Behind the Couch

This collection of three novellas by Japanese author Yōko Ogawa is a deeply unsettling and atmospheric work. As subtle as it is quietly powerful, Ogawa’s brand of psychological horror explores the ‘horrific femininities’ of daily life, conjured by a gentle, sparse prose frequently serrated by striking, disturbing imagery. 'The Diving Pool' tells of a lonely teenage girl who falls in love with her foster-brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool - sparking an unspoken infatuation that draws out darker tendencies. 'Pregnancy Diary' follows a young woman who records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, but rather than a story of growth the diary reveals a more sinister tale of greed and repulsion. The final story, 'Dormitory', involves a woman who visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo, where she finds an isolated world shadowed by decay, haunted by absent students and the figure of a lonely caretaker. Og...

With its title echoing Louis MacNeice’s poem 'Autobiography' ( When I was five the black dreams came / Nothing after was quite the same ), this anthology of Weird fiction from Northern Ireland brings together new and established literary voices, and weaves together the modern and the Gothic. The stories present a Northern Ireland that is by turns recognisable, yet oddly unknowable; a place of bewitching stories, strange secrets, and where the eerie softly encroaches upon the everyday, the mundane, the domestic. An in-between place, a purgatorial place, internalised and unstable, nothing here is as it seems. Stories unfold in uncertain realities and are told by unreliable narrators. Streets trod countless times in real life are rendered unfamiliar, homes and havens harbour dark secrets, family and neighbours become strangers, and past actions and words seep deeply into the landscape to leave spectral traces of those who have gone before. A dreamlike essence pervades, beautifully...

Described by John Waters as “a sick orchid who seems like the perfect man”, Viktor Wynd is an artist, author, lecturer and the proprietor of The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History in London’s East End. His latest book, The Unnatural History Museum , not only provides a catalogue of his museum’s contents, but acts as a portal through which the reader may pass into another world, the world inside Viktor Wynd’s head: a magpie’s nest of the bizarre and the absurd. Head over to Exquisite Terror to read my full review .

The latest review of my Devil’s Advocates book on The Company of Wolves comes courtesy of journalist and academic, Emily Turner. According to Turner, ' Gracey is adept at identifying key themes in the 1984 film and exploring them in an accessible but thorough manner, forging links between images and ideas, and wider theoretical concepts [...]  a useful and interesting overview of the myriad references and inspirations which conjured the film from the minds of Jordan and Carter.' I’ve copied the full review below, and you can also check it out over at Emily’s blog ... Cinematic lycanthropy and monstrous femininity: a review of James Gracey’s The Company of Wolves  By Emily Turner The Company of Wolves is a title in Auteur Publishing’s Devil’s Advocate series, which showcases a range of critical approaches to horror cinema. James Gracey’s text explores how the 1984 Neil Jordan film of the same name evokes fairy tales, horror, werewolf films, Freudian symbolism, and t...

The latest review of my Devil’s Advocates book on The Company of Wolves comes courtesy of Jeremy Carr over at Film International , and it’s another really positive one. According to Carr, 'Gracey does his part to add to the legacy of The Company of Wolves, strengthening the film’s importance with a thoughtful monograph that is detailed and accessible, presenting arguments with deliberation and validity, never forcefully or self-righteous. Jordan’s film isn’t perfect by any means, but Gracey’s ultimate achievement is in making the case that it still warrants and welcomes further examination.' I’ve copied the full review below, and you can also check it out (along with a wealth of other film related reviews, news and features) over at Film International ... Review (by Jeremy Carr) James Gracey’s Devil’s Advocates entry on The Company of Wolves (Auteur Publishing, 2017) does everything a book of its scope should do. In about 120 pages, Gracey takes what is a generally...

The latest review of my Devil’s Advocates book on The Company of Wolves comes courtesy of the lovely folks over at FrightFest , and it’s another really positive one. According to critic Steven West, book is a ‘multi-faceted, intelligent and highly accessible study’. I’ve copied the full review below, and you can also check it out (along with a wealth of other film related reviews, news and features) over at FrightFest … Review The early 80’s saw a mini-boom of werewolf movies reflecting the revolutionary advances in transformative make-up effects, which ensured that David Naughton did not have to disappear behind a conveniently placed desk while morphing into AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. The John Landis movie and Joe Dante’s THE HOWLING brought a substantial degree of self-awareness and knockabout character-based humour to the sub-genre and have endured as modern horror classics. Other wolfman movies from the same period have enjoyed less latter-day attention, including...

The latest review of my Devil’s Advocates book on The Company of Wolves comes courtesy of the lovely folks over at Warped Perspective (formerly Brutal as Hell ). And I’m absolutely delighted that it’s another good one! According to critic Keri O’Shea, book is ‘lucid, detailed and meticulous, with exhaustive knowledge of the film, its inception and its interpretation [...] effectively crosses the divide between academia and fandom.’ I’ve copied the full review below, and you can also check it out (along with a wealth of other film related reviews, news and features) over at Warped Perspective . The Company of Wolves (1984) really is a force of nature – a vivid array of stories-within-stories which capture the insurrectionist tendencies of Angela Carter’s book, The Bloody Chamber, a collection of familiar fairy stories reworked into unfamiliar forms. The film brings several of Carter’s tales to the screen, albeit via a new, modern framing device, one which links the humdrum wit...

Published just in time for readers to enjoy through the ever-darkening nights of October, SelfMadeHero’s latest offering is a second volume of graphic adaptations of the tales of MR James: a medievalist scholar and provost of King’s College, Cambridge, who is remembered today as the finest purveyor of ghost stories in the English language. Adapted by Leah Moore and John Reppion, and featuring the illustrations of Meghan Hetrick, Abigail Larson, Al Davison and George Kambadais, the tales adapted for this volume include some of his best known work. Head over to Exquisite Terror to read my full review . Read my review of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary Vol. I here .

