Catherine Chidgey’s disquieting, award-winning novel The Axeman’s Carnival explores the disintegrating relationship of a rural couple from the perspective of their pet magpie, Tama.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author was always willing to experiment with his prose, pacing and narration, crafting an oeuvre that varied wildly in style and structure.
A UK university has attached a trigger warning to Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen’s biting satire, for ‘toxic relationships’. Ironically, Jodi McAlister loves it for the gentle romance at its centre.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic forces us to confront uncomfortable questions about morality and responsibility. Do the best of us have a repressed bad side, just waiting to get out?
Gothic texts are not all bloodsucking vampires and howling werewolves. An Australian Gothic tradition took root alongside colonisation, influencing writers from Marcus Clarke to Alexis Wright.
Gothic fiction has become the ideal genre for exploring the grotesque, frightening aspects of coming of age. And disruptive girls with supernatural powers have replaced the passive heroines of old.