Hi there, my name is Diane! This is a bookish blog where I'll be posting my reviews and thoughts about what I'm currently reading, as well as my all time favourite books. Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy!
Mrs McLean was perched on a bench at the mostly empty train platform trying to eat her bacon and egg roll neatly while balancing her shopping bags on her lap. It was a disappointing roll; the bacon was too undercooked and fatty, and the egg was even worse. She’d plucked up the courage to ask for the yolk to be “as runny as you can get it, please” but instead it had gone orange and congealed, and she hadn’t the nerve to ask them to redo it. The roll was also too crispy for her liking with crumbs sticking to her mouth, and worse, falling on her shopping. She felt terribly self-conscious, looking around at the other people on the platform to make sure she wasn’t being observed. Mrs McLean would usually have waited until she had gotten home to have such messy food, but she’d taken to dizzy spells lately and her daughter’s voice was stuck in her head.
“You have to eat when you’re out mum, your blood pressure gets too low – you’re at that age now where you need to take care of yourself.”
Her daughter had delivered this in the same tone Mrs McLean had used when she was potty training her children and it still stung. The public eating was a kind of rebellion then, proof that she was still responsible and in control. She was regretting it deeply. A funny turn was better than the humiliation of paying £3.50 for a subpar roll and the fear of a stranger literally catching her with egg on her face.
She was halfway through chewing when she heard the sing-song of the announcement.
“Please stand clear of platform two, fast train approaching.”
It seized her then. A thought that was so urgent and surprising that she forgot how to swallow, the bacon and egg turning to mush in her mouth.
What if I jumped in front of the train.
She’d never had a thought like this and the thrill of it sent a jolt through her tummy, stirring the contents of her stomach. She swallowed the bacon-and-egg-mush, but the thought remained, niggling at her like a bad tooth.
It would be fast. I’d barely feel a thing. I’d be in all the newspapers.
She felt a wild delight picturing the confused faces of her children when they heard the news.
“There must be some sort of mistake – Julianne McLean, are you sure?”
Inside, she was frenzied, ecstatic, picturing herself flying through the air before a perfect fade to black. At that moment, she heard it – the rush of air as the train came hissing through the station. She felt electric as she rose to her feet, ready to pirouette into the perfect conclusion to her perfectly mundane life.
“Oof”,
she let out a pathetic exclamation as the blood went rushing to her head. Her roll fell out her hands with a soft thud and her shopping landed heavily on the ground. The train passed quickly, and through her dizziness, Mrs McLean felt all the adrenaline leave her body. Her cheeks reddened as she saw the few commuters on the platform look over at her with concern. Panicked, she shoved the half-eaten roll in her shopping bag; greasy bacon and egg smearing her box of cornflakes. She scurried up the platform stairs, feeling light-headed and guilty as she walked towards the bus station.
“…monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
Stephen King
Hi friends,
These next few pieces are all about different forms of monstrosity, focusing primarily on themes of memory and transformation. Hope you enjoy these poems about a witch, a werewolf, a zombie, a ghost, and a boy that just wants to be loved.
Fable
The boy had become a monster
with scaled skin,
and tusks he had grown just Wednesday afternoon.
Mum and dad had stopped looking at him
around the time he started breathing fire.
When he heard them murmur his name
along with talk of chains and the dark,
he fled to the deep forest
where whispers said others like him had made their home.
I heard it first. That awful low whisper, speaking words I heard in a dream once. “The dark has many names” Shaking, I pulled myself from bed and saw it staring through the window. “The dark has many faces” But wasn’t that my face? No, the eyes were different. Darker. It was smiling now, but it had too many teeth. “The dark is waiting for you” I tried not to look into its eyes, but it was inevitable. Because it had happened before, hadn’t it? I remembered now. And I smiled. “The dark has such delights” I had made a promise to the shadows, and now it was time to go home. I laughed, while I fell into the dark.
