The year is 1897 and Bram Stoker is a bored businessmen who boosts his income by writing pulpy novels. The most famous of these, simply titled Dracula, was not an immediate hit, but would turn out to define Stoker’s legacy. This isn’t entirely undeserved, but outside of its snug historical pocket the novel doesn’t come across all that well. The story is well-known to nearly everyone, and I was quite surprised at how closely, at first, it follows the 1993 movie. And yet this film, […]
Makes me not want to read any more Brontë.
I am sorry to say I did not enjoy this at all. I’m very sure this was well-written, a masterpiece of the English language, etc, etc. But not for me. And there were all these reviews! From people saying it was better than Jane Eyre! What! I don’t get it. At all. George Eliot, were you smoking something when you read this? Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for it, but Lucy Snowe < Jane Eyre. I mean, I didn’t even need to have […]
An epic tale about the hopelessness of being The Other
[BINGO!] I’ve been mulling over this review of Frankenstein for a couple of weeks now and I have so many thoughts and feelings! I’ll first admit that I had never read Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus before this year, and truly believed that the gothic horror story was just the same as James Whale’s Frankenstein movie. And it is not. At all. The same. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley wrote her epic tale about the hopelessness of being The Other, of the misery of the life unwanted, and uncared for. The monster is a […]
I don’t think it’s aged all that well (Plus, half Cannonball!)
I’ve heard James’ The Turn of the Screw as being a classic Gothic novel, the one that basically begat a genre and inspired authors like Shirley Jackson (whose books I’ve loved so far in my readings). I chose this one for the ‘This Old Thing’ bingo square (it was published in 1898), and I was really excited to finally sit down and read it Unfortunately, I was disappointed. The plot is about a young governess who takes a posting that’s too good to be true in an […]