20. Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror & Speculative Fiction

By Lisa Kröger and Melanie Anderson

During the 2020 pandemic, Olman ordered a bunch of books from Argo because he wanted to support a local indie bookshop.
 
I think he had spotted Monster, She Wrote and thought it'd be right up my wheelhouse.  It took me a while to realize this, but it turned out he was right!   At first, I only read the chapters of authors I was already familiar with, ie. Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Sarah Waters, etc.  It was only later when I started reading the book from start to finish that I discovered a treasure trove of new authors.  This also explains why I finally finished it in 2024, as I would read a chapter in between my "regular" reading routine.
 
Even though Monster, She Wrote gives a general overview of sorts, it also pays tribute to the trailblazing women writers of horror and science fiction of the past four centuries starting with the Gothic fiction of Mary Cavendish and Mary Shelley to contemporary award-winners Helen Oyeyemi and Emily St. John Mandel.  Yet what makes this book special is that Kröger and Anderson also shine a light on more obscure and/or overlooked writers, like Ruby Jean Jensen, Elizabeth Engstrom and Kathe Koja.
 
The authors may be academics, but Monster, She Wrote is written in an easy, informal yet informational style with lots of pop-cultural references.  Each featured author is organized by subgenre, gets a brief life history, their better known works (with brief descriptions), recommended reads and a quote. I sat updating my 'to read' list as I went through each author, picking up almost several new books to check out!   
 
Monster, She Wrote is a keeper for sure.  I have my first wave of authors I want to read asap but there will definitely be a second wave as I delve into works by other featured writers.
 
p.s. I've already started checking off my list by:

•     borrowing the graphic novelThrough The Woods from the library
•     purchasing a reprint of Elizabeth Engstrom's When Darkness Loves Us
•     purchasing a reprint of Kathe Koja's The Cipher

9. The Sisters Brothers

By Patrick DeWitt

I think this was one of those rare times where I actually purchased a trade paperback brand new, jumping on the bandwagon with this much hyped novel.  I remember how the CBC and The Globe & Mail heaped praise on this book as the author is Canadian.  

Even Olman remembered the hype when he came across a a free copy several years later and decided to give it a go.  Thank goodness for that as I can just link to his review of it here (yay to retroactive reviews).

I’m trying to remember if I had ever read a real Western.  I don’t think I have, so this is the only book that comes close, though I'm not sure whether it counts as one.  Like how Speculative Fiction is high literature for the Sci-Fi genre, The Sisters Brothers is like Spec Fic for Westerns.   

I really quite enjoyed this book.  It had everything it was supposed to have in an award-winning 'literary western' of this calibre.  The brothers made a flawed yet charismatic pair tossing witty exchanges at each other, the plot had some bad guys, the story was engaging with the right amount of humour, action, and romance all delivered via high quality writing. 

… and this was the beginning of our new brotherhood, with Charlie never again to be the one so far ahead, and me following clumsily behind, which is not to say the roles were reversed, but destroyed. Afterward, and even today, we are careful in our relationship, as though fearful of upsetting each other. In terms of our previous manner of correspondence I cannot say why it vanished suddenly then, snuffed as it was like a candle. Of course the moment it passed I became fond of it in a sorrowful kind of way, at least in theory or maudlin memory. But the question has entered my mind so many times: Whatever became of my bold brother? I can never say, only that he was gone and has yet to return.

--

I brought this book with me during our vacation in Vancouver, where we visited friends in Lasqueti Island.  Not surprisingly, they had read this too.  

10. The Pesthouse

By Jim Crace 

I put The Pesthouse on my list as it was a post-apocalyptic tale about America, albeit a literary one, and I had read good reviews.  The story plays out as a kind of reverse frontier tale.  In the historical past as we know it, America was the new land that Europeans emigrated to as pioneers and settlers.  Now in some distant future, some unnamed catastrophe has reduced post-industrial America to ruin and the generations that have survived have since regressed to a state similar to the 17th century colonial frontier, except without any Indians or abundant resources.  This backstory is given in incremental detail.  At the beginning of the novel, you’re led to think the setting is like the Old West.  But instead of traveling west, the two brothers travel east, their ultimate goal being to board a sailing ship towards Europe in order to seek a better life.

I had very mixed feelings about this novel, being mainly disappointed by the lackluster storytelling. There was quality to some of the writing as befits a “literary” work, as this novel is regarded as such, but I generally felt quite disconnected from the main characters and indifferent to the events that befell them.  