It would be an understatement to say that South Korean cinema is having a moment right now. Spurred by the historic Best Picture Oscar win for Bong Joon-Ho’s gothically inflected Parasite, a multitude of think pieces have been published recognising the achievements of South Korean filmmakers and speculating about what lies in store for the now globally celebrated industry. With this renewed interest in South Korean cinema, I want to take a look at two examples of recent Korean gothic horror. Looking at Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing and Yeon Sang-Ho’s Train to Busan, two differing examples of contemporary Korean Gothic, I hope to show how these films, while being ridiculously entertaining, offer commentary on cultural anxieties in contemporary Korea and beyond. While these films represent two different trends in the Gothic – rural hauntings and urban zombie outbreaks respectively – their forays into monstrousness symbolise a need to reflect on the changing cultural landscape of Korea in light of increased globalisation and neoliberalism.
*SPOILER WARNING* There are massive spoilers ahead, so if you’ve not watched the films I recommend doing so before reading. Rest assured, both films blend prescient concerns with amazing visuals and make a fantastic double bill!
The Wailing: Hauntings and National Trauma in Korean Rural Gothic
While The Wailing can seem a little oblique on the first watch – there is truly so much going on in the film – I want to argue that this helps deepen the film’s commentary on struggling identities.
The Wailing follows the initially comedically hapless policeman Jong-goo as he investigates a spate of murders in his rural village of Goksung (the film’s Korean title) seeming to be brought on by a mysterious illness in the perpetrators, which local rumours are attributing to the arrival of a Japanese stranger. However, the film slowly changes, revealing a supernatural battle of wills between different spiritual forces, with the comedic tone faltering as Jong-goo must rush to save his daughter Hyo-jin from the unnatural illness he has been investigating. Multiple gothic trappings are at play in the film with ghosts, demons and folklore overlapping to create a sense of displacement which seems reflective of the changing identities of rural Korean communities.
This film immediately puts the stranger in the realm of the occult, with rumours of his monstrousness seeming confirmed when Jong-goo and his partner, along with a Japanese speaking deacon, raid the stranger’s house for evidence wherein they find a room covered in occult paraphernalia and photographs of the victims. Once Hyo-Jin becomes possessed, Jong-goo is quick to put the full blame on the stranger. Jong-goo screams “what is all this shit” as he destroys the stranger’s house in a striking scene. If that wasn’t extreme enough, Jong-goo also kills the stranger’s dog and threatens him for good measure, misguidedly thinking this will help his daughter. The fact that it is a Japanese stranger potentially wreaking havoc on a rural Korean village makes the blame seem especially apt; recalling the Japanese Occupation in Korea which saw much of Korean culture threatened due to Japanese assimilation.
Of course, it turns out that Jong-goo was right in his suspicion as the stranger is revealed to be a demon at the film’s conclusion – complete with red eyes, scaled skin and clawed hands. However, Na complicates this by showing that Jong-goo’s blame was somewhat reductive as it is revealed that there are actually three competing forces at play for control of Hyo-jin: the stranger, Il-gwang (a shaman hired to protect the village), and Moo-myeong (a mysterious woman revealed to be a powerful spirit). With his ties to western occultism, the stranger can be seen as representative of Korea’s Christianisation, while Il-gwang represents the once thriving but now declining religion of Korean shamanism, and Moo-myeong has strong ties to Korean folklore. If we keep these associations in mind, the battle for Hyo-Jin becomes a stand-in for the struggle of identity in contemporary Korea.
We can see this in a dizzying scene, where we cut between Il-gwang and the stranger as they perform their respective rituals, while Moo-myeong watches the stranger’s ritual in the shadows. The spectacle of the scene reaches a fever pitch as we see the different practices of the two men, while shots of Hyo-jin writhing in torment highlight what is at stake in the struggle. Il-gwang’s ritual fails, while the stranger’s is successful, indicating the decline in the belief of shamanism and the rise of Christian fears in Korea. (https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2014/08/12/why-south-korea-is-so-distinctively-christian) This is furthered later in the film when Moo-Myeong tells Jong-goo that the shaman cannot be trusted as he is ‘a pawn’ for the stranger (Na, 2016) suggesting that shamanic practices have been subsumed by the Christianisation and modernisation of Korea.
