While the trees are adorned with shimmering colors and the cold seems to gradually arrive, here comes the time of Halloween. Fast approaching, Halloween is not just synonymous with an abundance of sweets and monsters of all kinds, but Halloween is mostly synonymous with thrills. And books are real vectors to scare you. That's why JustFocus has selected novels with gothic, strange and squeaky atmospheres.
From dark novels to neurotic characters
Edgar Allan Poe and his Extraordinary Stories
Nineteenth-century author Edgar Allan Poe is considered the inventor of the detective genre, inspiring Arthur Conan Doyle for the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The author is also known for his dark pen by highlighting through his short stories themes related to death, madness, neurosis and decrepitude. He is one of the main figures of the noir novel of romantic literature, alongside Mary Shelley.
If Edgar Allan Poe is now known in France, it is thanks to the translations of our dear Charles Baudelaire, who, fascinated by the universe of Poe, magnified the work of the latter by his translation. New after novel, the spell is palpable until the moment when the character rushes into the paroxysm of horror reaching the terrible paradox of this tangible reality inscribed in the irrational. Playing on these blurred boundaries between the real and the unreal, Poe ends his short stories with death, in all its states. It is difficult here to summarize the whole of this trilogy as the short stories take a plural form.
Oscar Wilde's Portrait of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde's portrait of Dorian Gray falls somewhere between realism and aesthete, while rubbing shoulders with the strangeness of the fantasy novel. We can imagine through this novel, the influences that Edgar Allan Poe (and especially in The Oval Portrait) and Robert Louis Stevenson in The Curious Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde on Oscar Wilde may have had. In a Victorian era, the author takes us to a dark and gloomy underground London where the fog and the vapor of opium contrast with a London where art and beauty rub shoulders in the world of dandyism.
On many occasions, the characters question questions of morality, or rather immoral in the face of light morals, embodied by hedonism. Thus, in a slow and winding rhythm, we follow in the footsteps of Dorian Gray, a seductive young dandy, whose dazzling beauty freezes in time; Steps that lead him into this eternal duo of drugs and sex where point and measure give way to excess. The novel darkens taking away the soul of Dorian Gray over the pages, while his face painted by his artist friend reflects all the darkness of his soul.
Novels in the land of monsters
Bram Stoker's Dracula
Through a fantasy and epistolary novel published in 1897, Bram Stoker tells the story of the famous Count Dracula, an immortal vampire, who feeds on the blood of the living. In these fragments of diaries and letters of the protagonists, the author writes in the first person singular depicting several points of view, without ever adopting that of the count.
Inspired by legends and myths, the author plunges us between England and Transylvania in the nineteenth century. The first part of the novel takes place in the strange and dark atmosphere of the castle. If Dracula is far from being the first novel to exploit the figure of the vampire, it nevertheless marks a crucial step in fantasy literature. Indeed, it remains a real reference, even today. Bram Stoker's talent lies in the fact that he paints a psychology of this complex and paradoxical bloodthirsty monster. Thus, Count Dracula is an aristocratic vampire, both monstrous and refined. A charismatic non-dead.
Frankenstein by Mary W. Shelley
Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, an epistolary fantasy novel published in 1818, tells the story of a doctor – Victor Frankenstein – completely obsessed with science. Both horrific and philosophical, the novel questions an existential question "how to give life to an inanimate body? ». To constitute the body, the doctor recovers scattered corpses in cemeteries and "introduces a spark of existence". The novel heralds the beginnings of science fiction, like Poe's short stories.
As soon as it was published, Frankenstein, a gothic novel par excellence, was an immediate success. The writer plunges us into a paradoxical universe between terror and the sublime, a universe where science is cursed. By questioning humanity and grace and the creator-creature relationship, the book takes up universal themes such as the sorcerer's apprentice, the golem, not without reminding us of the story of Faust. From a literary myth, Frankenstein then becomes a cinematic myth and is totally part of the landscape of popular culture.
