Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
Wharton explores eerie presences and does so with a flare that lingers in the air over your shoulder as you read. Her prose is elegant and languid, drawing the reader in with lush descriptions and then twisting each tale to a disturbing and artful ending.
When I purchased Mark Z Danielewski’s House of Leaves, the clerk at our local independent bookstore clued me in to the presence it has in the horror reading community. And, oh, what a presence it is.
This drama is a great example of the power of monologue. If you come from a place of studying prose literature, your urge is to cringe when you turn the page in the play and come across a big block of text. But, actually, a monologue is a blessing rather than a curse.
The action centres around a writer named Katurian who is living in a totalitarian state. He has been brought in for questioning (and torturing) by police who are investigating a series of child murders based on Katurian’s stories.
Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun is a classic and compelling play centering around one poor Black family struggling to get ahead in 1950s Chicago.
What Kushner excels at is creating a sense of endings and of a grief that hangs above each of the characters as they accept illness, accept death, and accept that change is coming whether they want it to or not.
According to Google, a revenge tragedy is: A style of drama, popular in England during the late 16th and 17th centuries, in which the basic plot was a quest for vengeance and which typically featured scenes of carnage and mutilation.
It’s the subtlety that I described above that really makes this book a great selection to the spooky season — especially if you’re looking for something a bit off the beaten path.
The eleven tales contained in this collection of some of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s stories each contain a pervasive sense of the uncanny and of a narrator that exists out of step with time and space.
Nakayama Masaaki’s PTSD Radio is a horror series that has some very creepy writing combined with some fantastically creepy artwork.
