Reviews

Thus horror’s paradoxical appeal to the anxious and the melancholic: the genre makes visible — through light, shadow, noise — our barely conscious (ghost-like) fears and traps them in the mansion of the screen. (13)

A personal, beautiful book that was a genuine pleasure to read. It exists in the cross-section between horror fandom, horror theory, and a kind of personal demonology. I don't have much of anything intelligent to say in review, but I loved it.

But it isn’t often death-as-nothing that I think about. I worry about living — about getting all this wrong. My life feels like a contract that I entered before I had the language to endure it. I am not afraid of death’s hell but the hell I’ve felt right here. When I plead with the air, “do not let me fall into the pit,” I mean a space inside my spirit that seems carved out of the substance of the worst parts of the world. (175)

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley.

portlynhh's review against another edition

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dark informative reflective medium-paced

4.75

gardensong's review against another edition

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4.0

very sad and very smart, this book kept me company as i have struggled to sleep this past week. i feel like we made a deal: i let it into my heart and it gave me the language to say things i've only ever thought in images (isabelle adjani writhing in possession, neve campbell so vulnerable and defiant in scream, anya taylor joy; levitating, every horror girl covered in blood that isn't hers) before. would pair so beautifully with charlie shackleton's essay-film fear itself.

whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting, every love story a ghost story, the rest is confetti, etc.

thank you to netgalley for this arc!

otterno11's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative mysterious medium-paced

4.0

Musician and artist Claire Cronin’s memoir Blue Light of the Screen: On Horror, Ghosts, and God, wrestles with her love of horror (especially film), ghosts, and her family’s Catholic faith, building surprising connections that left me with a lot to consider about these subjects. An eerie, affecting work, full of intriguing ideas and lush language, Cronin writes “Ghost stories are hovering uncertainties,” and as a historian and librarian, concerned with sharing the mysteries of the past, this sticks with me. Whether through nostalgia or through regret, trauma, or privilege, memories and the past stay with us and affect the present, personally and societally.

Pointing out the contemporary surge in using ghosts as a metaphor for “psychic processes, cultural and political histories, and the nature of media that the word is nearly emptied of its meaning” while its ubiquity “is causing the ghost to slip back to its former life as fact” made me reconsider my own interest in using ghosts as a set dressing for my own fears. As she discusses these fascinating topics, her writing is punctuated by summaries of horror films, her spare, affecting illustrations drawn from movie stills, and poetic, italicized snippets of story fragments or dream memories, whispering ideas through the heart of the book, as though Cronin’s own prose is haunted.

I discuss other books exploring memory, place, and ghosts at Harris' Tome Corner.

aurora_linnea's review against another edition

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dark reflective

3.5

ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

4.75

“If this is a memoir, it’s a memoir of a mood. If this is a story, it’s a ghost story. If this is philosophy, it’s about the spectral interchange between seeing and believing. What I’m writing here is true, though figured blackly. A mirror-image of myself seen in a nearly lightless room.”

TITLE—Blue Light of the Screen

AUTHOR—Claire Cronin

PUBLISHED—2020

PUBLISHER—Repeater Books (UK)

GENRE—unconventional memoir, dissertation on Catholic-derived spirituality and the horror genre

SETTING—contemporary united states

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—ghosts, the horror genre in film, Catholicism, memoir & memory, black & white pen drawings, death & necromancy, demons & possession, curses & the occult, psychology, childhood, trauma, inherited suffering, unconventional writing style & narrative structure

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

BONUS ELEMENT/S—I loved the lines of poetry scattered throughout the prose in italics.

PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ // “My academic research and my spiritual life have merged.” (see Audre Lorde’s works: Zami & Sister Outsider)

PREMISE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

EXECUTION—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“What stays with a viewer like me, once in bed with doors closed and lights off, is not the thought that a monster lurks nearby but the thought that I’m the monstrous one.”

A really unique and interesting read! At times the book reads like an academic dissertation and sometimes like frantic journaling. If I hadn’t read WHITE MAGIC, by Elissa Washuta last year I would have said this is the most unique book I’d ever read. Recommend checking them both out together if you’re a memoir buff you’ll find it really interesting. They both also cover topics around spirituality and trauma.

What I especially enjoyed about this book was that it gave me a really good understanding about why the horror genre appeals to so many people—especially women and especially women my ageish. A common thread seems to be a repressive upbringing in response to being seen as different or other than what is considered normal or healthy in one’s formative sociocultural situation. An upbringing that uses fear and shame to shape behavior (& belief). An upbringing that “teaches” via rote instruction and moral judgment as opposed to encouraging intellectual humility, curiosity, and freedom of imagination.

But it’s not just that anyone who experiences some sort of formative trauma is going to be drawn to the horror genre—oftentimes the opposite is true. And sometimes the person drawn to the horror genre feels as though they have not experienced any kind of formative trauma (whether that’s true or not). And in most cases it’s not just that the horror genre is entertaining to its fans, but for many of them it is actually a source of *comfort*—a place where they feel seen.

Final, somewhat digressing thoughts: This book had me thinking about western theological and psychological models, and their systems for understanding the human condition and the place/role of humans in Nature and their relationship to gods and/or spiritual entities. It often strikes me that there is really no room for resolution from such spiritual torment as detailed in this memoir and the inner conflicts and contradictions of self facilitated by western modes of thought. It even seems that that is because such modes are *intentionally* not meant to provide resolution (/escape/relief/even understanding).

At times… (and I could be way off the mark here 😅 but) I almost felt like the author was subconsciously making a serious effort to not address this, going as far as to deny certain corollaries in some of their interpretations of events, films, experiences, books, etc.(their discussion of the film Hereditary was particularly eyebrow raising to me)—a result, in my opinion, that is largely due to the author’s assigning of certain entities and experiences as “real” versus “unreal”—a dichotomy that is purely a western construct.

So you can see how the discussion isn’t really *complete* by the end of the book—though this is not a flaw by any means. (*Another* whole other discussion—vis a vis the Christian theological perspective—would be what Jesus’s *actual* message and God’s *actual* plan for His Believers is and why a lot of modern Christian religious thought doesn’t align with those things and causes the problems it does in the spiritual lives of many Christians—Catholic or otherwise. But yeah.) ANYway. 😅

I loved this book. It was SO engrossing and thought provoking and beautifully written. Highly recommend!

I would recommend this book to readers who are interested in the horror genre and especially those for whom the horror genre is an important vehicle through which they understand their own identity and life experience. Or to those for whom their Christian (esp. Catholic) upbringing has had a big impact on their lives.

“I worry that my interests are like Faust’s: I want to know the secrets of hell. Or they are like Fox Mulder’s: I want to believe.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.75

TW // suicidal ideation, death, religious (Catholic) upbringing (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—

Our Wives Under the Sea, by Julia Armfield (BOTS is actually listed in the afterword to OWUTS)
White Magic, by Elissa Washuta (memoir)
Content Warning: Everything, by Akwaeke Emezi (“Catholic” & Igbo imagery/spirituality)
Zami, and Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde (biomythography, marriage of the spiritual & the professional/political)
Shirley Jackson (horror genre work dealing with identity & inner darkness)
Broke the Bread, Spilled the Tea, by Mitchell Kesller (oppressive Christian upbringing & a reimagined Christian spiritually)

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