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Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth illustrated by Sara Lautman

Cover of Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth illustrated by Sara Lautman

William Morrow & Company, 2020

ISBN-13: 978-0062942852

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audibook, audio CD ( Bookshop.orgAmazon.com )

 

 

Emily M. Danforth, author of the YA novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post, stretches her boundaries in this unsettling, haunted novel that reveals a buried history of queer romance and horror and some seriously creepy hornets.

The story moves smoothly from events in 1902 that led to the deaths of three students at the Brookhants School for Girs, tied to an uninhibited and shocking memoir by openly bisexual feminist Mary McLane, to a present day where author Merritt Emmons has written a book about the deaths that is about to be made into a sapphic “Blair Witch” style horror movie.

Two of the girls who died were co-founders of a club called The Plain Bad Heroines, which admires Mary’s unapologetic attitude, are found dead in the woods with a copy of the book,  attacked by a swarm of hornets in an orchard of rotting fruit. The third acquires it after their deaths and is literally poisoned by reading it near a plant in the campus greenhouse where she is caretaker. The headmistress confiscates it, convinced that it is cursed. As the students abandon the school, both the headmistress and her relationships begin to disintegrate, and trapped almost alone in a snowstorm, it’s hard to tell how much of a grip on reality she has left.  She’s also left remembering her college days, where a love affair led to her eventual inheritance of Brookhants, chosen by her husband because of its reputation as a spiritually important location, in a very strange manner.

The horror movie based on Merritt’s book will star the popular actress Harper Harper and the less well-known actress Audrey Wood. Merritt initially is starstruck by Harper and they hit it off; her interactions with Audrey are more negative. The movie will be filmed at the actual Brookhants School and on the grounds, adding atmospheric creepiness.  Once the filming starts, it seems nothing can go right– it’s almost like the production is cursed. This leaves Harper, Audrey, and Merritt, a lot of time for exploration on the Brookhants estate. Black apples, rotting vegetation, and ominous swarms of hornets in the woods ratchet up the tension, and eventually the story behind the Brookhants curse is revealed.

This is a doorstop of a book. After its tense begining, it slows down for some time and, had I not known there would be a payoff, I might have set it down. I think a large chunk of the Hollywood segment could have been easily eliminated  to slim it down. This is where a lot of the present day characters’ personalities are established, and Merritt’s romantic interests start to develop, but it is just too drawn out.

Danforth isn’t subtle about centering lesbian and bisexual characters. It is even a point of contention in the casting of the movie, where Merritt objects to Audrey playing a lesbian role, assuming she must be straight, to have Audrey come out and say she’s bisexual. The headmistress’ memories of inheriting the school are all related to the romantic love she and her partner had for each other. even as she turns on her.

Plain Bad Heroines is also about as metafictional as you can get; it’s a fictional story inspired by a book by a real person, containing illustrations and images of what I’m pretty sure are news articles about the book, that a fictional author has written a fictional nonfiction book about, that is being made into a fictional movie being filmed found-footage style, as if it is nonfiction. Both the director and Harper Harper use social media to affect the narrative, so Harper’s Instagram posts document the movie shoot and all of its “cursed” problems for her followers, creating a Blair Witch effect of convincing the audience for the movie that the haunting is real. Even the people around Audrey and Merritt are in on the gaslighting, so that none of them know whether they can trust each other or reality. It’s clever, and the unreliability of the people around them and the way the reader knows the three women are being manipulated is distracting, but it doesn’t detract from the sense of atmospheric creepiness, dread, and tension, with hornets and rotting vegetation always around. You will never feel the same about hornets after reading this book.

Danforth actually has an author’s note where she discusses her discovery of Mary Maclane in researching hidden sapphic history, and that she wanted to bring that to light through Plain Bad Heroines. I never had heard of her and I found this fascinating. Unlike The Miseducation of Cameron Post this is not a YA novel, although it might be appreciated by some older YA readers, but certainly it is an original book with plenty of dread and some well-drawn lesbian and bisexual characters that will draw in readers of historical and metafictional horror, Hollywood, and haunted houses. It won’t be for everyone, but this book will certainly find its audience. Recommended.

