The Little Stranger

by Sarah Waters

A haunted house story set in England in the years just after WWII, The Little Stranger’s creepiness comes not just from the decaying mansion and its inhabitants, living and otherwise, but also from the claustrophobically rigid habits of thought of its extremely unreliable narrator.

The house is Hundreds Hall, a grand Georgian mansion now left to rot in the hands of the Ayres family: a bitter, disabled war veteran; his plain, sturdy, self-effacing sister; and their doddering, once-elegant widowed mother. Our protagonist, Dr. Faraday, is a country doctor who has pulled himself up by his bootstraps from working-class roots. In a supremely British way he is very conscious of this, and very white, and very male.

Ms. Waters does a terrific job creating a window into the mind of a man who has no idea how blinkered he is, or how condescending. He’s such a man of his place and time, the book almost reads as if it had been written by a man of that period. This is, to me, what makes it interesting: the character study of Dr. Faraday.

In his mind, there’s a natural order to things that it would never occur to him to question. People of the lower classes and women of all classes either function properly and stay in their places, in which case he can safely disregard them; or they don’t, in which case he can chasten them or doctor them or send them off to the appropriate institution.

Meanwhile, the Ayres family is terribly isolated. The local folks see them as wealthy and powerful, which of course they once were at one point, and therefore too snobbish to rub elbows with the hoi polloi. But it has been decades since the estate could support itself and in fact its inhabitants are reduced to selling it off, bit by bit, just to keep food in the pantry and gasoline in the generator.

The Ayreses, being both proud of their heritage and ashamed of their current financial state, feel they have to keep to themselves. Until Dr. Faraday appears on the scene and slowly insinuates himself into the household. Around the same time, things at The Hundreds start going weirdly amiss, and naturally the good doctor won’t entertain any supernatural explanations. Hijinks ensue and the plot thickens, with the assistance of everybody’s God-given prejudices.

Verdict: read it if you love a good haunted house story, or if you enjoy a well-written period piece whose characters’ psychology is true to their time and place, or if you just want to read the book first so you can sneer at the movie. A thoroughly enjoyable read.

Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite

read by Chris Patton

I so wanted to get into this book. This was my second time through it, my first having been in the early-to-mid Aughts after a friend who is a horror fan (and now a horror writer—hi, Ben!) loaned it to me. Actually, he first loaned me another book of hers, Drawing Blood, and although I’m not generally a tremendous horror fan myself, I loved it. I remember not loving this one quite as much, but still, I got into it. It was a vampire book from, in part, the point of view of the vampires, after all; and it took place, in part, in New Orleans. I’m a complete sucker for all of that.

Not so much this time, though. Drawing Blood stands the test of time by being charmingly time-capsule-like. Lost Souls, though, fails the same test by charmlessly and blatantly pandering to the sensibilities of the horror-goth kids of the 90s, mindlessly repeating Anne Rice-esque tropes while splattering gratuitous gore everywhere. Sad to say, I didn’t even make it all the way through this time around.

It starts sometime in the late 70s or very early 80s. A very old vampire named Christian runs a bar in the French Quarter of New Orleans and notices a young girl spending a lot of time there. She believes there are vampires and is hoping to meet some there, in hopes of becoming one herself—though why she should believe this and why she should suspect they hang out at this bar is never explained. She’s more right than she knows, but our barkeep never reveals himself to her. And she’s wrong about one critical thing: in this reality, vampires are born, not made. So even if she does find the beings she seeks, it won’t do her any good.

In fact she does end up meeting some, and it does her much worse than “not any good.” Three old vampire friends of Christian’s roll into town for a visit and end up partying with the girl and impregnating her before taking off for the next chapter of their monotonously rollicking life on the road. After that Christian takes her in, giving her work at the bar and letting her live with him--but never bothering to explain that all vampire pregnancies end in the death of the mother, as the infant invariably eats its way out.

This takes place, and Christian disposes of the body very dispassionately and then drives up north and leaves the infant on a random doorstep with a note pinned to it. In the note he says that the baby’s name is Nothing and that he’ll bring luck to those who raise him.

So that’s all setup. Nothing grows up to be a teenaged psychopath—actually all the vampires pretty much act like teenaged psychopaths, aside from Christian, who acts like a tired old psychopath—and runs away from home and toward an inevitable encounter with his vampire dad and cohort, and also with the two main human characters.

