“To sleep on? Or to wake? This was the question facing me. To sleep, or to wake and face the reckoning, to find out what had been lost.” Although by no means an incompetent debut Before the Ruins does not offer a particularly innovative take on this subgenre (usually we have big houses, a group […]
More“There is no time in our lives when we are so conspicuously without mercy as in adolescence.” I don’t think I would ever picked up this ‘obscure’ and forgotten novel if it hadn’t been for the ‘crime fiction’ module I took during my second year of uni. Thanks to that module, which was in every […]
More“I mean, why should I figure I’m so special, the world is going to end while I’m around?” In The Sundial, perhaps Shirley Jackson’s most comical novel, twelve rather disagreeable individuals are cooped together in a mansion waiting for the end of the world. “The house would be guarded during the night of destruction and […]
MoreWhodunnits, Agatha Christie, mysteries, and puzzles are all favourites of mine…so I was pretty excited to read The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle as it promised to combine all of these things together. “I suddenly have the sense of taking part in a play in which everybody knows their lines but me.” With a […]
More“Who blames me? Many, no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.” Jane Eyre is not only considered a classic (if not the classic) in feminist literature, but an exemplary piece of Romantic Gothic literature. Personally, I view […]
MoreRebecca is a work of Gothic suspense that is told in a mesmerising prose and makes for an enthralling and evocative read. “Colour and scent and sound, rain and the lapping of water, even the mists of autumn and the smell of the flood tide, these are memories of Manderley that will not be denied.” […]
MoreMy rating: ★★★★✰ 4.5 stars “I had the children. They caught on fire. I had to keep them from catching on fire.” As soon as I read Kevin Wilson’s dedication (“for Ann Patchett”) I had a feeling that I was in for a treat (and I was right). There was something about Wilson’s surrealism that […]
More“Bow all your heads to our adored Mary Katherine.” In recent years Shirley Jackson has experienced a kind of renascence. Perhaps because of Netflix’s adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House or possibly thanks to contemporary authors (such as Donna Tartt, Neil Gaiman, and Stephen King) who have credited Jackson as their inspiration, enhancing her […]
More“Who is there who has not felt a sudden startled pang at reliving an old experience, or feeling an old emotion?” Curtain bids a bittersweet farewell to the one and only Hercule Poirot. While I know that by this point Agatha Christie feelings towards him were less than amicable, her novel doesn’t convey its creators […]
More“They can’t turn me out or shut me out or laugh at me or hide from me; I won’t go, and Hill House belongs to me.” The first time I read The Haunting of Hill House I felt confused and vaguely underwhelmed. Having loved We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I was expecting a […]
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