Viiiiiiiibes
5 books that set a mood + 4 things helping me feel autumnal
This year I feel like I’ve been dragged kicking and screaming into fall. But I’m slowly embracing autumn, partly thanks to the following things:
This “Autumn Ambience” video — listening to it right now, in fact. (Thanks to Amber Petty for the tip!)
Hallowmas bath bomb. Does it make me feel like I’m in Bath & Body Works in 1995? Yes and, to my surprise, I love it. Update: I’m also loving the Hallowmas soap!
Pumpkin spice pour over coffee. We just got our first Starbucks in Lexington (you read that right), but instead of joining the endless drive-thru line, I’m making my pumpkin spice at home. Update: Turns out I like the ground coffee better than the pour over.
Over the Garden Wall. I discovered this animated series last year thanks to a delightful essay called “On Spookiness.” Highly recommend both.
I also raided Trader Joe’s for seasonal treats, and I’ve been disappointed by practically everything I bought. But I had fun doing it! You know what doesn’t disappoint? Halloween Oreos.
Recommendations
This week’s reading recs are less about fear and more about the chilly, gloomy, misty, rainy setting that is so characteristic of the Gothic. So put on your coziest sweater, pour yourself a cup of tea, and snuggle into your duvet — it’s about to get moody.
Melmoth (2018) by Sarah Perry
Sarah Perry’s version of the Melmoth story — here with a female Melmoth rather than the classic male.
Dr Karel Pražan is delighted when he befriends a mysterious old man, Josef Hoffman, in the café of the National Library of the Czech Republic. But one morning he shows up to the library only to find Josef dead at his desk, and a document addressed to Karel left with the librarian. The document describes a strange curse that Josef lived with, and Karel begins to think that the curse has been transferred to him.
This book is dark and shadowy and creepy in a very pleasant way, and it’s unlike anything else I’ve read. To give you a sense of the tone, here are the opening lines:
Look! It is winter in Prague: night is rising in the mother of cities and over her thousand spires. Look down at the darkness around your feet, in all the lanes and alleys, as if it were a soft black dust swept there by a broom.
Read if you want: empty libraries, mysterious documents, cobblestones, gloomy Prague, and something on the more literary end of the spectrum.
The Death of Mrs. Westaway (2018) by Ruth Ware
If you like thrillers, you’ve probably heard of Ruth Ware. The Death of Mrs. Westaway is her take on Rebecca and the most Gothic of all her novels. But while her other books are a thrill a minute, Mrs. Westaway moves at a slower pace.
The book begins in rainy Brighton, where Hal is barely scraping by as a tarot reader, still mourning the loss of her mother. When she receives a letter saying she has been named in her grandmother’s will, she is hopeful — this could be the solution to her money troubles. But there’s a problem: any grandparents she had are long dead. The letter is clearly meant for someone else.
Like Rebecca, the bulk of Mrs. Westaway takes place on an old estate in rainy Cornwall, where Hal meets the family of her “grandmother” and tries to figure out how she can get out of there with some much-needed money. But along the way, she begins to uncover dark secrets and, as a result, finds herself in danger.
Read if you want: an easy-to-read, slow-burn novel with lots of mist, rain, cold rooms, family secrets, and Rebecca vibes.
Daisy Darker (2022) by Alice Feeney
More Cornwall, more mist, more rain, and more family secrets! Something terrible has happened in Daisy’s family, and as a result she doesn’t talk to her mother, father, or sisters anymore. But for her grandmother’s 80th birthday, they agree to come together at the family house in Cornwall. And everything seems to be going okay…until they start dying one by one.
If this sounds similar to Mrs. Westaway, it is. But while Ware pays tribute to Rebecca, Feeney writes her own version of Agatha Christie’s classic closed-set mystery And Then There Were None. In my opinion, Mrs. Westaway is a better book, but Daisy Darker moves at a faster pace and has a twist that really took me by surprise. That said, I listened to most of it while lying in bed with a brutal migraine, so my critical faculties may not have been top-notch.
Read if you want: an easy-to-read, fast-paced murder mystery set on the stormy Cornish coast with Agatha Christie vibes.
In a Lonely Place (1947) by Dorothy B. Hughes
Would you like your mist, gloom, and roaring ocean to be on the California coast rather than in Cornwall? Look no further than In a Lonely Place. This is one of the best and most chilling noir novels I’ve read — not only because of the gloomy atmosphere, but because Hughes occupies the mind of the deeply troubled Dix Steele.
In a Lonely Place reminds me a bit of a really dark Great Gatsby. When he returns from war, Dix feels entitled to a certain kind of life, the American Dream, but things take a grim turn when he has to face the fact that he might not get it. (That’s where the similarities end. Don’t expect any lavish parties or flappers in Hughes’s novel.) I was fascinated by this book, especially because it’s the only classic noir I’ve read by a woman. Word to the wise: skip the movie, even though it does have Humphrey Bogart in it. Hughes’s story is far too dark to be accurately adapted by Hays Code Hollywood.
Read if you want: California Gothic, serial killers, kick-ass noir written by a woman, one of the best books I read in 2023.
The Turn of the Screw (1898) by Henry James
One night many years ago, I pulled a cracked old copy of this novella off my grandmother’s shelf. Her house was set on an exposed hillside, deep in Kentucky horse country — no light pollution there. It was dark, it was windy, and I was terrified as I read James’s classic Gothic tale.
In Turn of the Screw, a governess arrives at a remote house and promptly begins to wonder wtf is going on with the children in her care. Their guardian is conveniently absent, and no one else is particularly forthcoming with information, so she’s left to puzzle out the horrifying situation on her own.
Bonus: if you’d rather read a more recent book, Ruth Ware (see above) has her own version of Turn of the Screw.
Read if you want: something short, classic Victorian fiction, creepy children, chills up and down your spine!
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments! Until then, stay cozy.
Put a sweater on this woman! She’s so cold!
Misty woods cover image by Freepik
Turn of the Screw! One of my all-time favorites. Apparently the novella is cinematically cursed though. So many adaptations, all of them so so terrible (except perhaps for the BBC, and possibly the very first -- though it's the REALLY bad ones that are most worth watching).