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Showing posts from July, 2020

... the Soul of Wit

In this column I will briefly introduce random four or five books I have recently read and I don't want to review extensively for one reason or another. In this first episode you can find some books I have read during lockdown. Enjoy!

Mexican Gothic - A New Subgenre That Just Might Take Root

Silvia Moreno-Garcia's latest novel Mexican Gothic is every bit Mexican and every bit Gothic as the title makes it sound! An old British family with a funky secret living in a very creepy mansion built in the middle of nowhere in Mexico... A rich and young Mexican girl, Noemí Taboada, sent there by her father to check on her cousin Catalina who married into this peculiar family and who, in a letter for help, indicates that someone might be poisoning her... During her stay in this gloomy place, the lighthearted and carefree Noemí experiences increasingly creepy, unsettling and outright invasive illusions/dreams which only solidify Catalina's suspicions. And oh, how right she is. The first half of Mexican Gothic heavily builds up tension that leads to a deeply disgusting turning point (slight spoiler - a secene reminiscent of another very uncomfortable scene from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" 1974), from where on the storyline quickly finds a direction, certainly di...

Beware of The Roo...

Reviewing The Roo by Alan Baxter Let's get this blog started with something rather playful, namely the wonderfully silly and gory creature feature The Roo by Australian author Alan Baxter. It doesn't take the math patrol to see that this one is no literary masterpiece that belongs on every school's reading list, neither is it intellectually exacting horror that will broaden your horizons... But who cares? The Roo is thoroughly silly, pure splatter fun with the brilliant premise of a kangaroo running riot in the Australian outback, murdering humans in inventive ways an actual kangaroo would never even be able to think of... mainly because they are herbivores and generally gentle creatures. And that's a good thing, because you'd never want to be slapped to death with the dismembered arms of your dead wife or be ripped in two halves by the claw of a hopping roo... Which by the way, in the foreword Baxter suggests you google before reading. I did and I can confirm tha...