Temporal dissonance is also at play in the film’s haunting as it is revealed that the stranger does not process time linearly. We see this at the film’s conclusion as Jong-goo wails “why is all of this happening?” to which Moo-Myeong responds “The father of the daughter sinned, and he has almost killed.” Although Jong-goo tries to defend himself saying “It was because of my daughter… it was because she got sick”, the stranger’s curse was premeditated, knowing that Jong-goo would attack him. Although admittedly confusing on the first watch, this technique suggests the lack of coherence in modernity, giving the impression that the present is informed by both the trauma of the past and the anxiety of the future.
As it is set in the rural Korean Peninsula, far away from urbanity, Goksung as a space encourages this dissonance, with its ties to tradition and shamanism seeming like the perfect setting to encourage the return of the past. However, the smartphones and vehicles used by the characters also represent modernity’s consumer culture, showing the shift from tradition to a more uncertain future. Although firmly rooted in Korean culture through shamanism and folklore, the film communicates anxieties that resonate in other contexts, with increasing modernisation changing how we reflect on national identities globally.
These global concerns are also apparent within Train to Busan, where we can see these anxieties expressed in urban Korean Gothic.
Train to Busan: Viral Zombies and Neoliberal Nightmares
Shifting away from the pastoral Korean peninsula, Yeon Sang-Ho’s Train to Busan sees the popular zombie genre transported to the Korean railway. I want to dig below the films bombastic surface, exploring how this crowd-pleasing Zombie film interrogates anxieties around neoliberalism – an ideology favouring free-market capitalism and reduced state controls – in contemporary Korea.
Train to Busan focuses on fund manager Seok-woo and his young daughter Su-an as they try to travel to Busan to visit Seok-woo’s estranged wife for their daughter’s birthday. However, their journey is thrown into chaos as it is revealed that viral zombie outbreaks are occurring in major Korean cities, with one infected woman quickly spreading the virus along the train the father and daughter are travelling in. Although the film features an ensemble cast with their own interesting arcs, it is Seok-woo’s redemptive journey from selfish individualist to sacrificing family man that defines the film, underscoring Yeon’s commentary on the horrors of neoliberalism.
The virus in the film spreads horrifyingly fast, with half the train becoming infected within minutes. The sheer scale of the horde is emphasised as we see a tracking shot of zombies streaming towards Seok-woo, with their glassy eyes and gnashing mouths showing a complete lack of humanity. Moving away from the aesthetics of the Haitian zombie origin but owing a lot to this idea of the zombie as dehumanised slave, the monsters in Train to Busan are fast-moving, recalling the crazed viral monsters of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. If the slow-moving Zombies of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead are a comment on the rise of consumer culture, Yeon’s crazed monsters suggest the rapid consumption of late capitalism. The horde swiftly infects any human they can reach, leaving a dehumanised vessel that only wants to consume.
Train to Busan remodels the westernised zombie genre to comment on the effect neoliberal globalism is having on contemporary South Korea. Yes, the zombies in the film are shown to be dehumanised consuming monsters, but many of the uninfected are shown to be arguably just as corrupted.
Yon-suk, the epitome of a late-capitalist businessman, continually urges train staff to leave others behind so he can save himself, embodying the individualistic mindset Yeon is critiquing in the film. In one particularly frustrating scene, after our heroes have managed to slaughter hordes of zombies to meet with the remaining survivors at the opposite side of the train, Yon-suk convinces the others not to let them into the carriage for fear they are infected. Sang-hwa, a working-class man who has done so much to stem the outbreak in the train is killed by Yon-suk’s actions, a death that could have been prevented if the carriage hadn’t given in to panic and individualism. It is of course notable that a working-class character is killed by such ideals. There is the suggestion that the neo-liberal values of Yon-suk sees a person like Sang-hwa just for the labour they provide, ignoring them when they need help or security.
The corruptive force of neoliberalism’s individualistic outlook is cemented by Yong-suk’s eventual infection. While he has been bitten, he refuses to admit he is going to turn, selfishly staying on the train rather than saving others. This contrasts with Seok-woo who has learned to disavow individualism throughout the film, retaining his humanity even when becoming infected, taking his own life to ensure the survival of his daughter and Sang-hwa’s pregnant wife. Here, Yeon uses the zombie as a metaphor to stress the potentially dehumanising effects a neoliberal outlook can have on society. While the train of the film represents the flow of ‘capital, information, commodities…) (2013:189) the infection, worsened by the lack of collectivism, shows the inherent flaws of this system which values capital over security.
