You hardly ever hear about hysterics nowadays; analysts like to say that the illness has entirely disappeared, replaced by the more ubiquitous ‘personality disorder’, and the likelihood of chancing upon nice bourgeois ladies in the midst of fainting fits as … Continue reading
When ghosts appeared in Victorian Gothic novels, they were often sounding an alarm about blood or money. The dead did not sleep easily in their graves when it looked as if the family inheritance, or its stately home, was about … Continue reading
There are very few books that are genuinely scary; Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is one of them. Jackson understood that the worst fears are those that lurk inside of us, always ready to menace and undermine us. … Continue reading
This year, I’m signing up for Carl’s RIP VI challenge. This blog is so old, I can remember the first year it ran, which was probably the last time I joined in. I don’t read so much in the way … Continue reading
Tales from the Reading Room 