My December in reading

Sometimes things slow down at work and you read nine books in a single month. I am living proof.

Witches of America by Alex Mar

In the beginning of this book, when Mar is profiling practitioners of different pagan beliefs across the country, I was worried that was all the book was going to be—a high-level view of a complex phenomenon. But as Mar lets herself become personally involved in practices like Feri witchcraft and Ordo Templi Orientis ritual magic, I became more wrapped up in the memoir. I related to her simultaneous skepticism and desire for belief. I’d definitely recommend this to anyone interested in paganism and the occult.

Bluebeard’s First Wife by Ha Seong-Nan (translated from the Korean by Janet Hong)

I bought this story collection a few years ago at one AWP conference or another—possibly in Texas, right before the pandemic—and I finally got around to reading it. Ha’s tales are odd and eerie—from marriages gone horribly wrong to taxi rides of revenge. On Twitter I said that Hong’s translation made the collection heavy, too, as if the words were weighted with rocks in their pockets. And I mean that as a compliment! If you enjoy strange stories, you can’t go wrong with this collection.

Melmoth by Sarah Perry (narrated by Jan Cramer)

Grab your black lipstick—it’s a gothic novel alert! I think gothic can be a hard genre to pull off in a modern setting, but Perry does it with aplomb. Helen Franklin has been living in Prague for years, working as a translator, living a spare life with little enjoyment and fewer friends, all to atone for…something she won’t tell you, something that lurks in the background of her life. After Karel, one of her few acquaintances, discovers an odd cache of historical documents that warn of “Melmoth the Witness,” he disappears, leaving his ill wife behind. Helen begins to wonder if Melmoth has been watching her all this time. This novel is terrifying, and I can’t speak highly enough of Jan Cramer’s melodramatic narration. My only qualm is that a certain section takes place in the Philippines, and that section felt Orientalist to me, in the Saidian sense. That particular plot element could have easily happened anywhere else on Earth; I obviously can’t speak for Perry, but it seemed like she selected the Philippines to provide a strange, exotic, even dirty environment. All I’m saying is there are just as many cockroaches in New York City. Though that section made me uncomfortable, I did very much enjoy the book overall.

O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker

O Caledonia is practically a novella, gothic in its setting and some of its content, but in other ways it defies genre. It’s also a coming-of-age story—sort of—and a murder mystery—sort of. It’s no spoiler to say that the young protagonist, Janet, dies when she’s just 16—that happens on the very first page. But the book is less of a whodunnit and more of a testament to what Janet could have become if she hadn’t been destined to become a ghost. Barker’s language is thrillingly precise—I wish I could write that sharply. Though the book is short, I spent a whole week reading it because I kept marveling at her nouns and verbs. I can’t recommend this one enough.

The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo (translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai)

Considering I’m a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, it’s funny that I don’t read more mysteries in general. The Honjin Murders is a classic Japanese locked-room mystery from 1946, the first in a series of mysteries that introduces the young, quirky private detective Kosuke Kindaichi. I tried my best to puzzle out the solution to the murder before Kindaichi got there—I took notes and everything—but he beat me to it. Though I must protest that the solution was, perhaps, a tad complex to be believable. I enjoyed this book, and Louise Heal Kawai has translated another in Yokomizo’s series, so I may pick it up sometime.

The Dracula Book of Great Vampire Stories edited by Leslie Shepard

I found a copy of this 1977 vampire anthology at Butcher Cabin Books, and it was, unsurprisingly, hit or miss. By “great,” Shepard clearly means “written by white people and published prior to 1930.” According to his introduction, the man is appalled by the sex-and-blood-fueled Hammer Horror films of his day and age, and he wishes we could return to…when? When vampires were not literally bloodthirsty murderers? If he didn’t want sexy stuff, he probably shouldn’t have included Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla in the collection. Some of the stories were underwhelming, but some were fun—I especially enjoyed M.E. Braddon’s “The Good Lady Ducayne,” in which a young English woman takes a job traveling with a wealthy, elderly woman who may want more than her companionship, and E.F. Benson’s “Mrs. Amworth,” which features a particularly extroverted vampire.

Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman

When trans vampire archivist Sol meets Elsie, a recent widow who has come to donate her wife’s papers—her wife being the woman who wrote Sol’s favorite X-Files-esque TV show in the 90s—it’s practically love at first sight. That, and then some. Together, Sol and Elsie help sort out each other’s messy lives and address the issues they have about grief and bodies and mental health and so much more. But then the archives start dying, pages literally rotting at a rapid pace. Fellman’s novel is a charming love story and a mystery rolled into one. I also appreciate that vampirism isn’t a metaphor for being trans in this book—Sol is a trans man who also happens to be a vampire. I loved this one—the dialogue was perfect.

The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

I’ve been meaning to read this 1895 story collection for a long time now—a story collection that inspired the “weird horror” genre later taken up by writers like Lovecraft, as well as the first season of the TV show True Detective. Though the stories feature different characters, they’re all connected by The King in Yellow, an ominous play that drives its readers mad when they come across the script. My favorite story was “The Mask,” in which a sculptor discovers a substance that can transform living things into perfect marble—to devastating effect.

Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste

Initially, this novel sounded right up my alley. The year is 1967, and Lucy Westenra—famously a victim in the novel Dracula—and Bertha Mason—Rochester’s first, attic-bound wife in Jane Eyre—find themselves roommates in sunny California. They’re both immortal—Lucy from Dracula’s bite, and Bertha, now Bee, from something hungry that was lurking in the attic where Rochester kept her. And they’re still on the run from the dangerous men who made them this way and want to control them forever. Here’s the thing: I am a nerd and I have read Jane Eyre about a million times. (And Dracula at least three times!) While I am certainly not in favor of locking anyone in an attic, I had a tough time buying that Rochester is a monster on Dracula’s level. Rochester is selfish and self-pitying, and he has the racist/sexist/classist mores of his age—but he’s not a murderer. I am happy to buy a universe in which he becomes a murderer, but you have to explain to me how he gets there, and Kiste fails to do so. I am also extremely happy to buy a universe in which Bertha Mason and Jane Eyre are lesbian lovers, but again, you have to explain to me when exactly that was supposed to have happened back at Thornfield Hall. What’s more, Kiste makes Jane Eyre (surprise! also immortal!) a weak, wilting victim, which literally defeats the entire purpose of the original novel. I think this would have been a more successful book if Kiste had stuck to Stoker and left Brontë’s characters out of it.