Book: Gina Wisker, Contemporary Women’s Gothic Fiction: Carnival, Hauntings and Vampire Kisses

This new book by Gina Wisker, Contemporary Women’s Gothic Fiction: Carnival, Hauntings and Vampire Kisses, looks marvellous. It covers Angela Carter and vampires–two topics that always whet my OGOM appetite–but many other aspects of contemporary women’s Gothic too. I really am dying (no pun intended) to read this but am going to have to wait a while for the paperback version.

This book revives and revitalises the literary Gothic in the hands of contemporary women writers. It makes a scholarly, lively and convincing case that the Gothic makes horror respectable, and establishes contemporary women’s Gothic fictions in and against traditional Gothic. The book provides new, engaging perspectives on established contemporary women Gothic writers, with a particular focus on Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison. It explores how the Gothic is malleable in their hands and is used to demythologise oppressions based on difference in gender and ethnicity. The study presents new Gothic work and new nuances, critiques of dangerous complacency and radical questionings of what is safe and conformist in works as diverse as Twilight (Stephenie Meyer) and A Girl Walks Home Alone (Ana Lily Amirpur), as well as by Anne Rice and Poppy Brite. It also introduces and critically explores postcolonial, vampire and neohistorical Gothic and women’s ghost stories. 

About William the Bloody

Cat lover. 18C scholar on the dialogue and novel. Co-convenor OGOM Project
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