid twenties, and doesn't have the same maturity as Melmoth, but the story is more straight forward.  The action takes place, mainly, around Naples in the latter part of the seventeenth century and tells the story of the Montorios, a family with more than their fair share of dark secrets. The main characters are the brothers, Ippolito and Annibal di Montorio. Ippolito, the elder brother, lives in his own residence in Naples. His younger brother lives with his father and younger siblings in the castle of Muralto. The brothers are different in natu...

                    Wieland  by Charles Brockden Brown was first published in 1798, by Hocquet Caritat, New York. It is one of the earliest American novels, following the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and   certainly one of the earliest American Gothic novels.   Brockden Brown wanted to move away from  the European tradition of ruined castles, declining nobility and superstition, but his work still contains many of  the accepted Gothic tropes: isolation, mental illness, religious fervor, twisted genius and doomed  love. Brown uses scientific explanations to explain preternatural abilities. The style may not be to everyone's taste. It is verbose, verging on ponderous, which get in the way of the story, and some of the actions of the main characters seem not only improbable, but ludicrous. However, we can allow some  artistic license.            ...

 Welcome to this Gothic book review blog. For the first blog I have chosen O Caledonia  by Elspeth Barker. This book was first published in 1991 by Hamish Hamilton Publishers. This is a novella, runing to approx 150 pages, which makes it easy to read in one or two sittings. The story is set in the 1940s and 50s in Scotland, partly in Edinburgh and partly in the fictional Auchnasaugh Castle near Aberdeen. The title is taken from lines in The Lay of the Last Minstrel by Walter Scott:                                    O Caledonia! stern and wild,                                    Meet nurse for a poetic child. The poetic child is Janet, and the story opens when she is sixteen, or rather, when she was sixteen, because she is dead, murdered, and lying at the bottom of the s...