BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - FICTION

The Supernatural and English Fiction (1995) Glen Cavaliero Cavaliero's book is an occasionally academic and dry but very useful review of what he chooses to define variously as the supernatural, the paranormal and the preternatural in English fiction. Like the donnish figure that he is, he implicitly privileges the supernatural as the numinous in literature over the attempts (as he seems to see it) of those who want to give you a good jolt or who see magic as just undiscovered science - but it has to be said that his own use of language is hardly inspiring when he moves beyond his judgements on particular authors to a consideration of theory. This is what they might call a solid performance. There is serious value to be gained from it - if only the introduction of new names to the non-specialist in literary studies. He has made me want to read Charles Williams. He brings out of the closet a number of women authors like Phyllis Paul who have been long and probably (on hi...

Skizz (1983) [ with Jim Baikie ]     Captain Britain Omnibus (1985-1987) [ Various Contributors, notably Dave Thorpe, Chris Claremont and Grant Morrison ]     Lost Girls (2006) [ with Melinda Gebbie ]     The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen [ with Kevin O'Neill ]        Black Dossier (2007 ) [ also with Ray Zone ]        Century 1910 (2009)      Century 1969 (2011)     Neonomicon (2010) [ with Anthony Johnston and Jacen Burrow s]     Fashion Beast (2013 originally from a 1985 film script) [ with Anthony Johnston and Facundo Percio ]   Skizz , first published in 1983 for British comic series 2000AD (originator of Judge Dredd and many other iconic comic figures), is a rather heart-warming tale. Yet the tale is told without losing an ounce of the dystopianism for which the British are so well known. Set on the Planet Burmy-Gam, it helps to read the text in a Brummy a...

Gamiani, or Two Nights of Excess (1833) Alfred de Musset Seduction (1908 but re-published in 2003) Anonymous   Tropic of Cancer (1934) Henry Miller Erotic Comics: A Graphic History (2008) Alice Kominsky-Crumb   Shameful Duties (Probably 1970s but re-published in 2017)  Susan Saraband   Gamiani is a somewhat Sadean quasi-Gothic erotic novel of the 1830s which has been attributed, although not certainly, to Alfred De Musset and which even reached the hands of Edith Wharton no less. However, you would not know any of this from my Edition, a second-hand copy of its inclusion in the Erotic Prints Society's 'Scarlet Library' which has no introduction, notes or bibiliography. What that Edition does have is excellent erotic illustrations by Vania Zouravliov. That is why I am happy to refer to it here while suggesting you find an edition with more background information. As for the story, it is a tale of extreme and destructive erotic passion with the standard issu...