Kent-based author Erik Hofstatter’s latest offering is a dark, terse and keenly paced little chiller that consistently leads the reader into unexpected and ever unsettling places. The story concerns Aurel Schwartz, an unassuming young man whose tendency to sleepwalk begins to create tension within his family. When his somnambulant wanderings become strangely menacing, Aurel’s wife Zora believes he poses a real threat to her daughter Livie. Before long the family is caught up in a nightmare of missing teenaged girls, grave-robbing, astral projection and necromancy… Head over to Exquisite Terror to read my full review. And keep an eye open for issue 5 of Exquisite Terror , coming soon ... 

Few films of any genre have had the influence and impact of The Blair Witch Project (1999). Its arrival was a horror cinema palette-cleanser after a decade of serial killers and postmodern tongue-in-cheek intertextuality, a bare bones ‘found footage’ trend-setter. In this Devil’s Advocate monograph, Peter Turner tells the story of the film from its conception to its pioneering internet marketing campaign and critical reception. He provides a unique analysis of the mockumentary/non-fiction film-making techniques deployed by the film, its appeal to audiences and the themes that helped make it such an international hit (it made more than $140 million in the US alone). Turner also explores the film's lasting impact on the horror genre with a look at other found footage phenomena, such as the Paranormal Activity series, that followed in the wake of The Blair Witch Project . Head over to Exquisite Terror to read my review .

Devil's Advocates is a book series devoted to exploring the classics of horror cinema. Contributors to Devil's Advocates come from the worlds of academia, journalism and fiction, but all have one thing in common: a passion for the horror film and for sharing that passion. Each instalment delves into a specific horror film, exploring everything from its conception to its impact on genre cinema and wider popular culture. Titles thus far include Let the Right One In by Anne Billson, Witchfinder General by Ian Cooper, SAW by Benjamin Poole, The Descent by James Marriott and Carrie by Neil Mitchell. Despite its reputation as one of the greatest and most influential of all horror films, there is surprisingly little literature dedicated to Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (1960), and Martyn Conterio's contribution to the Devil’s Advocates series is the first single book devoted to it. Head over to Exquisite Terror to read my review . 

Liverpool-born Dorothy Kathleen Broster (1877-1950) is perhaps best known for her ‘Jacobite Trilogy’ of historical novels, The Flight of the Heron (1925), The Gleam in the North (1927) and The Dark Mile (1929). Much like Ediths Wharton and Nesbit though (more famous for works such as The Age of Innocence [1920] and The Railway Children [1905], respectively), Broster also turned her hand to writing fiction of a much darker nature, producing the bizarre collection of tales gathered together in Couching at the Door (1942). Obscure, atmospheric, elegantly penned and seriously odd, this batch of little chillers ranges from ghost stories boasting undeniably supernatural intrusions upon vulnerable characters, to subtle, Shirley Jackson-esque studies of obsession and fraying mindsets. Suffusing her stories with the everyday and the mundane makes them all the more effective, and at times Broster approaches what can only be described as ‘kitchen-sink Gothic.’ Her protagonists are usuall...

Written by Jeanette Winterson Based on the most notorious of English witch-trials, Jeanette Winterson’s latest book, The Daylight Gate , is a tale of magic, superstition, conscience and ruthless murder. It is set in a time when politics and religion were closely intertwined; when, following the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, every Catholic conspirator fled to a wild and untamed place far from the reach of London law. This is Lancashire. This is Pendle. This is witch country. Lurking in deepest, darkest north England, Pendle is a place brimming with bleak moors and dark forests. The events of 1612 are now an established part of English folklore and Pendle is still synonymous with witchcraft and diabolism to this day. Winterson tells of the plight of a group of Pendle women accused of witchcraft and cavorting with the Dark Lord, and the tortures and atrocities they endured at the hands of the law before they were put to death. Reality swirls with augmented fancy. Are these women real w...

Unfolding in the spring of 1890, ' Oscar Wilde And The Vampire Murders ' is the fourth instalment in Gyles Brandreth’s series featuring writer/poet/wit/dandy/philosopher Oscar Wilde as a highly sophisticated, eloquent and, in typical “Wilde” fashion, self-indulgent sleuth. Aided in his investigations by fellow literary luminaries Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker and his eventual biographer, Robert Sherard, the Philosopher of Aestheticism finds himself irrevocably embroiled in a series of nasty murders, the grim details of which suggest they were carried out by a vampire… Amidst the lavish locations and copious amounts of Perrier-Jouët decadently guzzled by Wilde and co, is an irresistibly macabre mystery which will undoubtedly please those who enjoy classic murder-mystery whodunits in the vein of Agatha Christie or indeed, Conan Doyle’s own Sherlock Holmes. To read my full review, head over to Fangoria . The following review was published on Fangoria.com in June 2011 Os...

A few reviews of my book Dario Argento have been appearing in various magazines and websites over the past month... I just thought I'd post them here and keep track of what folks are saying about it. So far, so good - it has been garnering mainly quite positive feedback. Which is great! I'll add links to more reviews as they appear. The first review of the book appeared on the Danish website  Uncut . There's an English translation  here ... Reviewer Lars Gorzelak Pedersen said he 'devoured' the book and " it will be welcome from both experienced Argento enthusiasts as horror fans who just want to know what the hype is about, or who want to enrich their experience of the director's films with new perspectives."  According to the latest  FrightFest emagazine , ' Dario Argento ' (Kamera Books) by James Gracey is not only " Well written and comprehensive ," it is also "' An invaluable guide for die-hard fans and recent  convert...