ZOFLOYA, OR THE MOOR (1806) – I am sure this was bookmarked due to something or someone (if not Sam herself) over at Romancing the Gothic; while a poor reproduction, this is the version I read with that Fromentin painting (peak orientalism, yes–which is rather the point). I have been dipping into unusual gothics of late, some that veer away from the main tropes and some that take them into unusual directions. This one is more like The Monk with its deep dive into ‘lust, betrayal, and multiple murder’ mostly in and around Venice because of course it is.

Victoria di Loredani has the odds stacked against her at the start of the novel, and blames everything on her mother’s scandalous affair and abandonment of her father but Victoria takes to sin with both hands and feels it is her right to burn the world down, more or less. Her transgressions ramp up with the arrival of the Moorish servant Zofloya who swears loyalty to her rather than his master, because he is royalty fallen on hard times — or is he something more?

Dacre does a lot to play with the notion of the taboo attraction between the two, but he is no noble Othello undone by a meddling Iago. Victoria, while blaming others for her problems, does not shy from claiming her crimes and remains unrepentant to the end. Fascinating for its portrayal of female desire and more complicated (if not entirely laudable!) engagement with race than we usually see in this time amongst writers of this class.

ANGEL (1957) – OMG. The Backlisted Podcast folks were talking about this book and while I had often heard people praise Elizabeth Taylor, I don’t think I had ever got around to reading her. I think I burnt out on modernist fiction a long time ago and especially dreary women’s lives ending badly (which too many of the Virago books seemed to be) have little appeal. I realise I am tarring with a very broad and probably inaccurate brush there. I was interested by how unlikeable everyone said the main character was — especially when the library copy had this cover (!) of the movie which certainly seemed to pitch it as a sweet romance and now I have to see the film because who green lit this weird little book and how much violence did they do to the story? Glancing at some reviews, maybe they didn’t do such violence but oh the marketing department must have despaired.

Angel hates the life she has been consigned to and creates a much better one in her lies and her head and when she finds her lies have been exposed she claims illness, refuses to go to school and stays home writing a novel even though she doesn’t read novels and hates other people. But she doggedly puts all her fantasies into a story that she tells herself. Write what you know? Well, she knows this is what she wants to be true. This book is just as wild as the beginning suggests and the twists and turns her story takes are both predictable and completely bizarre as she tries to make her bizarre, unworldly, unrelated to reality dreams come true. The people who end up in her orbit remain just as nonplussed by her from their first meeting to their last. And yet, some stay. Yes, undoubtedly neurodivergent but with a side helping of such arrogance and entitlement it’s breathtaking.

This is just bizarre and delightful and strange. I have to see the movie and yet —

THE BALLAD OF PECKHAM RYE (1960) – I always think I have read all Spark except one, but then I find it’s not true and this novella ends up being heretofore unread and just as delightful and surprising and fun as her best. It starts with a bang and continues going round and round and exploding in unexpected directions. I suppose the theme of all these recent reads are ‘unlikeable’ main characters or at least difficult ones. And like Zofloya there’s more than a hint of brimstone about, too. Angel’s actions certainly imply anything but her namesake.

The adventures of Dougal Douglas, M.A., recent of Edinburgh, as he brings ‘vision’ to a Peckham factory are ribald and devilish, bringing people to ruin. This would not be a book to big up the inclusion of the arts into the world of commerce — instead it suggests the liberal arts as a kind of source of chaotic destruction leaving seemingly normal people completely unhinged.

Fair enough, eh?

Dougal makes much of telling people the bumps on his head come the removal of horns he was born with. Given Spark’s famous conversion to Catholicism this seems an obvious metaphor but she’s never so heavy handed without a sardonic smile to dare you to take it seriously. He loves telling about it. And his effects, if not infernal are indeed destructive to many. But it’s their responses to his meddling that cause the terrible things (and the not so terrible and yet resonant). I will never not be amazed at Spark’s incredible indelible skill that is light as a very light thing much like a feather or perhaps even lighter. I may re-read it before I take it back to the library. It’s that good (and that short).

I have another book but I may give it a post of its own as it hits on so many other things swirling around at the moment (mostly tarot), so there’s that. And more pictures to come. And a book coming soon; printing has become an even more perilous process, I guess, thanks to tariffs from the eejit.