There are two kinds of devilry in this world: the kind that froths and foams in the convent, and the kind that wears a signet ring and drafts policy. Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun is about both — a tale where hysteria kneels before power and calls it holy. I’ve long thought that if Lucifer … Continue reading The Devils of Loudun: Possession in the Age of Reasonable Madness
Tag: fiction
The Woman in the Wall: Madness, Marriage, and the Myth of Care
‘I’ve got out at last,’ said the woman behind the wallpaper. ‘And you can’t put me back.’ It begins, as all good horrors do, with a husband who means well. John is a physician, a man of reason and gentle authority, and therefore utterly unfit to understand his wife’s soul. He prescribes what men have … Continue reading The Woman in the Wall: Madness, Marriage, and the Myth of Care
The Virus: A Parable of Power and Pathogens
Never thought I’d find myself reading this, but, curiosity got the better of me. It’s one of history’s tidier ironies that a man once wrote a novel about an incompetent government facing a deadly plague - only for his son to later preside over one. The Virus (originally The Marburg Virus, 1982) is Stanley Johnson’s … Continue reading The Virus: A Parable of Power and Pathogens
The Divine Discovery of Desire
Federico Andahazi’s The Anatomist If literature ever flirted with anatomy, it must surely have blushed at first touch. Federico Andahazi’s The Anatomist peels back not merely the skin of the body, but the corset of civilisation itself, revealing that the true heart of the Renaissance was never made of marble or reason - but of … Continue reading The Divine Discovery of Desire
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Some novels are so steeped in fatalism that one half expects the pages to sigh when turned. The Mayor of Casterbridge is such a book - a work that feels as though it were written not with pen and ink, but with plough and sorrow. It’s a tragedy of the English soil, where destiny is … Continue reading The Mayor of Casterbridge
Wording 