These are Ghost and Steve. They are two young men from a small rural town called Missing Mile, North Carolina, which is also where much of Drawing Blood takes place. Ghost is a spooky kid who has visions. His best friend, roommate, and bandmate is Steve, a self-absorbed rapist. Both are bisexual—seemingly everyone in this book is bisexual—but they don’t appear to be lovers, just very close friends.  Their band, Lost Souls, gives the book its name and provides the plot device that brings the two of them and all the vampires and Steve’s ex-girlfriend and rape victim, Ann, onto a collision course.

Nothing and his father, Zillah, become lovers and then discover their relationship—which delights them both and cements their union, with Zillah becoming fixatedly possessive and Nothing becoming fixatedly dependent. Zillah impregnates Ann and takes off for New Orleans. Ann becomes fixated on Zillah and decides to follow him there, and Ghost decides to follow her and try to save her. This was the point at which I stopped caring about what happened to any of these crazy and painfully improbably people and stopped reading.

If this is the sort of book you like, you’ll really like this book. A lot of people do.

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft

Narrated by Jim Roberts

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is easily Lovecraft’s most ripping yarn, and a work of high fantasy, not horror. Well, there is an element of horror; eldritch beings do gibber and bubble and meep in inimitably Lovecraftian fashion throughout the story. But at its heart it’s definitely a fantasy story, if one with madness at its core.

The hero, Randolph Carter, dreams of a heartbreakingly beautiful city three times and never again. This dream affects him so deeply that he goes on a quest to beseech the gods’ help in finding it again—never mind that those self-same gods are probably the ones who decided they didn’t want him dreaming about it anymore. Along the way he encounters both help and hindrance in many forms, is captured and escapes, forms alliances, and generally exhibits the manly, chiseled-jawline sort of equanimity, resourcefulness, and determination we expect in a fantasy hero from the first half of the 20th century. Think of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter, or Flash Gordon.

The central conceit of this book, and of all the stories of Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle, is that we actually go somewhere, to a shared reality, an objective plane of existence, when we’re dreaming. (Well, not entirely objective; it looks a little different to each of us.) There’s a geography to it; there are denizens who are actual people, not just figments of our dreaming imaginations; and there are physics and natural laws, though different ones from those we’re subject to in the waking world. Our old and much-altered friend Richard Pickman is there, and ships that sail to the moon. Mountains walk (not in a good way), and cats talk.

Experienced dreamers—skilled dreamers—“old dreamers,” as Lovecraft calls them—are able to affect the reality around them, to a greater or lesser extent, in the Dreamlands. One truly old dreamer in the story was able to create an entire city, and retire there to rule over it after he died on the mortal plane. Ghouls—those rubbery, doglike creatures who inhabit Earthly cemeteries for reasons best not dwelt upon--also nibble at the edges of the Dreamlands.

Expect Lovecraftian language. Things are verdant and wholesome and fair, or else chthonic and cryptical and cyclopean. Bad guys are squat and swarthy and slant-eyed, and black men (always men, we never see any women) exist purely to be enslaved or worse. (Apparently their life in the dreamlands isn’t any better than their reality—hell of a raw deal, that.)

In between the racism and the gibbering horrors, though, it’s a beautiful place, and Lovecraft describes it to within an inch of its life, never failing to modify a noun or verb if he can possibly help it and never using just one adjective when two will fit. Here’s a fair sample:

“Down through this verdant land Carter walked at evening, and saw twilight float up from the river to the marvelous golden spires of Thran. And just at the hour of dusk he came to the southern gate, and was stopped by a red-robed sentry till he had told three dreams beyond belief, and proved himself a dreamer worthy to walk up Thran's steep mysterious streets and linger in the bazaars where the wares of the ornate galleons were sold. Then into that incredible city he walked; through a wall so thick that the gate was a tunnel, and thereafter amidst curved and undulant ways winding deep and narrow between the heavenward towers. Lights shone through grated and balconied windows, and the sound of lutes and pipes stole timid from inner courts where marble fountains bubbled. Carter knew his way, and edged down through darker streets to the river, where at an old sea tavern he found the captains and seamen he had known in myriad other dreams. There he bought his passage to Celephais on a great green galleon, and there he stopped for the night after speaking gravely to the venerable cat of that inn, who blinked dozing before an enormous hearth and dreamed of old wars and forgotten gods.”