We also see the film interrogate fears about how governments react to viral outbreaks, which is admittedly hard to watch right now. We can see this lack of trust in the scene in which passengers begin the learn the scale of the outbreak through news reports and mobile phone footage. A government announcement is played while shots of zombies limping and snarling in the other carriage are intersected. A government official reads “violent riots have broken out in a number of major cities… Thanks to our government’s rapid response, a number of outbreaks are being contained… we must stay calm and trust our government… to the best of our knowledge, your safety is not in jeopardy.” This is contrasted with apocalyptic mobile footage being played over the announcement, showing the carnage of the zombie outbreak and shots of a city skyline up in smoke. The announcement is further contradicted as the passengers dock at the supposedly secured Daejeon station, only to find the soldiers containing the city have been infected, leading to many passengers dying. This suggests that the government is more focused on preserving the illusion of a functioning neoliberal society rather than keeping people safe and informed, or putting effective barriers in place to stem the infection.
These are obviously all too prescient global concerns packaged in a commercially viable genre film, but Train to Busan still feels thoroughly Korean. Through using an all Korean cast and locations, the film takes a global anxiety, and indeed genre, but shows that the medium is fitting for a contemporary Korean context.
Gothic Korea
Looking at these films alongside the recent internationally successful Korean genre offerings such as Parasite and The Handmaiden, we see films that have high budgets but arthouse concerns, using gothic imagery to assert anxieties around modernity. With these films gaining more and more global recognition, it seems that a new wave of Korean Gothic is firmly on the rise.
Terror Beyond Progress: On Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s HEX
While gothic novels of old trickled information to the reader slowly, gradually building suspense before introducing the monstrous, Thomas Olde Heuvelt showcases this from the very beginning. In HEX, the town of Black Spring, a settlement in New York State nestled by the Hudson River, is home to its very own witch – the vengeful spirit of Katherine Van Wyler who had been brutally executed in 1644 under suspicion of witchcraft. However, Katherine doesn’t slink in the shadows; in fact, she appears on the first page being unceremoniously ‘run over by an antique Dutch barrel organ’. Later in the chapter, she looms in the background of a family home where they refer to her as ‘Gramma’ and hang an ‘old dishcloth’ over her face. For Black Spring, a witch’s haunting is business as usual, and a business it certainly is.
The town employs an extensive security program aptly titled HEX, with employees ensuring the town’s secret stays hidden and the witch doesn’t cause any trouble. Most progressive in the security detail is the use of technology, as townspeople use an app to pinpoint Katherine’s whereabouts and feed the information back to HEX headquarters. Of course, a technology forward security operation isn’t exactly synonymous with the Gothic and seems rather unexpected in a novel about a haunted town. Yet, the absurdity of the witch’s presence and the measures the townspeople take to conceal the secret is what makes Olde Heuvelt’s novel so striking. This melding of classic Gothic tropes with technology and macabre humour places the novel firmly in the territory of Postmodern Gothic, with these sensibilities becoming increasingly marked as the novel progresses.
From the ridiculous rendering of the witch’s introduction, you would be forgiven for thinking that she is a toothless antagonist, yet, as the story unfolds, we learn that she is anything but. Olde Heuvelt employs a gradual change in tone that sees the witch progress from a town nuisance, to an apocalyptic harbinger of Black Spring’s collapse. We learn that her whispers compel one to take their own life and, likewise, if any Black Spring resident remains outside the limits of town for too long they are plagued with hallucinations urging them towards suicide. Once you decide to live in Black Springs, you can never leave, with the townspeople forced to confront the sins of their Puritan predecessors every day. Even the town’s control over Katherine is tenuous, with their relative rein over the witch made possible from her eyes and mouth being stitched closed, purportedly by church elders after her first sighting in the year 1713. Katherine is literally silenced, unable to fully enact her vengeance on a town whose regressive ideals destroyed her. As the head of HEX, Robert Grim explains to shaken new residents of the town:
‘Stitching her up has made her mostly harmless… we have every reason to believe that if her eyes open and she starts muttering her spells, we will all die…Katherine is a paranormal ticking time bomb.’
