Carmilla

A sapphic vampire story from the 1800s exists, and that alone blows my mind. There are kisses, chaste yet intimate touches, talks of love and romance and dying eternally - shared between two young women. My brain has fried itself, unable to process the reality in which I've lived, ignorant of this work, until just this very year (2021). But the most amazing part? This book is good!

I borrowed the deluxe edition from my local library - the one with a gorgeous black and red cover - which is important to note because varied reviews suggest different editions are edited for grammar and wording. The version I read was written in flowing, atmospheric prose which initially threw me for a loop. The style and manner of speaking are so distinctly different from the way people speak and write nowadays that I struggled on the first couple of pages. Once I grew accustomed, however, the writing style enveloped me, urging me to sink deeper into its peculiarities and exist for a few hours in a completely different time and place.

And sink I did. With gluttony worthy of any vampire, I took in every word of this short novel and reveled in it. A book from the 1800s presented to me something no modern media has yet: women romantically infatuated with one another, treated as completely normal and not even noteworthy as being unusual or different. I can't begin to put into words how happy that makes me - how much it warms my heart and brightens my mood, despite the dreary gothic atmosphere of the story itself and the inevitable tragedy expected of any vampiric story.

I love this. The writing is a bit slow at times, but never boring. Laura's ignorance to the vampiric presence in her life is a bit silly sometimes, but it's in character; it's not as if she grew up playing Vampire: the Masquerade or reading Anne Rice novels, neither of which existed back then. It's just... good. That's all I can think to say.

I enjoyed this. It's good. I'm so glad I read it, and I almost feel a little sad that I have to return this one to the library.

Jordan Hall said it best: “this ethereal, infuriating book”

Reader's log: • Came for Carmilla Karnstein, stayed for the mystical moon child Mademoiselle De Lafontaine • Steamiest passage: “A small income in that part of the world goes a great way; eight or nine hundred a year does wonders.” [Half] kidding. It's probably: “Sometimes there came a sensation as if a hand was drawn softly along my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, longer and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat...” • Langor¹⁷ • Everything I could want in a good Gothic — dark, damp, and dusty castles, dramatic carriage wrecks, creepy portraits, unexplainable maladies, strange dreams, mysterious strangers, a story within a story...

Now, how many stars should I knock off for the author promulgating the whole ‘queer women as monsters' trope?

Thank goodness for Lanternfish's edition, which is Le Fanu's Carmilla, kintsugi'd. Carmen Maria Machado's edits and commentary make this 1872 Gothic much more accessible. And the modern reframing of the narrative adds nuance while turning the monstrous lesbian trope back onto its makers, whose “own accounts become highly suspect.” “I wished this edition to bear LaFanu's shame,” Machado writes. “I wish the reader to come to the book with a complete understanding of its inadequacy.”

Now that's the punk rock Mary Shelley energy I'm here for.

And how about those illustrations by tattoo artist Robert Kraiza?