Tag: caitlin starling

The Gremlin’s Library: The Death of Jane Lawrence

October 27th, 2022

Trigger warnings for the review: some minor gore discussion
Trigger warnings for the book: gore, surgical/body horror, ghosts, unreality/reality shifting shenanigans, period-typical misogyny (period is, like, Regency/Victorian-ish?)

The Death of Jane Lawrence is a book I’ve once again deliberately stepped into while knowing very little about, and I’m very pleased to report that whether by luck or fate, this is absolutely, absolutely my shit. To be fair, I’ve already read – and adored – The Luminous Dead by the same author. So when I saw that Caitlin Starling had a gothic horror/ghost story coming out, I put that on my TBR faster than you can say “Daphne du Maurier”.

Still, it took me a while to get around to it, and new books are always a bit of a gamble. Jane Lawrence is mysterious from the start, with a main character who’s so uncanny about her own prospects and so organized that I was wondering (honestly dreading) that the reveal might be that she was a murderer. (Small spoilers: it’s not. Thankfully.) Jane Shoringfield is setting about finding herself the most suitable possible husband, now that her benefactors/employers are moving and not taking her with them. She wants a husband where there’ll be as little romance as possible, where she can make herself useful, and where there won’t be any fussing around about courtship or anything like that. After reviewing all the potential candidates, she makes her first choice Augustine Lawrence, reclusive doctor… who’s very surprised to hear about this. Especially since she has it all figured out ahead of time. (Having a wedding proposed To You like a job offer must be a bizarre experience. I truly, truly adore Jane as a character.)

After Jane helps him in his clinic, he accepts on one condition – she must never spend the night at Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town, where he has to spend every night. She’ll spend the nights at the clinic; he’ll sleep out there. Given Jane’s disinterest in sex/romance (at first, anyway – more on that) she’s fine with this. More concerning is the case she helps him with — where there is something growing in a man’s stomach. And despite their best efforts, despite a successful surgery, the man’s bowel turns necrotic during the night and he dies. An overheard conversation tips off Jane that there’s something more involved here; dark magic and meddling in the occult.

Of course, the nature of these stories means that obviously Jane ends up at Lindridge Hall. The story does some absolutely fantastic work with setting the tone and mood, and the dark magic and ghosts at work are both evocative of the long tradition Starling is working within and original enough to keep tripping up every prediction I made. The character work, however, is where I think I’m the most impressed. Jane Lawrence herself is a take on a particular archetype within older work (cf. Austen, the Brontes) and occasionally more modern literature, of the passed-over, overly-practical Plain Jane sibling/spinster/what have you. Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice is likely the most famous example, or at least the most instantly recognizable. But instead of entering into a loveless marriage and being punished for it, simply “making peace” with her lot, or just falling in love with Augustine with no other questions or demands, Jane is an active, questioning and flawed protagonist. Augustine, who in other books would be elevated or heroized, is both noble and pathetic, making choices that don’t feel like just “bad choices for plot” but the kind of squirrelly bad decisions that come naturally from his characterization. (And I have so much to say about the ending, but it’s best experienced without spoilers, truly.)

My one gripe with the book is ultimately a minor one, and one that only exists in context with the literary world as a whole. It was, I’ll admit, a bit disappointing when I realized about a quarter of the way into the book that Jane was falling in love with Augustine. I expected it; certainly I wasn’t disappointed with the narrative once I readjusted. But part of me enjoyed the set-up of a marriage of convenience with someone who came off as completely disinterested in sex/romance, but who could easily get embroiled in someone’s personal issues anyway. Ultimately, this isn’t that book, and I wouldn’t ask it to be any other book than it is, but it does make me a little sad that those characters still don’t exist as much as they could.

Otherwise, it’s a great read. Nothing jumped out at me in terms of bigotry, although I did wait a while before writing the review; the main thing is the misogyny inherent in the premise, and even that isn’t too bad. If you’re sensitive to gore, I’d give this one a miss. But if you like Mexican Gothic, Crimson Peak, Jane Eyre or Rebecca (the latter two of which I’m fairly certain are explicit influences) definitely pick up a copy.