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road had a similar premise and it too had a distant narrative style, but as a reader, I was much better able to relate to the character’s desperate situation and immerse myself in that frighteningly black and lifeless world.  The Pesthouse, on the other hand, was like watching a mildly interesting TV drama.  The novel, as a wholle, was strangely and frustratingly low-ley. For much of the novel, the threat of violence was looming (when it finally comes it is rather PG-rated), and though blood-curdling violence is not always necessary in this type of story, the author never takes the narrative to a level that impacts the reader in any memorable way.  

This review from The New Yorker articulately summed up how I felt about the book.  It's evident that Jim Crace is a great writer, but The Pesthouse was obviously not the best pick to showcase his talent.

“The Pesthouse” is Jim Crace’s ninth novel, and the most self-consciously mythic. Certainly, it’s a far cry from the virtuoso fusion of high-concept fabulism and psychological realism you find in “Being Dead” (1999), which takes a pitilessly minute observation, as through a microscope, of the processes of organic decay in the lifeless bodies of a middle-aged married couple, and makes something unexpectedly romantic. Nor do you find the world-conjuring gifts that are on display in Crace’s “Continent,” “Signals of Distress,” “The Gift of Stones,” and “Quarantine.”

The new novel is almost purely conceptual, an idea-driven work that might have been more effectively executed in graphic-novel form, or in film. The post-apocalyptic landscape, though repeatedly described, is never more than generic wilderness, like the backlot set of a low-budget movie, and never acquires regional specificity. Where Crace’s first, Calvino-inspired novel, “Continent,” conjured an imaginary continent through the sheer poetry of language, “The Pesthouse” is blandly and perfunctorily narrated…

The book’s droll, mock-tall-tale tone soon grates: it isn’t clear whether Crace wants us to feel sympathy for his characters or laugh at them as fools who have brought their collective doom upon themselves. 

Although this review by the Guardian praised The Pesthouse as a “wonderful, wonderful book”, the reviewer also shared my opinion about the novel’s flaws.

At this point Crace's customary rigour and control desert him for a while: there are a number of rather pointless diversions and adventures, but they don't engage the reader. It is as though, by broadening his perspective to include America and the perennial American dream, Crace has gone a little beyond his natural inclinations and ventured outside the arena of his enviable talents. The endless attempts to find food and to escape capture or rape - particularly after Franklin and Margaret are separated and Margaret acquires a baby - become less and less interesting. After Franklin has been enslaved by bandits (who are very sketchily drawn), Margaret finds refuge with a strange religious sect, the Finger Baptists, near the coast. Now the story picks up again, and all Crace's imagination is brought to bear on the elders of the sect, the Helpless Gentlemen, who must be washed, fed and even pleasured by the women, as using their own hands is the devil's work. Somewhat improbably - even within the very flexible boundaries of what is permissible in a dystopian novel - Margaret and Franklin are reunited and the novel canters towards the finish. The couple find a row of abandoned cottages near the sea and make some sort of life there as they wait to emigrate. Here Crace is at his best, describing their sight of the ocean and its vast and alien character.

Some people might like this book, but I'm not going to recommend this to anyone I know.  There are some interesting ideas, but I have read more traditional PA genre novels that are more engaging and original than this one.

Literary fiction versus genre fiction

The Globe and Mail books section recently featured an article about how reading fiction is good for you.

I appreciate Keith Oatley's study that reading fiction is indeed good for the mind and soul by fostering empathy for others and expanding worldviews.  However, it's towards the end of the article that Oakley makes the specific case that only literary fiction (not any other fiction) can have the capacity to change you:

For his part, Oatley is convinced that the better the writer, the more powerful the simulation, and he makes a distinction between literary fiction and genre fiction.

“You can have a good read, but it is sort of like going on a roller coaster. The engineers have constructed it so you have a particular set of experiences. You get off, your heart is beating a bit, but you are still the same person,” he says of reading a thriller or detective story. On the other hand, “Chekhov was a great artist: The effect is different – the extent to which [the reader] can really inhabit another mind.”

The roller coaster may be fun, but the flight simulator … now that's art.

Does this mean then, that reading genre fiction would not have any of the same benefits – at all?  Does reading lowly genre fiction serve to merely excite the mind, rather than enlighten it?  Oatley says that in order to truly inhabit the mind of someone else, the story should contain three of six elements (the article doesn't list them; I guess you have to buy a book or something).  But what if a story contains the required elements but the characters you are inhabiting the mind of happen to fly spaceships, slay dragons, or investigate murders?

I’m sure if I were to only read Dan Brown or Danielle Steele, I would probably suffer some mental deficiency over time and perhaps become even more self-absorbed than usual.  But I can’t get over Oatley's (and the Globe & Mail's) condescending attitude towards genre fiction -- that is, fiction that is not in the lofty form of literature.  This kind of smug attitude seems all too common among those who read literary fiction primarily to be enlightened, and if they were to read any other fiction, it would be for simple edification, escapism or entertainment.  

