In a Glass Darkly

Maybe a bit closer to 3.5 stars. This was entertaining enough, although I feel like Edgar Allan Poe had better ghost stories from this period.

The first two stories, “The Green Tea” and “The Familiar”, had very similar themes and in fact made me wonder whether it was a progenitor to describing schizophrenia, what with the central figure in each story suffering from persecution mania, hearing voices and seeing entities. This was more so in “The Green Tea”, where the protagonist's persecutor is invisible to everyone else, not the case in “The Familiar”. Even the third story, “The Justice of Harbottle”, felt a bit to do with hallucinations driven by a guilty conscience.

The last two stories were markedly different, and therefore more interesting. “The Room in the Dragon Volant” read more like a thriller and a mystery rather than a ghost story per se. Kinda felt almost a bit like The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe or even in some parts like The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. The most famous story in the collection has got to be “Carmilla”, however, which is well known for having inspired Bram Stoker when he was writing Dracula. It deals with a vampire legend and shares a lot of similarities to Stoker's later work. Being a short story, it's also got a lot less suspense. What struck me the most about “Carmilla” was how much same-sex undercurrents it seemed to have, whether intended or not by Le Fanu. I know the standards for displays of affection between women back then were quite different, but I do believe the extent to which it happens here is beyond the norm, which was also remarked upon numerous times by the protagonist herself.

Overall worth reading if you're into Gothic horrors, but imo I don't think any of these will really haunt me for long.

Overall a great read—some of the stories actually had me a little spooked when I found myself out alone late at night, which is quite the accomplishment. As I've been focusing on the GRE lately, I also couldn't help but notice the significant amount of GRE vocab in these stories, so it's an excellent read for anyone studying for the verbal! Carmilla is, of course, certainly the best short story in the collection, but the others hold their own perfectly well and should not be overlooked.