Intrigued? You should be. If you haven’t read Lovecraft, this is a great place to start. If you have, but haven’t read anything from his Dream Cycle, all I can tell you is you’re missing out.

Locke & Key Vol. 1: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez

A spooky mansion with magical doors and hidden keys—a Bay Area family with a secret history taking refuge there after a horrific tragedy—an echo in a well that is also a deeply malevolent creature—an unapologetically murderous teenager on the road trip from hell—a quiet New England town called Lovecraft—who could ask for more?

Go ahead and ask, because this graphic novel is also replete with glorious artwork and nuggets of sly, laugh-out-loud humor. Not for the weak of stomach or the faint of heart! But super rewarding for the stout-hearted reader.

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

Imagine waking up in a cave, alone and horribly injured and with no memory of anything that happened before you woke up. First you just have to survive from one minute to the next, then from one hour to the next, and eventually, from day to day. But you don’t have the luxury to just focus on healing; if you’re going to survive, you need to learn who wanted you dead, and why.

This is how Fledgling opens. Our protagonist is a remarkable, intelligent, strikingly self-possessed and resourceful young woman who also happens not to be human. A creature of some kind wanders into the cave where she lies injured and alone. She kills it with her bare hands, eats it, and begins to heal immediately—and that's how we learn that she’s not only a vulnerable girl who is in terrible danger, but is also capable of being very, very dangerous herself.

This is Octavia Butler’s last novel and, in my opinion, her masterpiece. It’s a work of literary fiction that starts out as a mystery, then becomes a vampire novel, then a work of science fiction—and finally it wraps up as a courtroom drama. Butler doesn't so much transcend genre as bend it to her formidable storytelling talents. And the story is hugely entertaining and tightly-woven.

This was my second time through this book, and I’d forgotten just how good it is. Butler was such a master. Here she explores her usual themes of what it means to be female and black, the nature of humanity, what it does to people to be “othered,” and what it does to people to do the “othering.” She does this absolutely seamlessly, in the context of a gripping story set in a very recognizable California among very real people.

So much literature is tough to chew on and hard to digest. Butler’s work reminds one that there is literature—meaningful, multilayered, deeply intellectually satisfying writing that leaves room for as much thought as the reader wants to bring to it—that is also a pure pleasure to read. The concepts are laid out in a gorgeous, stimulating feast that also happens to be perfectly nourishing. 

Read this book! It'll never, ever make it to the screen, for reasons that will be obvious to any reader but which I won't spoil for you here. So if you want the story—and you do—you'll have to read it. If you'd rather be read to, the audiobook version, narrated by Tracey Leigh, leaves absolutely nothing to be desired.

If you still want more convincing, read this review—it’s fantastic.

Drawing Blood by Poppy Z. Brite: #tbt review

When I first read this book in 2002, it was still too soon after the 90s for me to realize just what a product of the 90s it really was (all the mansplaining about the magic you can do with a laptop and a modem becomes a little heavy-handed after a while, for example), and I was still too young to realize the degree to which Brite is maybe just a touch too close to her characters in all their just-post-teen rebellion. 

Rereading it in 2013, I concluded that in spite of my minor quibbles with it, this is a gorgeous, highly readable book. The settings are flawlessly painted, the characters have depths that they themselves aren't aware of, and, like all the best haunted-house stories, the plot hooks you remorselessly and draws you along until your knuckles are white and you are tempted to close the book--but you can't, because you have to know what happens next. Very, very worth reading.

Not convinced yet? Read this review by Paul Jr. on Goodreads.

Slade House by David Mitchell

read by Thomas Judd and Tania Rodrigues

Brrrrrr! I Won’t say that I don’t read horror--but I am very choosy about what horror I read. As a tremendous fan of Cloud Atlas, though, I had to give this book a try--in spite of some trepidation after having found The Bone Clocks unreadable.

Yes, it’s a haunted house story--closer to a classic one than I expected from this author. Yes, the structure of the story is recursive, and will reward the reader who pays close attention (and will bore the reader who doesn’t)--a bit like Cloud Atlas in that respect, though Mitchell has become an even better writer since then and doesn’t, this time, tempt you to skip entire chapters. (Much. You definitely won’t retroactively wish you had, in any case.) And yes, it’s deliciously creepy.