31 Days of Horror: Day 13-- Why I Love Horror by Danielle Trussoni

Today, on lucky day 13, I would like to highlight an author who is a  great readalike for yesterday's essayist. Meet Danielle Trussoni:

Danielle Trussoni is a New York Times, USA Today and internationally bestselling author whose books have been translated into more than thirty languages. She has written five books. Her latest The Ancestor was selected as an Editor’s Choice by The New York Times. She served as jury chair of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, and is the Horror Columnist for The New York Times Book Review. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.

Her most recent novel,  The Ancestor is the perfect suggestion to someone who wants a creepy read with an amazing setting and a captivating protagonist. Captivating in that you cannot stop watching her, you kind of want to be her, and yet you also don't. Click here for my full glowing review. This book is a readlaike for all of your Katsu and Jennifer McMahon fans.  

Trussoni is also the New York Times Book Review's Horror Columnist and in that capacity, you can watch her, myself and and Sadie Hartmann talk about our reviewing philosophies and how understanding the reviewer can help you use the review to help readers as part of Librarians' Day. Details and how to view and participate are here.

Also check out  Hartmann's "Why  I Love Horror" essay from last year's blog-a-thon. 

And now, here is Trussoni who shares why she loves horror, hint-- she likes the Gothic-- and she also asks you to share your feelings about the genre with her at the end.  

31 Days of Horror

Danielle Trussoni

 

I first came to the horror genre by mistake.  As a kid, I spent many hours each summer at the local library, where I would check out books more or less because of their covers. In the eighties, horror covers were pretty amazing (at least to me they were!) and so I ended up reading a lot of books by Anne Rice and VC Andrews, Stephen King and other horror writers, as well as fantasy and teen novels. I didn’t know what genre was, but I knew I wanted to read books that got my attention on page and kept me reading until the end.  This mix created a love for great storytelling, books that are both character and plot driven, and stories that keep me intellectually engaged. 

  

These preferences led me to classic Gothic novels like Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Dracula, and Frankenstein, all of which (except for Dracula, of course), were written by women. I found that I loved 19^th century Sensation Fiction, and early crime novels like The Woman in White and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, as well, because they mixed mystery, suspense and elements of horror together. 

 

Although I never would have imagined it, horror fiction has shaped my way of seeing the world

 

Now, a large part of my reading is in the horror genre. I write literary horror mystery novels (no one can really pin a genre on them, which makes me infinitely happy). I read horror novels and review them as the Horror Columnist for The New York Times Book Review. To take it a step further, I recently created a sci-fi/horror podcast called Crypto-Zwith my husband. 

 

If you are a reader who thinks that the horror genre is comprised of books about chainsaw massacres and slasher teenaged bloodbaths, I will say: you are in for a delightful surprise. Horror, for me, is about the miraculous, the awe-inspiring, the things in nature and the human psyche that defy explanation. This idea is, in some ways, at the very foundation of the horror genre. I think specifically of the tradition of HP Lovecraft (if you’re looking to read Lovecraft, a few of my favorite are: “At The Mountains of Madness” and “Under The Pyramid”, in which Houdini is kidnapped in Egypt by a group of Bedouin and finds himself trapped in a cavern below the Sphinx of Giza).

 

Lovecraftian horror is often described as “the fear and awe we feel when confronted with phenomena beyond our comprehension, whose scope extends beyond the narrow field of human affairs and boasts of cosmic significance” or “a contemplation of mankind’s place in the vast, comfortless universe revealed by modern science”. In other words, horror is intellectual and cerebral and blows your mind. 

 

For me, this idea of horror  means exploring the unknown. Horror, for me, is a way of looking into possibilities of the universe and just how awe-inspiring and scary they can be. This is why I’m so drawn particularly to horror of the Gothic variation.

 

There can be some confusion about what exactly Gothic means, so here is  one definition: “Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature and film that combines fiction and horror, death and at times romance. Gothic fiction tends to place emphasis on both emotion and a pleasurable kind of terror, serving as an extension of the Romantic literary movement... The most common of these pleasures among Gothic readers was the sublime—an indescribable feeling that takes us beyond ourselves.” 

 

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a great example of the idea of the sublime and the contemplation of mankind’s place in the universe, as revealed by science. A quote that comes to mind from the book says:

 

“So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein---more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown power, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.” 

 

Frankenstein’s creator is tapping into exactly the same sentiment explored in Lovecraft’s stories, the idea of mankind’s place in the world and the unsettling horror of a vast unknown, explored through science and, in this case, the act of creation.

 

“With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, an my candle was nearly out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the create open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.”

 

Some of my other favorites in the genre are Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and even Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. 

In my years as a horror critic, my horizons have been expanded to some great modern examples as well, most recently including: Wonderland by Zoje Stage, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Things In Jars by Jess Kidd, The Return by Rachel Harrison, and The Unsuitable by Molly Pohlig. All of these stories dig into what’s lurking below the surface of the mundane world.

 

Gothic influences are everywhere in my own work. My series Angelology and Angelopolis combines the arcane with science, while The Ancestor puts a sinister, Gothic spin on the traditional ‘family secrets’ novel. A young woman inherits a fortune and a castle in the Italian Alps from a mysterious family she never knew she had, only to find that her own ancestry is wrapped up in a shocking scientific mystery.

 

I’m often curious about what readers feel about the horror genre, how they define it, and what kinds of books they like to read (either in horror or outside of it). I’d love to hear from you. If you’re on social media, get in touch. I’m @DaniTrussoni on twitter and DanielleTrussoni on Instagram. Have a dark and stormy October.