Novels in the heart of a windy atmosphere
The Heights of Hurlevent by Emily Brontë
Emily Brontë first published Les Hauts de Hurlevent in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. In her only novel, she tells the story of an abandoned child, Heathcliff, taken in by a family. But the arrival of this difficult child plunges the house into turmoil. When Heathcliff grew up, he became an unscrupulous man. The whole novel paints the destruction of two families, who tear each other apart generation after generation, in the heart of the windy, wild and immutable landscapes of the Yorkshire moors.
The author gives us characters with complex, tormented and dark personalities. Their darkness as well as the violence of certain scenes and the omnipresence of death shocked the readership of the time. But, Les Hauts de Hurlevent has, today, become one of the greatest classics of nineteenth-century literature.
Spray by Louise Mey
Embruns is Louise Mey's second book, published in 2017 by Fleuve noir. In this novel, the author tells the story of an unbearably perfect family who leaves on the weekend of July 14, on a Breton island. But, this enchanted parenthesis will quickly turn into a nightmare. Louise Mey makes this island a real agonizing closed door. Far from the heavenly clichés, the island becomes a muddy ground, facing a hostile sea where winds and rain fall imperiously. Without phones or cars, the characters seem cut off from the world, without phones or cars and lead us to the heart of paranoia and claustrophobia.
Thrillers to take our breath away
Sharko by Franck Thilliez
Published in 2017, the novel Sharko tells the story of Lucie Henebelle and Franck Sharko , cops at 36 quai des Orfèvres, united with the city and the stage. One of their investigations will lead them directly to the heart of "human darkness". Also a television screenwriter, author Franck Thilliez perfectly handles the workings of the thriller in this thrilling plot, at the gates of hell that makes us plunge into a universe mixed with horror and blood. The horror is thus contained in the cohabitation of two universes that seem to oppose each other: the world of vampirism and hematology. Sharko is one of those novels where sensitive souls must abstain…
The perfume of Patrick Süskind
Patrick Süskind's Le Parfum, published in 1985, was an immediate success. The story takes place in the eighteenth century, in France between Paris, Auvergne and Grasse, emblematic places in the world of perfume because the character we will follow is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, who has an extraordinary sense of smell. After an unhappy childhood, Jean-Baptiste has the ambition to capture the very essence of people because according to him, each person naturally gives off a smell of his own. This ambition becomes a real obsession, making him one of the greatest murderers in history.
This book is full of smells plunging us into the meanders of a nauseating Paris to the lavender fields of southern France. The fear we may feel when reading this book emanates only from the character John the Baptist who is clearly devoid of humanity. Beyond a virtuosity of writing and incredibly realistic descriptions of smells, the genius of the author lies above all in the fact of having chosen the point of view of the murderer, a point of view that then allows to arouse in the reader this feeling of dread.
Novels populated by witches
The Witches of Salem by Arthur Miller
The Witches of Salem is a play by Arthur Miller (The Crucible) written, published and performed for the first time in 1953. The play is inspired by a famous trial in American history, which took place in 1692. This is the famous witch hunt that reflects a New England dominated by a kind of Puritan hysteria. A crisis of hysteria that gave rise to more than twenty-five executions on satanic grounds.
For Arthur Miller, the witch trials are actually an allegory of McCarthyism. Thus, the witch hunt then becomes a hunt for communists. Recall here that Arthur Miller was questioned by the "Un-American Activities Commission" at that time.
A witch at the court of Philippe Madral
A Witch at Court is a historical novel by Philippe Madral, published in 2019. It is inspired by an investigation, the famous case of Poisons under the reign of Louis XIV to highlight the situation of women in the eighteenth century.
So we are in 1678 when Paris knows countless and abominable murders. And for the rumor, no doubt, it is poisoners under the influence of the devil who are behind all this. While an investigation is opened to convict them, the lieutenant general of police, La Reynie, discovers a terrible plot. Above all, behind this great violence, it is a question of highlighting the violence that women suffer on a daily basis.
