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Horror as a Perfect Vehicle: A Book List for October

October 8, 2024

It’s always a joy to visit the library, but especially in October, when the libraries get witchy and weird and fun. We have a lot of wonderful programming this month for you to check out for youth and adults alike, including making leaf garlands, build-a-monster-box gatherings, writing workshops involving ghosts, and a lecture about Mary Shelley. Some of these are happening at multiple locations; you can view our complete events calendar online for more information. And do feel free to come by the Central Library’s 3^rd Floor any day through the middle of November to peruse the National Library of Medicine’s “Frankenstein: Penetrating the Laws of Nature” exhibit, and to admire some of the strange and fascinating items we’ve pulled and displayed from the library’s special collections, including the 15^th century tome, The Discovery of Witchcraft.

Since it’s the month of scaries and hairies, I’ve been thinking of horror novels, and why I love them. My own personal favorite is Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. What I love about this novel is not just the frightening supernatural content but also the heightened emotional reality of its main character, Eleanor Vance, a creature rippling with vulnerability and longing. Eleanor’s backstory is barely hinted at: emotional abuse at the hands of her mother and sister; isolation and grief as her mother’s caretaker; a hopeful new beginning in a paranormal experiment at Hill House. As a reader I wanted everything to go for Eleanor as she wished, a new friendship, a new romance, a new life of autonomy and safety and adventure.

Alas, this is horror. And this isn’t, for Eleanor, what comes to pass.

But there’s a thrilling, terrifying scene late in the novel in which the house inhabits Eleanor as much as she inhabits it, and her wheeling through its rooms in a fit of delirious release is as close to a happy ending as we will get for her.

The best horror seems to understand the very nature of trauma, and to somehow twist it so that what frightens us and consumes us becomes legible, readable, metaphorical, and yes—horrifically—fun. If the ability to share our most difficult stories is healing, the horror genre is a perfect vehicle.

I continue to root for Eleanor even now, despite my knowing the ending. Whenever I re-read this book, I hope for a different outcome that never comes. She doesn’t deserve what befalls her, as so many people do not. And despite the darkness, or rather, because of it, I revisit this book again and again.

There are so many awesome horror novels to read this eerie season. Here is a smattering of scary titles, most of them published in the last year or two, that we have on our library shelves: