#Catriona Ward

[aconissa]

WRITERS + DIRECTORS ON THE POWER OF HORROR

Catriona Ward, interview for The Guardian Mark Gatiss, in A History of Horror (2010) Pascal Laugier, for Electric Sheep Candyman (1992), dir. Bernard Rose Colin Dickey, Ghostland Carmen Maria Machado, for Paris Review Kier-La Janisse, House of Psychotic Women Possession (1981), dir. Andrzej Żuławski Mariana Enríquez, ‘Notes on Craft’, Granta Guillermo del Toro, Haunted Castles, Dark Mirrors

[mostlyghostie]

Latest commission!

I am very slightly ahead of my Xmas orders, so have opened one other slot for custom orders which I can fulfil before the big day. Order asap if you’re interested in getting one!

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[oddishfeeling]

do you have any book recommendations? pls i need lots 💙💙

this is such a loaded question friend. but lucky for u, i am procrastinating assignments, my take out has yet to arrive, and i just finished another book!

horror fic has been my choice for the last several books

the centre by ayesha manazir siddiqi is about a young Pakistani woman living in the UK. she's a translator for Urduru films. language and translation are central to this book. people are becoming fluent in a matter of weeks in complex languages.... the centre is gorgeous if not entirely mysterious, magical even. but whats the catch?? beautifully written. vivid details. anisa is a flawed, honest, and genuine feeling mc, as are the people in her life. i just finished it a couple hours ago n i miss my girls.

slewfoot by brom is set in 17th century Connecticut. our protag, Abitha, is not from this town but she does he best to adhere to the Puritan standards, if not for her well being, than that of her husband's. something stirs in the outskirts of the village, in the forest and beyond. she finds help from an unlikely source while also fostering a deep inner power of her own. these characters felt so well thought out, the writing is magnetic and the action is well paced. it puts so many preconceived notions right on their head. i loved this book and can't wait to read brom's other novel, the child thief, a retelling of peter pan and the lost boys!

sister, maiden, monster by lucy a. synder was oh so gay and oh so cosmically horrendous. this is like h.p. lovecraft wasn't a weird racist. this is like if biblically accurate angels were once just women in love. this is horrifying, visceral, and relevant to our COVID world. i was gawking at so many of the details. there are so many monster themes actually, it's perfect. the story is told through 3 povs of 3 different women. and we love women! and horror! i didn't expect to pick this one up but I'm so glad i did.

mary: an awakening of terror by nat cassidy do u know what it's like to be virtually invisible? forgotten? disaffected? do u know the pure joy of having a precious collection, adding to it over time, and it being almost ur only reason for living anymore?? then you're a lot like mary. and mary is a lot like plenty of women who get the chance to live beyond adolescence, who are cast out by society-- deemed invaluable. mary is utterly lost at a time in her life she feels she should have it all figured out. she goes back to her hometown, an ambiguous small town in the middle of the desert, and some unlikely characters help her piece things back together. i finished this book feeling so close to mary. we are friends now. there is mystique, horror, fables, myths, bad guys, mysterious architecture, and well mary is not the most reliable narrator. loved this one too.

the last house on needless street by catriona ward i had no idea where this book was going and i loved piecing the narrative together through several characters and their povs. it forces u to confront ur own biases regarding mental health. u are sympathetic to the characters in the most painful, heart wrenching ways. there is murder. there is mystery. there is missing children. there are cats. this book surprised me and it was fun to have to find a couple reddit threads to be sure i was understanding the story correctly. i felt like i read this kind of fast! which is always fun too.

brother by ania ahlborn this one pissed me off a bit. but in a good way because i was so deeply invested. this one is set in Appalachia. i'm not one for stereotypes, especially bc i think Appalachians have a bad rep and it's of no fault of their own. that being said, the insular feel of the book and the absolute claustrophobia those mountains create in this story were like a character in it of itself. our protag, michael, knows there's something beyond. he's seen them on colorful postcards. but his own mind and his own heart seem utterly trapped here. this one is heartbreaking. it's horrifying. and it'll make u dizzy from the amount of times u change ur mind. excited to read her other novel, Seed, because this one stuck with me so much!

a couple honorable mentions that fit the theme:

the vegetarian by han kang korean food. infidelity. art. nightmares. inexplicable mindfucks! this story was scary because it felt very.. possible? no monsters this time. no spells. just... the mind deteriorating. could happen to any of us.

a certain hunger by chelsea g. summers what if girlbossing is just a quick pivot from sociopathy?? what if the crimes are so much more gratifying than say, fame or fortune or even love?? women can be sociopaths too, you know!! this one is fun bc the protag is crazy and it's fun to slip into these characters. cathartic even. omg did i mention, she's a foodie too! just like me :-)

[kazz-brekker]

one of my favorite ways books can do a plot twist is to use the fact that they are a written medium and not a visual medium to tell a story in a way where you THINK you know what's happening and who the characters are, but actually, what you're imagining is different than the reality of the story because of a few key details you didn't notice have been left out. and then, when the truth is revealed you're like "oh my god! how did i not see this!!" when of course the reason why you didn't is because you're seeing the book filtered through the perspective of a narrator who does not feel the need to explain every aspect of the world and their mind to you, and so something that is so shocking to you has actually been known to them all along.

[skullprincess]

When people say something is “unthinkable,” what they usually mean is that they don’t want to think it. They are resistant to an idea. But that is not what unthinkable means. I understand that, now. It means to be confronted with a thought so vast, dark, and monstrous that it will not fit into any known shapes in your mind. It is poison and madness flowering behind your eyes.

Catriona Ward, Sundial

[miss-m-calling]

Writers are monsters, really. We eat everything we see.

Catriona Ward, Looking Glass Sound

[litandlifequotes]

You can only do three things with danger: run away from it, fight it, or make friends with it. I don’t know which one to do.

Sundial by Catriona Ward

[monstrousflower]

“Rain poured down like shining knives. The world crashed and shivered. I had never known anything different, so I thought there was always a storm.”

— Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Looking Glass Sound | Author: Catriona Ward | Publisher: Tor Books (2023)

[hughmunculus]

My experience reading The Last House on Needless Street:

I don’t know what’s happening

So …what’s happening

Alright I GOTTA know what’s happening

OH GOD I KNOW WHATS HAPPENING

OK I WAS WRONG BUT THIS TIME I KNOW WHATS HAPPENING

I DO NOT KNOW WHATS HAPPENING

I know what happened :)

[layla-was-here]

I'm listening to this book and one of the main characters is like this super religious cat?? Like it's not like an especially magical cat as far as I know. It doesn't talk or anything. It's not much smarter than a regular cat either? And like religion isn't even some special cat based religion, it's just Christianity. Like this cat is obsessed with jesus, but it's also a regular cat that does things like nap and knock things off counters.

Like seriously this cat loves Jesus so much. In the first chapter it literally feels conflicted about something and it knocks over it's owners bible, so it'd open to a random page and reads a verse for advice like what?

I want to stress so far this cat has shown no magical powers at all other than reading the bible. It's not like human in a cat body or something. She's basically as smart as say Buck in Call of the Wild?

Again I want to stress this cat is immensely religious, all on its own. Its owner isn't religious at all either. It's not surrounded by religious people or anything. It's just a devout christian cat???

[mostlyghostie]

Can’t recall if I’ve posted this one. I like it anyway!

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[aconissa]

“I love horror. I think it’s one of the most expressive, most empathetic genres you can work in. Everyone feels afraid at some point in their life. Reading is a sustained act of telepathy or empathy, and reading horror is even more profound than that: it’s asking people to share real vulnerabilities of yours and open themselves up to their own. It is like going down a tunnel, and hopefully the writer is leading the way with a torch, taking the reader’s hand.”

Catriona Ward (for The Guardian)

[katajainen]

It's a very special mix of exhilaration and annoyance when you finish a brilliant book and want to to scream about it to the Internet, but literally can't say anything detailed about it that wouldn't be a huge spoiler.

(The Last House on Needless Street, by Catriona Ward. A very, very clever book. State-of-the-art suspense. Wonderful cast. And that's all I can say.)

[words-after-midnight]

How you can tell I'm really into a book. I started this on my morning commute today.

[deadweight-at7am]

Finished this book in two days. I picked it up by chance at a book store and it opened to a chapter entitled “Lauren”, so it was a sign. So I just went to the library and picked up another book by the same author “Sundial”. 😎

I decided I needed to read more (I had once read a lot as a teen and young adult) but I really stopped, not sure why. Books lost my interest 1/4 way through a lot of the time. But since I've deleted Tiktok and have stopped wasting so much of my time on needless social media usage I decided my downtime is better used this way.