All posts tagged: gothic

A Blazing Portrait of a highly enmeshed sibling relationship, a crumbling English house, a despondent writer-illustrator mother and a slippery twist in Daisy Johnson’s SISTERS

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By Leslie Lindsay  A taut, twisty, mind-bending read that is so superbly written, so lyrical and tragic.  ~Writers Interviewing Writers|Always with a Book~ Spotlight: Siblings A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF THE TOP TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR —PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR —VULTURE “Daisy Johnson is the demon offspring of Shirley Jackson and Stephen King.” —The Observer (London)“Builds a gothic plot to an artful and shocking climax.” —The New York Times“Ends with a magnificent twist.” —The Boston Globe From a Booker Prize finalist and international literary star: a blazing portrait of one darkly riveting sibling relationship, from the inside out. Something unspeakable and unbearable happened between sisters July and September, just 10 months apart and named for their birth months. What presents as not-quite a thriller, not quite-a novel, not-quite horror or prose poetry, it is but all of those things, and that’s what makes SISTERS (Riverhead, August 2020) such a slippery one to pin down. Reading this story is strange and fantastical, a bit like a …

Serpentine Literary Historical suspense inspired by the classic ‘rebecca,’ THE TWO MRS. CARLYLES is about the bond between women, but also manipulation

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By Leslie Lindsay A twisty literary thriller set in the wake of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. ~Wednesdays with Writers|Always with a Book~ Historical Fiction Spotlight San Francisco, 1906. Violet is one of three people grateful for the destruction of the big earthquake. It leaves her and her two best friends unexpectedly wealthy — if the secret that binds them together stays buried beneath the rubble. Fearing discovery, the women strike out on their own, and orphaned, wallflower Violet reinvents herself. When a whirlwind romance with the city’s most eligible widower, Harry Carlyle, lands her in a luxurious mansion as the second Mrs. Carlyle, it seems like her dreams of happiness and love have come true. But all is not right in the Carlyle home, and Violet soon finds herself trapped by the lingering specter of the first Mrs. Carlyle, and by the inescapable secrets of her own violent history. “If you loved Rindell’s THE OTHER TYPIST, if you adored Jane Eyre, if you were riveted by Rebecca, you will be enthralled by THE TWO …

Julia Heaberlin on how obsessions start early and never leave, the horrific experience of a woman’s found body parts, ‘evil passing through,’ her mother’s box of terrifying nature, reading poetry to unlock flat descriptions, plus prosthetics in WE ARE ALL THE SAME IN THE DARK

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By Leslie Lindsay  Portrait of modern Texas, in which tradition, family, secrets, and redemption run wild, this is a slow-burn mystery rooted in gorgeous writing. It’s been a decade since Trumanell Branson vanished from her family farm, leaving only a bloody handprint behind. She was the town’s beauty queen, beloved daughter, but now she’s gone. Was it a serial killer? Her brother? Her disappearance and murder haunts the town. Now, in WE ARE ALL THE SAME IN THE DARK (Ballantine/PRH, August 11 2020), another girl has turned up. She’s not dead, but badly injured. She’s missing an eye, she’s mute. Odette Tucker, the town’s youngest cop (and hiding a perceived disability herself) is the one to find this injured girl amidst a field of dandelions. She believes the two instances may somehow be linked. The writing in WE ARE ALL THE SAME IN THE DARK is delicately charged and searing, exploding with atmosphere. But it is a slow-burning literary thriller told from the POV of several traumatized characters carrying plenty of their own baggage. WE ARE ALL THE SAME IN THE DARK is …

Stunningly shocking and terrifying, and so good, FEVER DREAM is haunting and magical and I am obsessed

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By Leslie Lindsay  A blazingly stark yet lush and surreal tale that will shock and injure your world, no matter how comfortable you think it is.  ~WeekEND Reading: Spotlight~ I’m dubbing this week, “Fantastical Fiction Week.” I mean, wow. I read two books (see Wednesday’s interview with Vikram Paralkar on NIGHT THEATER) that absolutely blew me away and are very closely related in terms of themes, writing style, and genre. And this genre is a slippery one to pin down. Some call it speculative fiction, others say it’s magical realism.  Others still might liken it to horror or gothic or even a fairy tale. All agree it’s imaginative and stark and might include elements of science fiction.  I find it thought-provoking, literary, dreamy, hallucinatory, mysterious, and at times, terrifying. “This is a weird hallucination of a book—reading it feels like an experience, like something that happens to you, as infectious and mysterious and unstoppable and possibly magical as the disease that powers its plot.” —LitHub A  young woman called Amanda lies dying in a rural …

Julia Fine on her debut, WHAT SHOULD BE WILD, plus the magic of forests, allegorical tales, working with Audrey Niffenegger, creating atmosphere vs setting, & more