(Olde Heuvelt, 2016)
It is the threat of what the witch could do that keeps Black Spring constantly on its toes, with superstition changing the very fabric of the town and eventually shattering the illusion of progress and civility.
This dichotomy between superstition and progress is central to the novel, made literal through the tension between the neo-puritanical ‘council’ and the modern outfit of HEX. Ran by the elderly Colton Mathers, the council is responsible for dolling out punishments straight out of the 17th century, much to the distress of Robert Grim and other progressive townsfolk. Also on the side of progress are the town’s stifled teenagers who concoct a plan to expose the witch in true 21st century fashion, by causing her to go viral through a vlog series which, as one can imagine, does not go well. This subplot is the catalyst for the novel’s catastrophic climax, signposting the disconnect between advancing in the shadow of historical guilt. This dichotomy is particularly notable as the protagonist recalls the disconnect between voting in the 2012 U.S elections for Barack Obama, a relatively progressive candidate, while Katherine – the embodied representation of the nation’s brutal past hovers nearby.
From these themes of guilt and hidden secrets, it seems like Olde Heuvelt was aiming for a contemporary reimagining of American Gothic, indebted to the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe. However, Olde Heuvelt is in fact a Dutch author, with the original 2013 novel set in the Netherlands which has markedly less national guilt and a lack of known Gothic tradition. Translated in 2016 by Nancy Forest-Flier working in tandem with Olde Heuvelt himself, the English edition was localised to New York State with the ending also changed in the process. The fact that a Dutch writer can position themselves with ease into another nation’s literary tradition speaks to cultural fluidity that comes from globalisation and postmodernity. The U.S’s lingering historical guilt is firmly in the global consciousness with its Gothic potential still translating wonderfully to literature.
The translation also goes down a more obviously postmodern path as Olde Heuvelt employs self-reflexivity and ambiguity to better suit his foray into American Gothic. While the original Dutch version ends with the witch as the undoubted evil of the town, the Americanised edition suggests that the real evil is the town itself. When the threat of the witch’s eyes being opened becomes real, the town is quick to cannibalise itself. Looting, child sacrifice and ritual murder ensue, showing just how illusory progress and civility are. The witch opens her eyes but is not responsible for a single death, looking on in confusion as the townspeople give into superstition, showing their similarity to their puritan ancestors. As the head of HEX’s security and the last bastion of tolerance, Robert Grim makes explicit the absurdity of the regression:
‘Madness. Yesterday afternoon these folks were still ordinary, mild mannered twenty-first century Americans…’
(Heuvelt, 2016)
This new take on the haunting of the past makes HEX a worthy addition to contemporary Gothic and it’s creeping, apocalyptic tone makes it a befitting read for these troubling times (although I wouldn’t blame you for just sticking to Netflix right now) Most importantly, HEX shows that the Gothic doesn’t need to retreat into the shadows to terrify. The monstrous can be allowed into the open, into your home, even into your phone – and still give a good scare.
In the early hours after Halloween of 1988, four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls uncover the most important story of all time. Suburban drama and otherworldly mysteries collide in this smashhit series about nostalgia, first jobs, and the last days of childhood.
So, Paper Girls is actually the first graphic novel I have ever finished reading and I absolutely loved it!
Before this, I would appreciate the style of the graphic novels I tried to read but would find the story hard to follow. With Paper Girls though, something just clicked. I loved how colourful and detailed the art was, and each panel was relatively simple story-wise so I could follow the action without issue.
Paper Girls starts by following Erin, a newly minted paper girl, doing her route during the aftermath of Halloween. After being cornered by a group of boys, Erin is saved by Mackenzie, Tiffany and KJ – the more seasoned neighbourhood Paper Girls – who decide to take Erin under their wing. The four team up for the rest of their route for protection but inadvertently stumble upon a mystery that seems too crazy to be true.
I don’t want to give away much more of the plot because it really goes in an unexpected direction, but I was fully on board for all the craziness. The meshing of the sci-fi/horror elements with the suburban backdrop was handled brilliantly, and every new twist felt earned and exciting.
