Hungerstone by Kat Dunn

[Matt McKeon]

I'm adding Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu to my Horror Literature class for next class. I've gone down a rabbit hole of reading books using the Carmilla character, or reimaging the Carmilla story. Most, I'm sorry to say, don't resonate with me. Partly because they don't work for me as literature, and partly because vampires might be suave and sexy aristocrats in fiction, but they are still basically just serial killers, not heroes.

However.....

 

[Matt McKeon]

Hungerstone is darn good. Lady Lenore is in a loveless marriage of convenience with a British steel magnate in the 1880s, where she traded her aristocratic name and connections for his wealth. For mysterious reasons he packs them off to a remote country estate, in a massive crumbling gothic manorhouse, near Sheffield. Lenore must contend with fixing up the house, preparing for an elite "shooting party" for her socially climbing husband, his increasingly menacing behavior towards her. Even without the entrance of Carmilla, its enough for a good Victorian novel by a Bronte or Wilkie Colllins.

 

[Matt McKeon]

Hungerstone is darn good. Lady Lenore is in a loveless marriage of convenience with a British steel magnate in the 1880s, where she traded her aristocratic name and connections for his wealth. For mysterious reasons he packs them off to a remote country estate, in a massive crumbling gothic manorhouse, near Sheffield. Lenore must contend with fixing up the house, preparing for an elite "shooting party" for her socially climbing husband, his increasingly menacing behavior towards her. Even without the entrance of Carmilla, its enough for a good Victorian novel by a Bronte or Wilkie Colllins.

Enter Carmilla, as usual the injured victim of a carriage wreck. Alluring, foreign, she is an disruptive presence in the house. Unlike in LeFanu's novella, she isn't a predator or draining the life from her victims, instead she is liberating them, connecting them to their rage and their appetites. The women in her orbit display strange and transgressive hungers, attacking, biting, eating animals and other people.

Recommended, if your tastes run to gothic Victorians.