Whatever the reason, I’ve been on an especially strong kick to rediscover gothic lately, and fresh, modern voices have taken me far beyond Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Full of pent-up emotion and psychological tensions, the feminist gothic genre has long been an outlet to explore the cracks in society—the ways we repress, suppress, and oppress; the things we refuse to address head-on. In gothic stories, there is a reckoning with a past that simply cannot let us live in peace. If these themes resonate for you in the face of all the year has brought so far, here are five 2020 releases to get you started: As if the fresh take on beloved gothic conventions wasn’t enough, this story’s heroine is at once chic, unconventional, smart, tough—and wholly memorable. Just don’t look too closely at the new materials department. Ines doesn’t care about any of this, only that she gets to escape from her terrible past. At first, she’s only interested in distracting herself from the secret she has buried with parties, drinking, and sex, but slowly the school’s magnetic secrets draw her in. Like a car crash, you know something terrible is about to happen, but still you can’t look away. In a complicated narrative about the damage we can do to one another—especially within a family—and the closure and healing of moving past it, this atmospheric story offers a captivating dive into transformation, healing and reckoning. Decades later, Hester comes to care for a mute and partially paralyzed older Louise as an escape from her past—but the history of the place she has landed at may prove even more dangerous.