If there’s anything to know about my taste in literature and film, it’s that I adore coming of age narratives and that I am all about a story with supernatural elements, so this was extremely up my alley. There’s nothing like a 1980s small town setting to evoke that sense of pre-teen nostalgia (even though I wasn’t born until the 90s), and although some of the cultural references were a little too obscure for me to get, I appreciate a story that really leans into its period.
All the Paper Girl gang were delightful to read, especially the snarky, chain-smoking Mackenzie, whose background i’m hoping will be delved into deeper in other volumes. Their motivations seemed realistic for a group of girls suddenly thrown into an unknowable crisis, and their personalities were varied and distinct.
The only downside is that it ends on a massive cliffhanger and I haven’t had the chance to buy the other volumes yet.
After reading this, I really want to go back and give the graphic novels I struggled with another chance, so hopefully i’ll get to them soon!
Goodreads Rating – 4.5/5
Thanks for reading again, friends. If you have any Graphic Novel suggestions, please let me know!
When blood is thicker, and more difficult to get out of the carpet, than water …
“Femi makes three you know, Three and they label you a serial killer.”
When Korede’s dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows whats expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This’ll be the third boyfriend Ayoola’s dispatched in “self-defence” and the third mess that her lethal little sibling has left Korede to clear away. She should probably go to the police for the good of the menfolk of Nigeria, but she loves her sister and, as they say, family always comes first.
I mean… what a title, right?
For such a short book, there’s a lot here to think about. I read this in a single sitting, which the punchy prose and flashbacks really encouraged. There’s an almost cinematic quality to the techniques Braithwaite uses, like the short chapters that feel like rhythmic scene changes, and the heavy use of vernacular dialogue that immediately immersed me in the Lagos setting and the characters who inhabit it. Coming in at only 223 pages, this is a great one to read if (like me) you’re scrambling to meet the halfway point of your Goodreads goal.
The blurb touts the book as taking ‘wicked aim at male impropriety’ and while this is true, it’s the co-dependant relationship of the sisters that interested me the most. Korede, who narrates the novel, is practical and regimented, spending her time split between working as a nurse and trying to keep her home, and sister, in order. Ayoola, on the other hand, is impulsive and hedonistic, with her beauty and charm being her defining characteristics to outsiders. Only Korede knows about her sisters murderous compulsions, and yet she willingly enables her. I don’t want to spoil the intricacies of the relationship, but I think it’s one of the most fascinating depictions of sisterhood I’ve ever read.
“You’re a big sister now, Korede. And big sisters look after little sisters”
I also really enjoyed the novel’s dark humour, particularly around Ayoola’s use of social media, who is distraught after being told by Korede she can’t upload carefree snapchats while being under suspicion of her boyfriend’s murder.
If I had one criticism, it would be that a subplot surrounding Korede confiding in a comatose patient named Muhtar threw the rhythm of the book off a bit, but it did bring up some interesting insights into Nigerian culture and gender politics so it’s just a minor nitpick.
Overall, this was such a strong debut from Briathwaite and I’m looking forward to seeing what she does next!
Before I get started with any actual bookish content, I just wanted to scribble a little about me and also give a thank you for even clicking on my ramblings at all!
I chose the name Highlighted Page for this blog because, as much as I love a pristine cover, there is something so joyous to me about a well loved book with highlighted passages and annotated pages. Apologies if that’s controversial, i’m a responsible reader in other regards, I promise. I don’t bend the spine or fold the corners of pages, although I admit I used to eat chocolate while I was reading as a child and did ruin quite a lot of books that way (I’m so sorry to my beautiful original Harry Potter series) but we can move past that, right?
In all seriousness, books have always been a wonderful escape for me and have gotten me through some difficult times, so i’m very pleased to have my own wee place to write about how much they mean to me.
I’m also about to start a Masters in The Gothic Imagination so there might be some content about that, but it will be fun and unpretentious (PLEASE HOLD ME TO THAT)
I’ve just read some books that I very much enjoyed so I should have some reviews soon!
Highlighted Page 