House of Horrors: Familial Intimacies in Contemporary American Horror Fiction

This book explores the tumultuous transformations of kinship and intimate relationships in American horror fiction over the last three decades, focusing on how social scripts and concerns linked to intimacy and family life structure the genre. It problematizes the source of horror by examining how the family supports and replicates social hierarchies, exclusions, and struggles for dominance.

Format: Hardback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 15 June 2023
Publisher: University of Wales Press

This extensive study delves into the turbulent transformations of kinship and intimate relationships in American horror fiction over the past three decades. Spanning twelve contemporary novels, written by ten women writers and two whose work is classified as women's fiction, the volume is organized into four primary thematic clusters: haunted houses, monsters, vampires, and hauntings. However, it is the underlying social scripts and concerns directly related to intimacy and family life that form the overarching structure of this comprehensive work. By highlighting the crucial role that the most intimate social relationship, the family, plays in perpetuating and reinforcing social hierarchies, exclusions, and struggles for dominance, the book challenges the very essence of horror. By examining horror narratives through the lens of familial intimacies, the study opens up new possibilities for rethinking genre boundaries, questioning the effectiveness of certain genre tropes, and appreciating the contributions of diverse authors such as Kathe Koja, Tananarive Due, Gwendolyn Kiste, Elizabeth Engstrom, Sara Gran, and Caitlín R. Kiernan.

Dimension: 216 x 138 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781837720125