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Posted on July 10, 2021

Amnesiac Girls: Memory Loss in Young Adult Fiction

Dawn Keetley

Much twenty-first-century young adult literature written by women and featuring teenage girls has taken up the theme of memory loss. Typically, the protagonist’s amnesia is related to some kind of trauma, an accident of some kind—anything from falling on the steps and hitting your head to a devastating car crash.

Here are some notable examples:

Gabrielle Zevin, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac (2007)

Mary E. Pearson, The Adoration of Jenna Fox (2008)

Cat Patrick, Forgotten (2011)

Michelle Hodkin, The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (2012)

Megan Miranda, Hysteria (2013)

Natalie Richards, Six Months Later (2013)

Shelly Crane, Wide Awake (2013)

E. Lockhart, When We Were Liars (2014)

Jennifer Armentrout, Don’t Look Back (2014)

Alexandra Sirowy, The Creeping (2015)

Eileen Cook, With Malice (2017)

Kara Thomas, That Weekend (2021)

Some bloggers have noticed this trend, and there is an extensive Goodreads list about YA novels and amnesia. Indeed, lists are plenty (see Dobrez & Rutan and Lipinski), but critical explorations are few: Alison Waller’s “Amnesia in Young Adult Fiction” (2016) is the lone exception.*

Posted on July 8, 2021

Xenophobia is America’s Deadly Specter in Image Comics’ ‘Infidel’

Guest Post

It remains one of the hardest things to accept today, knowing that we can’t avoid the latest report on hate-based violence, whether rooted in politics, race, opinions, or faith. At least for now, the 21st century is a time for hatred.

People are blinded by it, struggle to actively resist it, even cling to it like a religion, like a belief system to which they are somehow twistedly entitled.

And others cower in the presence of it, incapable of affecting it, helpless to escape its influence.

Yet Image Comics’ ‘Infidel,’ a five-issue miniseries collected in trade paperback written by Pornsak Pichetshote and illustrated by Aaron Campbell, seeks to exploit hatred in order to demonstrate through recognizable tropes of the horror genre that bigotry is a monster as capable of haunting humanity as any silver screen spirit or unstoppable slasher. Read more

Posted on June 26, 2021

Memories Worth Keeping: Adaptational Changes in IT: Chapter 2

Guest Post

Stephen King’s IT – and, later, the Andy Muschietti adaptations – have been vital to my journey as a horror fan and an aspiring fantasy/horror writer, and as an important way to think about change. I read IT during the summer of 2018, after moving from the home I had lived in for 12 years. While I approached the novel thinking I had hit the jackpot of horror, I found myself more moved by the strong bond that the Losers’ Club formed as adolescents, which made the disintegration of these friendships in adulthood all the more tragic. In many ways, IT shares more DNA with Stand By Me (a non-horror adaptation, based on King’s short story “The Body”) than some of his other horror novels. Both works are coming-of-age stories that see seemingly unshakeable friendships tested by fears and anxieties – some are explicitly horror-related, such as Pennywise, but others are more existential: how long will we remain friends? Adulthood, in these stories, seems to be more of a source of horror – or, at least, anxiety – than any monster or bully, and yet when it comes, it happens gradually. Adulthood’s arrival is not heralded by ominous music or a jumpscare, it just… happens, and childhood friendships that seemed strong don’t always last. Read more

Posted on June 17, 2021

Carrie White as Witchcraft, Power and Fear

Guest Post

In our hands: embers embers embers
just waiting for
the opportunity
to ignite

-Amanda Lovelace, The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One (53)

The Witch in Popular Culture

In the twenty-first century, literature and film have demonstrated a compulsion to return to the figure of the witch. Witches are embedded in popular culture old and new. From the folkloric enchantresses Baba Yaga, Circe, and Morgan Le Fay to the fairytale hags who eat, kidnap, and murder children in stories such as Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, and Snow White, the witch is designed to reinforce men’s fear and abhorrence towards women. Modern media, however, continues to challenge the witch as a figure of absolute terror and evil. What happens, for example, when the witch is a child herself? Portrayals of the “goodhearted” child-as-witch emerged and took centre-stage in stories such as Harry Potter (2001-11) and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018). But before Hermione and Sabrina, there was Stephen King’s Carrie White.

Posted on June 5, 2021

Folk Horror at Home and Abroad in Ari Aster’s Midsommar

Guest Post

Upon its release, Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019) was hailed as a new Folk Horror masterpiece. Like so many other films in the genre – for instance, The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973) and the made-for-TV movie The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (Leo Penn, 1978) – Aster’s film ends in death and with the triumph of the values of a secluded community over the members of a more modern society.

Many viewers read this violent ending as cathartic. Dani (Florence Pugh) has finally shed all the people and circumstances in her life that made her miserable. Her acceptance by the Hårga and the enigmatic smile that plays on her face as she watches her boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor), burn to death are seen as the hallmarks of a happy ending.