If there’s one writer who doesn’t pull punches, it’s Ryū Murakami. His shuddering novel Audition (translated into English by Ralph McCartney) is compressed into just above 200 pages, yet it leaves you reeling and confounded in the best way possible. Later adapted for the big screen in 1999 with Takashi Miike as the director, the film leaves an equally lasting impression, but with contrasting techniques.
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A horror obsessed Jade finds out that her hometown Proofrock is in danger—and despite some gruesome killings happening right under her nose, she is a little more thrilled than she needs to be that she’s finally experiencing a slasher in her own life.
Being an outcast in her hometown, a seventeen year old Native American girl named Jade Daniels utilizes horror movies as a coping mechanism to escape her abusive father and the rest of her environment. After discovering two murders in Indian Lake, Jade starts thinking that this might be the start of a premeditated killing spree. In the meantime, the other side of Indian Lake lies Terra Nova; the former Shoshone territory has now been gentrified and altered into a construction site for the wealthy. While most people would be terrified of the continuous murders, Jade sees this as an opportunity to channel her inner Sherlock Holmes and depend on her slasher knowledge to solve the murder mystery.
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The grisly, the sublime, and moral quandaries are all fascinating aspects of the Gothic genre—and Silvia Moreno-Garcia doesn’t shy away from them in her novel, Mexican Gothic.
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17 people go on a writer’s retreat to craft pretty words with no distractions, no contact with the outside world, all together in an abandoned theater for three months. What could possibly go wrong?
Synopsis:
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a compilation of 14 disturbing short stories that are part of a bigger narrative. Following the lives of 19 people with names representative of the stories they tell, such as Saint Guts, Sister Vigilante, and Mother Nature. Palahniuk adds a much darker and satirical tone in a setting and premise that might remind the audience of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.
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Rock star Judas Coyne with a taste for the macabre decides to buy a ghost off the internet. It sounds gnarly, stupid and a waste of time – but he eventually wishes it was only that.
Synopsis:
[Content warning and spoiler: assault, gore, violence, death, mental, physical and sexual abuse]
This novel follows a rock star, Judas Coyne (Jude), who loves collecting obscure and freakish objects. With his creepy collection that includes everything from a noose to a snuff film, nothing seems extreme to him. So when he becomes the highest bidder for a ghost on sale from a website, he merely thinks it’s a scam. But then, the ghost arrives in the form of a dead man’s suit, in a heart-shaped box. What then ensues is completely unexpected and reveals more of Jude’s past and relationships.
My review:
Heart-Shaped Box sounds like it has a bit of a goofy premise, and I was initially skeptical of it because combining technology with the supernatural has always been difficult to pull off, I find – it either comes across as cringe-worthy or trying too hard, unless it’s intentionally comedic.
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Imagine living on a secluded snowy mountain in the middle of nowhere. You’ve been living with your husband, a monster, for 12 years – only to discover that there’s a new one lurking in the woods. How are you going to survive and escape both of them?
[Content Warning: SA, Abuse]
Christina Henry’s Near the Bone explores the horrors that the main character – Mattie – has to endure in an abusive relationship with her husband, William. While the premise does make it seem like the book mainly explores the strange supernatural-like entity living on the mountain, it actually focuses more on the abuse that Mattie endures which I don’t mind, the blurb is just a bit misleading. Mattie and William both have been residing on a mountain, almost completely secluded from the outside world. After years of being trapped and not having seen a single soul, it’s clear that William is not who claims to be and has tried to instill the idea that Mattie’s life revolves entirely around him. Her discovery of a horrifying yet intelligent creature called the “cryptid” alarms her and shows that there’s something else she should be afraid of, which also becomes the catalyst of her realisation that she could try to escape.
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