The Death of Jane Lawrence is available through Barnes & Noble – or find it at your local indie store here!
The Gremlin’s Library: The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

December 15th, 2020

TW: This book and review deals heavily with mental illness, hallucinations/delusions, and the claustrophobia of deep cave exploration.

It’s part of the nature of the literary world, at this point, that I will hear something About a book and how it’s good and still know very little about it. Perhaps, like with Every Heart a Doorway, the only thing I actually know going in is the vague premise and that it has ace rep. Perhaps I know even less than that – Magic for Liars took me so off guard because I knew almost nothing, and I went into Gingerbread and White is for Witching entirely blind. Rarely, I actually know something about the setup of the book, like with Ninth House or Mexican Gothic – but I like being surprised.

The Luminous Dead is a book I heard from ‘best-of’ lists and recommendations from people I hold in high esteem, but I was still nervous to go in. All I knew about it was that it was science fiction-horror, and that there was something about caves. So I am extremely glad to report that one, it is queer; two, it is one of the most terrifying books I’ve ever read; and three, it’s one of the books in the latter half of this year breaking a very, very disappointing streak in which I would pick up a highly-recced book, hit major ableism or something similar a while in, and put it down quite miserably.

So, the basics. Somewhere in the far future, in a setting with terra-formed (but not too terra-formed) planets and colonies, Cassandra-V is a particularly miserable place to live. The mines twisting through the planet offer wonderful resources, but the mines themselves are incredibly deep and dangerous, necessitating months-long expeditions by solo divers to avoid attracting the local wildlife. Gyre Price is particularly keen to get away from Casssandra-V, so she lies about her credentials, and takes on an incredibly dangerous diving job that she’s sure she can pull off. Probably. Downside: Solo cavers are supposed to have a full team of techs helping run their high-tech suit; the suit that feeds them, drugs them, keeps them safe from whatever’s in the air or the water, and holds all their supplies. Gyre, instead, has a single woman on the comms with her – Em, the financier of this peculiar job. As it turns out, Em is not quite stable. Luckily, neither is Gyre.

A lot of books with this premise would have gone for the easy chills; ‘stuck with the psycho’ feelings, tired tropes about mental health, insults about narcissism or psychopathy that would have had me throwing the book (metaphorically; it was on Kindle) across the room. But what makes The Luminous Dead so bloody excellent is that for all that Em and Gyre are both crazy, it’s a sympathetic narrative to both of them. It’s a book written about insanity that doesn’t treat insanity as a spectacle for able-minded people to goggle and stare at; it’s horror that treats mental illness as the most terrifying for those inside of it. I cannot and will not make any judgements or statements about Starling, but I’m deeply impressed to find a horror writer that doesn’t seem more preoccupied with creating a ‘horror movie villain’ than tapping into the psyche of her characters. As a result, the cave, Gyre’s body, and the unravelling mental states of both Em and Gyre all reflect each other. Gyre gets more and more injured and less and less sane as the book goes on, mind and body influencing each other, and the deeper she goes into the caves, the deeper she falls into irrationality. I’m also struck by the commentary on co-dependence – it’s hard not to feel for both Em and Gyre as they’re attracted to each other, while being brutally aware that the attraction isn’t healthy. Will it last outside of a situation where they are each other’s lifelines? It’s unclear – and that lack of clarity is part of the whole book. Are you going up or down? Is this real or false? Is the person you trust lying to you or not? Are you sick or are you insane? Are you dying or are you surviving?

I’ve tried to avoid outright spoilers, but I don’t think I can recommend this book any more highly. I kept waiting for a punchline, almost; something that would show Em clearly as a Crazy Villain and Gyre as an Innocent Victim. Instead, at every turn, I was surprised for the better, and yet, never quite thrown off by something out of left turn. Highly recommend, and kind of wishing I had something higher than a 5/5 to give.

The Luminous Dead is available in most places, including Google Play Books and directly through HarperCollins.

Tag: caitlin starling

The Gremlin’s Library: The Death of Jane Lawrence

The Gremlin’s Library: The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling