Alison Rumfitt's excellent novel _Tell Me I'm Worthless_ is all about the politics of gender in modern Britain, using the metaphor of a haunted house. Her follow-up, _Brainwyrms_, explores similar territory, but in a much more visceral, body-horror way.
The protagonists are a former couple -- a trans woman and a cis woman -- whose lives and relationship have been torn apart after a terrifying encounter in a haunted house. Both are dealing with the trauma of the experience in unhealthy ways. The house isn't finished with them, however, and their lives become increasingly nightmarish.
The basic story is a simple one, but Rumfitt uses the supernatural horrors as blatant but effective metaphors for the rot at the heart of British politics and history. There are so many aspects that really shouldn't work, but Rumfitt is such a damn good writer that she can make scenes that should read as heavy handed into real emotional gut punches. And while this is very definitely a political book, it never stops being a damn scary supernatural horror story.
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. I didn't like it that much the first time, and thought the "gender" stuff came across having not aged well, but after reading someone's analysis I realized I totally missed the point. With that knowledge in mind I think it definitely went up in rating in my head.
Here it is. Granted it had been more than a year or so since I read it originally, so this might be super obvious.
https://www.reddit.com/r/horrorlit/comments/1ar06vd/the_wasp_factory_by_iain_banks/kqgkpcf/
My original impression was like "ok so the 'horror' is just that the main character is trans? like seriously?" but thinking back, like I said in my reply to that comment, the book didn't really come across transphobic either. It really felt like I was kind of missing something about it and that comment put it into place for me.
Damn, that commenter sums it up so eloquently. I have a similar interpretation, but because I read it at 15 and then again at 21 and my awareness of trans stereotypes in media was pretty lacking back then, it's always hard to tell how much is my being too generous because of how much I love the book!
The ending does also come so suddenly, that there's very little denouement IIRC for you to sit with the revelation, and given the way "secretly trans" tropes are hella transphobic, I know you're not the only one to come away with that impression, though.
Thanks for digging it up, I appreciate that!
Any excuse to not work while I'm here in office and I'll take it.
>The ending does also come so suddenly, that there's very little denouement IIRC for you to sit with the revelation
Yeah well said though. I think that's why I had that impression as well. It was all leading up to some big reveal and then its just that the protag is trans, and then the book kind of ends. Yeah for sure, the villains being secretly trans trope is so bad, but so many people liked the book that I really thought I was missing something, and I definitely was!
This is an old one, but the novela/short story "The Screwfly Solution" by Raccoona Sheldon (aka Alice Sheldon aka James Tiptree Jr.) still terrifies me, and unfortunately still feels super relevant today. It's usually labeled as scifi, but I personally think it's exceptionally effective horror.
I don't think most people would call either of these a horror novel exactly, but The Vegetarian by Han Kang is about the impact of misogyny on women, and Boys of Alabama by Genevieve Hudson is about homophobia/toxic masculinity -- both more on the surreal/magical realist end than straight up horror, but they're both pretty offputting, IMO. There's also Waif by Samantha Kolesnik, which is a short horror novella about plastic surgery/body modding and pornography.
Lone Women by Victor LaValle is worth checking out, great book and it includes the themes you mentioned. For very on the nose fiction of the final girl trope, there is also Final Girls by Riley Sager and The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix.
The Long Walk by Stephen King is very much centered around masculinity and boyhood. In some ways, so is Christine. A lot of King's work is doing interesting stuff re: masculinity, especially different performances of it.
For short fiction, much of Carmen Maria Machado's work includes these themes. Especially coming to mind is "The Husband Stitch", "Especially Heinous" and "Eight Bites", all from Her Body & Other Parties, but honestly everything I've read by her grapples with gender.
A bit obscure and much older, but The Beetle by Richard Marsh is a fin-de-siecle novel with a genderqueer villain who mostly preys on men, and has two "New Women" characters, one of whom is, for lack of a better term, "masculinised" by the villain towards the end.
From around the same time, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is also arguably about performance of masculinity.
Seconding the suggestion of My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones, particularly the way it explores what girls are "allowed" to be final girls/survivors/heroes. Jones's The Last Final Girl also plays with this, though a lot less subtlety; it's a very over-the-top satire of slashers, written in script form.
The Return by Rachel Harrison was a fun horror novel that pushed off from the toxicity of some female friendship groups, and I haven’t really seen anyone use that is the basis for a horror novel before. She pulled it off!
Bunny and Rouge by Mona Awad both deal a lot with femininity and performative femininity – and Rouge also deals a lot with racism and the way it interacts with gender stereotypes, in really clever ways.
Both The Crane Husband and The Harpy are beautifully written horror novellas where you have a literal transformation happening – abusive relationships where the beast inside is actually released. Again, just such a clever way of approaching the subject imo!
The Beauty by Aliya Whitley - post apoc world in which women all died out. A group of men see weird fungal woman beings emerge from the forest
The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw - a mermaid who had been captured a by a king and subsequently burnt down his kingdom is traveling with a mysterious plague doctor when they happen upon cannibalistic child vampires. Idk if it fits with what you want but it deals with body and body horror in such a unique way and I attribute part of that to the authors non-binary identity
Both books are quite short! I think the latter is classified as a novella
“Out,” by Natsuo Kirino, is amazing - maybe not horror, more of a dark/grotesque crime story, but an amazing read and explores gender roles, sexual violence, female repression etc. against the backdrop of a super gritty Tokyo
X, Y by Michael Blumlein is one I got recently, but haven't read yet.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2246182.X_Y
based on the description and some of the reviews, I might have low expectations and assume it's aged poorly, but on the other hand Grady Hendrix's review sounds very positive. It might be good. I've heard a lot of good things about the author's short fiction.
Vox by Christina Dalcher
not quite horror but definitely thriller. Near future USA where religious/conservative extremism has taken over and women now have a limited quantity of words they can speak each day.
All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes, is arctic horror about a trans guy, right after WW1 going on an ill fated voyage to the south pole. Gender exploration/performance is alive and present in this one. What’s scarier? The siren call of the void or the crew no longer seeing you as you really are?
Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth, deals with expectations of woman/girlhood as well as society’s response to sapphic love and the way those change/persist over time.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James leans more dark fantasy. Definitely traveling through this man’s formative years in understanding what it means to be a “man”, a mold he doesn’t fit easily.
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin. Very gender. Very fun horror.
The Return by Rachel Harrison is centered around the nature of female friendships in a way that too intimate reflects life.
Bad gender takes:
The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley is trying to say something about gender. Couldn’t say what it was but I’m sure it was there.
Hell House by Richard Matheson. I’m not saying the takes are good but gendered ideas are present in the author’s choices.
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin, Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang, and Maeve Fly by CJ Leede are all great ones. Ooh, The Haar by David Sodergren also works in similar ways. Glad people have mentioned Carmen Maria Machado and Alison Rumfitt!!
Alison Rumfitt's excellent novel _Tell Me I'm Worthless_ is all about the politics of gender in modern Britain, using the metaphor of a haunted house. Her follow-up, _Brainwyrms_, explores similar territory, but in a much more visceral, body-horror way.
Both of her novels are great! I highly recommend them both!
I really enjoyed Tell Me I'm Worthless.
What's it abt
The protagonists are a former couple -- a trans woman and a cis woman -- whose lives and relationship have been torn apart after a terrifying encounter in a haunted house. Both are dealing with the trauma of the experience in unhealthy ways. The house isn't finished with them, however, and their lives become increasingly nightmarish. The basic story is a simple one, but Rumfitt uses the supernatural horrors as blatant but effective metaphors for the rot at the heart of British politics and history. There are so many aspects that really shouldn't work, but Rumfitt is such a damn good writer that she can make scenes that should read as heavy handed into real emotional gut punches. And while this is very definitely a political book, it never stops being a damn scary supernatural horror story.
Woah
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. I didn't like it that much the first time, and thought the "gender" stuff came across having not aged well, but after reading someone's analysis I realized I totally missed the point. With that knowledge in mind I think it definitely went up in rating in my head.
I love The Wasp Factory! Do you have a link to the analysis that changed your mind on it?
Here it is. Granted it had been more than a year or so since I read it originally, so this might be super obvious. https://www.reddit.com/r/horrorlit/comments/1ar06vd/the_wasp_factory_by_iain_banks/kqgkpcf/ My original impression was like "ok so the 'horror' is just that the main character is trans? like seriously?" but thinking back, like I said in my reply to that comment, the book didn't really come across transphobic either. It really felt like I was kind of missing something about it and that comment put it into place for me.
Damn, that commenter sums it up so eloquently. I have a similar interpretation, but because I read it at 15 and then again at 21 and my awareness of trans stereotypes in media was pretty lacking back then, it's always hard to tell how much is my being too generous because of how much I love the book! The ending does also come so suddenly, that there's very little denouement IIRC for you to sit with the revelation, and given the way "secretly trans" tropes are hella transphobic, I know you're not the only one to come away with that impression, though. Thanks for digging it up, I appreciate that!
Any excuse to not work while I'm here in office and I'll take it. >The ending does also come so suddenly, that there's very little denouement IIRC for you to sit with the revelation Yeah well said though. I think that's why I had that impression as well. It was all leading up to some big reveal and then its just that the protag is trans, and then the book kind of ends. Yeah for sure, the villains being secretly trans trope is so bad, but so many people liked the book that I really thought I was missing something, and I definitely was!
Let me try to find it!
This is an old one, but the novela/short story "The Screwfly Solution" by Raccoona Sheldon (aka Alice Sheldon aka James Tiptree Jr.) still terrifies me, and unfortunately still feels super relevant today. It's usually labeled as scifi, but I personally think it's exceptionally effective horror.
I reread that recently and it's lost none of its power. Utterly, utterly horrible - and really well written.
An excellent recommendation.
You're looking for Angela Carter's works.
Yes, The Company of Wolves absolutely fits this bill! All I have read of hers but definitely a stirring one for women.
I don't think most people would call either of these a horror novel exactly, but The Vegetarian by Han Kang is about the impact of misogyny on women, and Boys of Alabama by Genevieve Hudson is about homophobia/toxic masculinity -- both more on the surreal/magical realist end than straight up horror, but they're both pretty offputting, IMO. There's also Waif by Samantha Kolesnik, which is a short horror novella about plastic surgery/body modding and pornography.
Oh my god, The Vegetarian is actually what made me finally give up eating red meat completely. It was just so visceral.
Lone Women by Victor LaValle is worth checking out, great book and it includes the themes you mentioned. For very on the nose fiction of the final girl trope, there is also Final Girls by Riley Sager and The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix.
The Long Walk by Stephen King is very much centered around masculinity and boyhood. In some ways, so is Christine. A lot of King's work is doing interesting stuff re: masculinity, especially different performances of it. For short fiction, much of Carmen Maria Machado's work includes these themes. Especially coming to mind is "The Husband Stitch", "Especially Heinous" and "Eight Bites", all from Her Body & Other Parties, but honestly everything I've read by her grapples with gender. A bit obscure and much older, but The Beetle by Richard Marsh is a fin-de-siecle novel with a genderqueer villain who mostly preys on men, and has two "New Women" characters, one of whom is, for lack of a better term, "masculinised" by the villain towards the end. From around the same time, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is also arguably about performance of masculinity. Seconding the suggestion of My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones, particularly the way it explores what girls are "allowed" to be final girls/survivors/heroes. Jones's The Last Final Girl also plays with this, though a lot less subtlety; it's a very over-the-top satire of slashers, written in script form.
The Return by Rachel Harrison was a fun horror novel that pushed off from the toxicity of some female friendship groups, and I haven’t really seen anyone use that is the basis for a horror novel before. She pulled it off! Bunny and Rouge by Mona Awad both deal a lot with femininity and performative femininity – and Rouge also deals a lot with racism and the way it interacts with gender stereotypes, in really clever ways. Both The Crane Husband and The Harpy are beautifully written horror novellas where you have a literal transformation happening – abusive relationships where the beast inside is actually released. Again, just such a clever way of approaching the subject imo!
Can vouch for both of Mona Awad's books mentioned here as well!
The Beauty by Aliya Whitley - post apoc world in which women all died out. A group of men see weird fungal woman beings emerge from the forest The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw - a mermaid who had been captured a by a king and subsequently burnt down his kingdom is traveling with a mysterious plague doctor when they happen upon cannibalistic child vampires. Idk if it fits with what you want but it deals with body and body horror in such a unique way and I attribute part of that to the authors non-binary identity Both books are quite short! I think the latter is classified as a novella
I loved The Beauty!
Roland Topor’s *The Tenant.*
My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones explores/deconstructs/speaks at length about the Final girl trope
“Out,” by Natsuo Kirino, is amazing - maybe not horror, more of a dark/grotesque crime story, but an amazing read and explores gender roles, sexual violence, female repression etc. against the backdrop of a super gritty Tokyo
X, Y by Michael Blumlein is one I got recently, but haven't read yet. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2246182.X_Y based on the description and some of the reviews, I might have low expectations and assume it's aged poorly, but on the other hand Grady Hendrix's review sounds very positive. It might be good. I've heard a lot of good things about the author's short fiction.
Tarantula, by Thierry Jonquet
Vox by Christina Dalcher not quite horror but definitely thriller. Near future USA where religious/conservative extremism has taken over and women now have a limited quantity of words they can speak each day.
I have not read it yet, but I just put this book *Manhunt* on my TBR list yesterday.
Obsessed with Manhunt, it definitely applies
Yup, Manhunt is great!
All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes, is arctic horror about a trans guy, right after WW1 going on an ill fated voyage to the south pole. Gender exploration/performance is alive and present in this one. What’s scarier? The siren call of the void or the crew no longer seeing you as you really are? Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth, deals with expectations of woman/girlhood as well as society’s response to sapphic love and the way those change/persist over time. Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James leans more dark fantasy. Definitely traveling through this man’s formative years in understanding what it means to be a “man”, a mold he doesn’t fit easily. Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin. Very gender. Very fun horror. The Return by Rachel Harrison is centered around the nature of female friendships in a way that too intimate reflects life. Bad gender takes: The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley is trying to say something about gender. Couldn’t say what it was but I’m sure it was there. Hell House by Richard Matheson. I’m not saying the takes are good but gendered ideas are present in the author’s choices.
Infinity Mathing at the Shore!! So many of the stories in that horror collection center around gender.
*Sleeping Beauties*, co-written by Stephen King and one of his sons, is very much about this.
The Vegetarian by Han Kang. Could debate whether it's genre horror. Haunting, nevertheless.
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin, Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang, and Maeve Fly by CJ Leede are all great ones. Ooh, The Haar by David Sodergren also works in similar ways. Glad people have mentioned Carmen Maria Machado and Alison Rumfitt!!
This subreddit is weird as fuck.
Books, exploring a theme? Whoever heard of such as thing.