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By Leslie Lindsay  Rare and enchanting (fairy) tale about magic, gruesomeness, women, and so much more, WHAT SHOULD BE WILD is dark, sublimely written, and spellbinding. Join me in conversation with the lovely Julia as she chats about how teaching inspires her, her amazing reading list and so much more. Trust me, you’ll be swept away. I quickly fell under the spell of Julia Fine’s debut, WHAT SHOULD BE WILD (Harper, May 2018). We’re talking a gorgeous setting filled with trees, mysterious elements, an old ancestral home, and magical realism. There is so much going on in WHAT SHOULD BE WILD–at heart, it’s a coming-of-age story, but it’s also an abduction tale, an allegory, and just darn good writing.  Maisie Cothay is a special 16-year old girl–not only because she was born of a dead mother, but because she comes from a long line of cursed women, going back to 591 AD. Maisie has never known the touch of human flesh–she was born with the power to kill or resurrect at her slightest touch–and therefore has been sequestered …

Emma Healey talks about her most recent book, WHISTLE IN THE DARK, inner demons, missing girls, mothers & daughters, unique structure, more

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By Leslie Lindsay  Stunning, psychologically complex atmospheric tale about mothers and daughters, inner demons, and piecing back the shards of a fragile psyche. Emma Healey pops by to chat about her favorite podcasts, how her teenage breakdown–and subsequent depression–informed Lana’s character, and so much more.  I am overwhelmed with the subtle absorption of WHISTLE IN THE DARK (July 2018, Harper), which explores the complexity of mother-daughter relationships, with a wry, poignant, sharply observed style. Emma Healey’s prose is both taut and lush and I was immediately drawn into her atmospheric underworld of 15-year-old Lana Maddox’s teenage depression, unaccountable days, and her eventual reappearance.  Plus, that cover! Told in a unique noir style in which we begin with the end, delve into a murky (in a good way) middle ground, and then reemerge on a brighter, more hopeful side, WHISTLE IN THE DARK is written in titled sections that aren’t exactly chapters, but present-day vignettes/memories/back flashes, while also propelling the narrative forward. I have to say, I loved this! I found the smaller sections easier to read (as opposed to an …

Fragile 9-year-old boy misses his mother dearly in THE BOY AT THE KEYHOLE, plus Stephen Giles talks about writing for adults vs. kids, his love for isolated homes, more

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By Leslie Lindsay Sinister and intense story of melancholy and loneliness with an imaginative 9-year-old boy at the center in THE BOY AT THE KEYHOLE. Plus, it’s just been picked up by New Agency for film!  Stephen Giles is here chatting about his love for country homes, his distaste for the dentist, and how he misses an old cubby house  in the backyard when he was a kid.  Locked doors. An atlas. Attics. Cellar. England. Mystery and, maybe murder.  Samuel Clay is living in a crumbling old estate in England with his housekeeper, Ruth Tupper. He’s missing his mother terribly, who has ‘gone away’ to America for the last 119 days (he’s been keeping count). Mrs. Clay is now widowed and the family’s finances have fallen to disarray–perhaps there’s some money or bankers in American who will help her get the ‘capital she needs.’ What’s worse, is Samuel’s mother left in the middle of the night, without so much as a word of good-bye to her son, leaving him in the care of the housekeeper. …

Writers on Wednesday: How characters are like ‘lost souls’ at the airport, ghosts, old farm houses, and more in Elizabeth Brundage’s ALL THINGS CEASE TO APPEAR

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By Leslie Lindsay  ALL THINGS CEASE TO APPEAR is like a slow boil, starting out  with tender delicate prose  and reaching a gritty climax. The story is  harrowing. Spooky, even. The characters are cold and stiff (quite literally, and that’s not just for the ones who are dead). ALL THINGS CEASE TO APPEAR is written almost in a frame style, that is, the book opens with a murder, then becomes filled in with a deliciously creepy and unsettling backstory/character study into the mind of sociopath, finishing off with an end-cap to the murder set in the first few pages. It’s at first blush, a ghost story, but there’s so much more to it, combining dark noir with gothic in a story about two families, one farmhouse, all of whom are wrapped in their own unhappiness, with a ribbon of art history, like a river running through connecting the gruesome unsolved murder. I am super-honored to have Elizabeth Brundage sit down and chat with us about her inspiration, her process, and the book. Please, join us. …

Fiction Friday: Culling Novel Images

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By Leslie Lindsay As a visual person, I love coming across images that resonate with the novel I am working on. In yesterday’s mail, I received a catalog: Victorian Times, or something of that sort. It’s filled to the brim with fancy perfume bottles, roses, and doilies. Pretty much stuff I don’t need, never will need and ..then I came across this rather gruesome image smack in the middle of ladies petticoats and tall lace-up boots. Since the working title of my manuscript is Zombie Road, you can guess what happened next: I tore the darn photo out of the catalog, pasted it on my visual board, and then got myself to Google. Okay, in all honesty, the image was familiar but I had disregarded it, shoved it waaay to the back of the ol’ brain and simply forgot about it. (Def Leppard, Retrospective album, anyone?) I find it a fun little twist of fate that it came back. Or, perhaps I was just prime to see it? Victorian pen and ink artist, Charles Allan Gilbert (September 3, 1873 …