For one thing, Oatley sings the praises of how Pride and Prejudice is "a wonderful example of the simulator effect", conveniently overlooking the fact that this classic novel is also a romance at heart. An extremely well-written romance, to be sure, but P&P nevertheless uses the same tropes found in any Harlequin paperback. Even Austen herself admitted that P&P was like a sparkling flight of fancy which stood apart from her other works.  Oatley is right in that the power of simulation depends on the talent and skills of the writer, yet he argues that thrillers and detective novels don’t count. So I guess Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Patricia Highsmith just don’t cut it when it comes to rewarding simulation then.

I just recently read my first Alice Munro book, a classic coming of age novel that was banned from schools because of its sexual content. Alice Munro is considered a sacred cow of CanLit, a master of storytelling.  Legions of fans revere her for the powerful realness and understatedness of her writing. But personally I found her book to be a snooze-fest.  It failed to have any of that simulator effect on me, and other than a few exceptional passages, the novel failed as a whole to stimulate my mind in any real way, suffering from too much description, a lack of plot and a meandering structure (which happen to be -surprise- the clichés of literary fiction).

At first I felt a little guilty. I consider myself a fairly well-read person who has read all kinds of books (modern and classic literature, romance, fantasy, sci-fi, thrillers, horror, non-fiction, etc), surely I’m missing something important by being bored with a Munro book (and a classic one at that)? But no, I realize that there are plenty of other well-read people who feel the same way.

For me, it’s not about being on a rollercoaster, it's about being engaged – the equivalent is the suture effect when watching a movie. How can I really inhabit another person’s mind (or appreciate the true artistry of literary fiction) if I’m bored to tears? Or worse, if I feel obligated to read literary fiction because it's considered important.  Literary fiction shouldn't be a chore, or like a root vegetable  (it's not about enjoying it, it's about what's good for you).  I get that literature can allow us to understand the human condition better, but I also like to be engaged with what I'm reading at the same time.

In many ways, Alice Munro writes more beautifully than Austen, yet her stories are much harder for me to engage with. What makes Jane Austen distinctive (and so popular) is her brilliant social insight wrapped up in the form of a tightly structured (and appealing) narrative. There are plenty of gifted writers who follow this tradition of mixing "high" (quality writing) with “low” (genre conventions) – Sarah Waters, Gil Adamson, Susanna Clarke, Laura Lippman (no reason why I only came up with female authors), but also Juno Diaz, Jonathan Lethem, Patrick O’Brian also come to mind -- who have made far more impact on my mind than any Munro or Atwood or literary icon of "serious" fiction.

The thing is, I don't believe there is a qualitative difference between literary and genre fiction, as it's apparent that literature borrows much from genre fiction, and all the better for it.  By the same token, genre fiction can provide a deeper understanding of human foibles.  Again, it's a matter of context.  Sherlock Holmes was probably considered pulp fiction in its day, but those books are now regarded as literary classics.  These books are most definitely detective novels, but they also contain sharp character studies of the protagonists - do they not qualify as wonderful simulators in Oakley's mind because the stories also happen to be driven by plot?  Certainly, reading about the friendship between Holmes and Watson must help readers understand, as Oatley says, "what goes on between people” in real life.

And I'll bet a lot of the simulator effect depends on how the reader responds to the work of fiction.  I'm sure if Oatley were to take MRI scans from me and an avid Munro fan on how we respond to Lives of Girls and Women, the mental synapses of the Munro fan would be firing while mine would be dormant.  But I'm sure my synapses would awaken if I were to read a Stieg Larsson book.  He is not a great writer, but he does a wonderful job of painting a picture of a bleak Stockholm and making the unrealistic yet very identifiable Lisbeth Salander come alive in my mind.  Does that make me, as a reader, less capable of empathy?  One person's response is not superior or inferior to the other; we're just different people with different perceptions and experiences.

I think that Oatley must have equated genre fiction with sensational writing (which elicits cheap emotions), and literary fiction with great writing (that provokes thought and intelligent emotions), overlooking the fact that great writing is not strictly limited to the lofty realm of literary fiction.  That is the only explanation I can think of to understand where his snobby attitude and silly arguments came from.

Perhaps I should pick up Such Stuff as Dreams, as I'd really like to see the type of reader cross-section that was used for these MRI scans.  Because at the moment, it strikes me as ironic how Oatley makes the case for fiction fostering greater empathy, yet he himself holds such close-minded regard for genre fiction.

Anyway, that’s my rant for the year!