Aiken, Joan: A Cluster of Separate Sparks AKA Butterfly Picnic
I read one of Aiken's Gothics, Nightfall, a while back and was startled that it was not merely bad but conventional; but this one is exactly what one would expect from the sentence, "The author of the totally insane Dido Twite books, in which pink whales are spotted off New England and sinister plots to roll St. Paul's into the ocean are foiled by a girl on an elephant, writes a Gothic."
It functions perfectly well as a Gothic in the atmospheric and well-written Mary Stewart style: a young woman with a tragic past arrives in a gorgeously described Greece, and immediately something violent happens, attempts are made on her life, and romantic interests who might be villains appear. It's extremely page-turny.
It's also a hilarious parody of the form. The attempts on the heroine's life are extraordinary inventive and frequent. No one seems to care that people they supposedly love, or just people they know, are dropping like flies. The hero/villains are not physically attractive. There is an oubliette in the kitchen, and a sauna covered in bees; the heroine sings the bees to sleep, allowing her to make her escape. At one point I thought there was an army of clones, but that turned out to be a misunderstanding.
If you obtain this, do not read the inside or outside cover; my single favorite bizarre plot twist occurs on page 37.
Also, if you obtain this, standard warning for mysteries or Gothics written before 1980, ie, mild racial stereotyping (in this case, largely or possibly entirely parodying racial stereotyping in other Gothics) and now-offensive terminology like "Mongol" for "Downs syndrome."
The heroine, having witnessed the murder of her cousin, is bundled off into an airplane heading home because the body has vanished and the cops claim she hallucinated the whole thing. However, luckily for her, it has been hijacked by Arab guerillas, one of whom she had coincidentally struck up a conversation with on the transmigration of souls earlier that day.
He sympathizes with her demand to drop her off rather than taking her to their desert training camp, and the guerillas are completely nice and reasonable, so they land on the other side of the island, right in front of the Gothic school for clones children who are subjects of a seriously bizarre plot, where all the other important characters are hanging out.
Later, the guerillas reappear disguised as Gypsies and in the employ of the clone school's headmaster, as the other guerillas kicked them out because the camp was over-crowded, so they had to find some employment.
It functions perfectly well as a Gothic in the atmospheric and well-written Mary Stewart style: a young woman with a tragic past arrives in a gorgeously described Greece, and immediately something violent happens, attempts are made on her life, and romantic interests who might be villains appear. It's extremely page-turny.
It's also a hilarious parody of the form. The attempts on the heroine's life are extraordinary inventive and frequent. No one seems to care that people they supposedly love, or just people they know, are dropping like flies. The hero/villains are not physically attractive. There is an oubliette in the kitchen, and a sauna covered in bees; the heroine sings the bees to sleep, allowing her to make her escape. At one point I thought there was an army of clones, but that turned out to be a misunderstanding.
If you obtain this, do not read the inside or outside cover; my single favorite bizarre plot twist occurs on page 37.
Also, if you obtain this, standard warning for mysteries or Gothics written before 1980, ie, mild racial stereotyping (in this case, largely or possibly entirely parodying racial stereotyping in other Gothics) and now-offensive terminology like "Mongol" for "Downs syndrome."
The heroine, having witnessed the murder of her cousin, is bundled off into an airplane heading home because the body has vanished and the cops claim she hallucinated the whole thing. However, luckily for her, it has been hijacked by Arab guerillas, one of whom she had coincidentally struck up a conversation with on the transmigration of souls earlier that day.
He sympathizes with her demand to drop her off rather than taking her to their desert training camp, and the guerillas are completely nice and reasonable, so they land on the other side of the island, right in front of the Gothic school for clones children who are subjects of a seriously bizarre plot, where all the other important characters are hanging out.
Later, the guerillas reappear disguised as Gypsies and in the employ of the clone school's headmaster, as the other guerillas kicked them out because the camp was over-crowded, so they had to find some employment.