 

Contains: violence, murder, body horror, sexual situations, insects

Book Review: Invisible Chains by Michelle Renee Lane

Invisible Chains by Michelle Renee Lane

Haverhill House Publishing, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-949140-03-3

Available: Hardcover, paperback

 

Jacqueline, an enslaved Creole growing up on a Louisiana plantation in Michelle Renee Lane’s Invisible Chains, learns all too soon what it means to be black and female. She is beaten, raped, and terrorized but manages to survive by using the secrets of Vodun her mother taught her and by tapping the powers of the vampire and werewolf who assist her on the flight toward what she hopes will be a rescue.

Even though monsters help Jacqueline, she is still threatened by them and in constant danger, even from love. Lane uses these relationships, including a flirtation with the vampire, to highlight the suffering, marginalized groups depicted in this novel. This includes enslaved people and monsters but also mixed race people, Spanish Jews, Irish immigrants, circus performers, Gypsies, seers and couples in interracial relationships. People who are considered different by the larger white society are powerless and can survive only by appeasing and imitating their oppressors or using magical or supernatural powers against them.

Although the book often moves quickly from one terrifying event to the next, Lane effectively traces Jacqueline’s growing sense of her own talents and strengths. Jacqueline learns that each horrific experience enhances her abilities as a conjurer and intensifies her understanding of herself, thus making it possible for her to voice her demands and choose what she needs to live. She also learns that she must protect her mind and soul most of all and that she has a certain power in knowing the future in which her true freedom will never be a reality. However, she continues to be brave, heroic, and unstoppable. Recommended.

Contains: Graphic violence including rape and torture; sexual situations

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Editor’s note: Invisible Chains was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Novel.

Book Review: Doorways to the Deadeye by Eric J. Guignard

Doorways to the Deadeye by Eric J. Guignard

JournalStone, 1919

ISBN-13: 978-1947654976

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

 

Novels about riding the rails can be exhilarating journeys in the right hands. Eric J Guignard is fresh off his first Bram Stoker win for best fiction collection, proof he has the skills to terrify his audience. Luke Thacker is a victim of the Great Depression, scraping by to survive on the dangerous rails of America. Along the way, he learns many secrets to staying alive, from a code left by other hobos, often warning them of strangers who would sooner leave them bleeding in a ditch or a friend ready to help out a guy in need through symbols carved into trees. When he discovers one odd symbol, an infinity sign, he learns that reality is a bit broken.

He meets a gangster ready and armed, John Dillinger, who had perished just months ago in a hail of bullets. Luke  has entered the Athanasia, the realm of the deadeye.

The dead don’t exactly haunt but can be dangerous. The spirits that linger are the ones who are remembered. Dillinger hires Thacker to be his driver for a bit, before being rescued by Harriet Tubman who ferries him to safety through the corridors of the deadeye. The stronger the person was in life, the longer they linger in Athanasia, where the living can see them, hear them, and be hurt by them.

Some are them are pretty angry and vicious.

Luke takes to the rails and meets up with the semi-gentle giant Zeke, and the woman who entrances his heart, Daisy. Together, they explore more of the deadeye world, encountering the Wyatt brothers, bank robberies, and the worst memory of the rails, Smith McCain, a brutal rail worker who made his living tossing hobos from moving trains. In death, his viciousness only has amplified. He tracks down riders to send them into the deadeye where most of them don’t have the strength to remain remembered. They simply fade away into nothingness. McCain is a beast straight out of the best thriller and horror movies, a former man who can never be stopped.

Fifty years later, another former hobo, King Shaw,  is keeping the stories of Luke alive as he tells them to a reporter, and hopefully keeping himself alive, too.

This novel is a stunner. Horrifying and suspenseful throughout, what makes it work is the strong writing of Guignard. Having never read any of this author before, it was shocking to see how powerful his lines were, how well-drawn the characters had become.

This guy is more than someone to watch in horror. He’ll be winning plenty more awards.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

Editor’s note: Doorways to the Deadeye was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Novel.