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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
This is a typical Lovercraft story and I say this with the best of intentions, in fact I liked it and it brought back to my mind those atmospheres typical of his other stories, which by now it is also time to re-read, because too much time has passed.
Questo é il tipico racconto di Lovercraft e lo dico con la migliore delle intenzioni, infatti mi é piaciuto e mi ha riportato alla mente quelle atmosfere tipiche di altre sue storie, che ormai é anche tempo di rileggere, perché é passato troppo tempo.
Questo é il tipico racconto di Lovercraft e lo dico con la migliore delle intenzioni, infatti mi é piaciuto e mi ha riportato alla mente quelle atmosfere tipiche di altre sue storie, che ormai é anche tempo di rileggere, perché é passato troppo tempo.
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
take a shot every time something is described as "queer" (you'll die)
This was an entertaining read for the slowburn horror of it, but I can't find myself rating it higher than 3 stars. Lovecraft's gruesome and alien descriptions are an absolute treat, but I can't help but feel that everything is tainted with undertones of Lovecraft's real life xenophobia and racism.
As a story on its own, it's a great bit of horror, just read it with a heavy pinch of salt? Oof.
Also shout out for a surprise appearance by upper Ohio.
As a story on its own, it's a great bit of horror, just read it with a heavy pinch of salt? Oof.
Also shout out for a surprise appearance by upper Ohio.
It was fine. I just don’t think I’m a fan of Lovecraft.
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
[Sort of spoilers follow] This is part of a huge Lovecraft Collected Works I bought for 37 p, which I’m reading through slowly. It would be hard to be an even marginally active reader, let alone one of speculative and horror fiction, and not be at least a little bit aware of what the shadow over Innsmouth actually is. Lovecraft’s racism, which I remember finding distinctly absent from At the Mountains of Madness, is rather more in evidence here: the fears and anxieties he evokes are clearly those of miscegenation and racial mixing, although I would argue that it is far more reasonable not to want to inter-breed with fish-frog creatures than it is to be racist about a mixed-race marriage. (Of course, the fact that Lovecraft clearly considers them analogous tells us all we need to know about his position re. the humanity of non-white people.) Something that always fascinates me about discussions of this kind of fiction—fiction that posits a kind of third, part-human race, and is repelled by it—is that it rarely seems to acknowledge rape. Most specifically, this happens when people talk about Tolkien’s Orcs. There are various accounts of their development (Tolkien wrote two or three, mutually exclusive, versions). None of them are really possible without accepting the presence of, at minimum, sexual coercion; logistically, it’s far more likely that there were rape camps. Yet Tolkien never mentions these, and neither do his critics. The same is true for the Innsmouth villagers: yes, it’s horrifying that their town fathers made this unholy bargain, but isn’t it more horrifying for the town’s young people, who were forced into planned inter-breeding by the power their fathers and grandfathers held in the social hierarchy, with no meaningful ability to consent or dissent? I don’t think that’s Lovecraft’s point at all, but that’s where the horror of Innsmouth comes from for me. The best part of this novella, as a set-piece, is the narrator’s nighttime escape from the dingy town hotel as a baying mob of villagers attempt to murder him; that really is chilling. If you read it as a portrayal of an evaded lynching—which is not an unreasonable reading for the 1930s—it throws an even more curious light on Lovecraft’s racial politics.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No