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It begins, they say, with a woman screaming. You can’t tell at first if it’s pleasure or pain, or that tricky place where the two meet; you’re almost embarrassed to hear it, but if you listen closer it comes to sound more like anguish, a lament torn from the heart: like an animal cry of loss, or defiance, or fury, carried across the cove from cliff to cliff on the salt wind.

“Everyone who comes here is trying to escape from something.��

While You Sleep is described on the back cover of the ARE I read as “a modern-day ghost story,�� adding that it is “a page-turning, chillingly erotic Hitchcockian thriller�� and so on. And I must admit that much of that is true. Modern day ghost story? Sure. There be spectres here. Page turning? Yep again. I typically split my reading between downstairs books, that I read on, or at my desktop and upstairs books, usually fiction that I read in bed before going (or trying, anyway, to go) to sleep. I definitely looked forward to bed time on the days when I was reading this book. Down near the bottom of that back page is a quote from Gregg Hurwitz, the author of Orphan X, calling it “A sumptuously written contemporary Gothic thriller.�� It made me realize that, for all the thousands of books I have read in my life, I was not particularly clear on just what it meant for a book to be considered a Gothic. So, I cranked up the internet machine and had a look around.


Stephanie Merritt - image from The Times

There is Gothic fiction, but there also appear be sub-categories, romance and horror, that make it all very confusing for me. My early diving down that rabbit hole led to far too many side passages, German Gothic fiction, Russian Gothic fiction. I might enjoy a lit class in such things, but cannot really squeeze it all in for the purposes of a single review. First, there is some space between Gothic Romance and Gothic Horror, with plenty of overlap as well. Think Wuthering Heights vs Dracula. Turns out there are many characteristics in the sundry lists of specifics that overlap, adding to the distill-it-all-down challenge. I am adding links to some of the sources I found in EXTRA STUFF. But I found one site in particular that seemed to have done the job for me, and, hopefully will for you.


Generic Gothic novel image �� from Literary Hub

I am using intel from an article on the elements of the Gothic Novel from to frame this look at the book. Let’s begin with��
1 - The setting of a gothic is usually a castle or an old mansion. Although recently renovated, the considerable McBride House sits on a high, sea-facing cliff, has been around for a long time, even has roots in the pre-christian era, so definitely, check. Such places are usually endowed with secret passages, trap doors, and/or other architectural surprises. There is some of that here, so double-check. Zoe Adams is a forty-something Yank looking for a room of her own on the other side of the pond, and settles on a rather out-of-the way Scottish island. Her husband was not exactly thrilled on learning of her plans.


From Futurism.media

2 - Gothic novels have an atmosphere of mystery or suspense, threatening feelings, characters see glimpses of this or that fleeting image, a person, a ghost, something. Oh, yeah, Zoe gets glimpses in abundance. Visual, auditory, olfactory. The book opens with a mystery. Two boys checking out the house on a balmy night hear screaming, one runs toward the action, the other passes. Then more screaming, this time a boy’s. Scratch one kid? That’s the contemporary mystery, a year before Zoe makes landfall. But wait, there’s more. The house has a history. Seems back in 1860 one Tamhas McBride built the house, and married the current owner’s great-great aunt, Ailsa. They got up to some interesting antics there, which I will not spoil, but let’s just say spells and sexuality figured. And where spells and sexuality in 19th century doings occur, scandal cannot be far behind. Isolation is a part of this. Slightly tougher to manage in a 21st century setting. But don’t worry, the power supply to the McBride place is dodgy enough that we can expect the odd blackout or three, and there is no broadband. A lovely moor lies between the house and town, several miles distant, so, yeah, she’s gonna be stuck alone there at some point, in the dark, and unable to reach anyone.


image from Futurism

3 �� There is often an ancient prophecy or legend associated with the spooky house. More the latter here, as the place is reputed by locals to be the goto place to bring a date if you wanna get lucky. Something about it gets the juices flowing. Things have been seen appearing in windows from time to time. Zoe is befriended by a local character of an older gentleman, Dr. Charles Joseph, who runs a local bookstore and is a font of local history and lore. Seems Ailsa McBride was a bit of an oddity in the area, maybe too confident, maybe too modern for a remote Scottish island. Some thought her a witch, some thought the house had seen doings with the dark one, himself. Sweet dreams.


image from Futurism

4 �� Omens, portents and visions are regular elements of gothics. Dreams as well. Well, boy-o-boy are there dreams. Maybe some part of Ailsa is still around, as Zoe has particularly vivid dreams in the McBride house, of a very sexual nature. Sounds like way more excitement than she had ever had at home. But are the dreams really hers? Or is someone or something having those experiences, but using her body for them? Extra alarming is that she tends to wake up in a different room from where she had fallen asleep, and the soreness sure feels real.


Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781, oil on canvas, 180 × 250 cm (Detroit Institute of Arts)

5 �� Gothics manifest supernatural or otherwise inexplicable events. Inanimate objects moving about, statue heads turning, that sort of thing. In addition to the extreme sleeptime disturbances above, in a less extreme mode, there is a repeating song, , a haunting lament from the 18th century about a woman whose seafaring fiancée went down with his ship before they could be wed, and her desire to join him beneath the waves. Zoe is introduced to this song when she hears it performed at a (the) local pub, on arriving at the island. Her landlord meets her boat and drags her straight to The Stag. The tune is new to her, but keeps repeating through the story, and even when it is sung in Gaelic she is able to understand the words. It should be noted that the luckless bride-to-be of the song is named Annag, (Annie), the name being used here for a dodgy young barmaid.


Illustration from Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

6 �� High, overwrought emotion
Life was not wonderful for Zoe in the States. She desperately needs to get away from something, needs to sort things out, figure out her next moves. There is even mention of meds at one point. The things that keep going bump and grind in the night are not exactly soothing. So, overwrought? Fuh realz.

7 - Women in distress - in this case both a living and maybe a dead woman.

8 �� Women threatened by a powerful, tyrannical male
Ailsa’s story includes a totally tyrannical husband. Zoe’s hubs back in Connecticut may be less than the perfect husband, and he has particular faults, but I am not sure tyrannical would be a good descriptor. And there is a third male personage who appears to wield considerable power.


From BBC News piece on The Castle of Otronto

The Virtual Salt layout of Gothic novel characteristics goes on to list a bunch of common tropes they call the metonymy of gloom and horror
-----Wind, particularly howling - gee, ya think? Cliffside house at the shore. It will definitely be a dark and stormy night.
-----Rain, especially blowing - see above
-----Doors grating on rusty hinges �� If those are here, I missed them - ya can’t have everything
-----Sighs, moans, howls, eerie sounds - yep
-----approaching footsteps - could I have missed them?
-----lights in abandoned rooms - and locked rooms that are suddenly unlocked
-----character strapped in a room - Oh, yeah
-----Ruins of buildings - there are certainly some ancient elements in the McBride crib
-----Thunder and Lightning - see wind and rain above
-----Clanking chains - no, not really
-----gusts of wind blowing out lights - I think this one skipped as well
-----doors suddenly slamming shut - there may have been one or two
-----baying of distant dogs �� sure wish I’d had this list when I started reading, so I could tick off each as it popped up, but my porous memory fails me. Just not sure about the baying.
-----crazed slaughter - well, I’m not telling what may have gone on back in the 1860s, but it sure looks like it was something dark. Back here in the 21st, we are aware of at least one presumed death (body was never found) and there may or may not be more in store, crazed or otherwise.

There is more from Virtual Salt, but I am stopping here. I recommend checking out the site, if the subject is of any interest.


Image from , an article, Setting in the Gothic Novel

A few more items of info and observations on the book. There is a bit of a romantic element in the 21st. Sounded possible. I liked the internal dialogue Zoe engages in around that. Danger manifests in the 21st in the presence of two dark characters, a crude, seemingly predatory mechanic sort, and the young barmaid, who takes an instant dislike to Zoe. Serious cause for making sure your doors are locked, and staying away from any dark places. On the other side there is the young teacher, who seems a good, supportive sort, and best of all, Dr Charles Joseph, the local historian, who appeared to me in the image of Brian Cox, full of knowledge and secrets. Of course, can we believe anything anyone says in this place?


Image from Hiveminer.com - Haus by coyote86

There were a few items that bugged me. During a blackout, Zoe is able to retrieve messages from her landline answering machine. Yeah, I know some of them had battery backup, but, well, it bugged me. In gothics set in an earlier age there was a fair bit of swooning. Fainting has gone out of fashion, but it was necessary to the plot for Zoe to drop consciousness here and there, so she kept falling asleep. I nap too. It happens. But it seemed a bit too convenient here.

Finally. Gothics are not my usual fare. I take issue with the formulaic-ness of this particular specimen of the genre, but I guess writers use formulae for a reason. They work. I was engaged, and entertained, although I cannot say that reading this caused me any lost zzzzs. Zoe was appealing in her lostness, and hope for better. There is a nice twist at the end that I did not see coming, although in retrospect, I probably should have. Consider disbelief suspended. A fun read. I would definitely advise taking this with you to that summer retreat by the ocean, or better, after the summer people have gone, and you can have some space to yourself, October, maybe, like the setting of this book. Make sure the doors are locked, and that you have plenty of batteries. And don’t worry about that creaking noise. I’m sure it is just your imagination.


You should know this one


Review posted �� April 19, 2019

Published
-----March 5, 2019 (Pegasus Books) �� this is the one I read
-----March 8, 2018 (HarperCollins)


==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below.