Books with leprosy - Michael Bentine's dreadful Templar (in which our Templar hero is initiated into Wiccan-type New Agey Mysteries by the Heroine) includes what appears to be an infodump about Hansen's disease from an encyclopedia, in the middle of some scene involving Baldwin the Leper King of Jerusalem. This wins my award for most glaring crass piece of anachronism + gratuitous infodumping.
I am impressed that you have read multiple books containing leprosy. The only one I've ever read was Monica Furlong's Wise Child, which didn't exactly have it as a major plotline or anything.
I am also impressed you made it through this whole book.
When I was, like, ten I sneak-read an incredibly trashy book called Aztecs, about Aztecs, in which there is a long gruesome leprosy description to set us up for the moment when the sidekick voluntarily offers himself as a sacrifice and gets his heart cut out because he found out that he had leprosy.
In the same book, the hero takes magic mushrooms and has sex and comes like mad. It made a big impression on me.
Oh, yes! Gary Jennings, whose authorial modus operandi was basically "protagonist travels extensively across land, having as much sex as possible in as many bizarre ways as possible, while every single other person in the story dies horribly, in new and inventive ways each time."
Coincidentally, I just read a book featuring leprosy!
Michelle Cliff's Free Enterprise is about two black women who are involved in the slave rebellion planned by John Brown; one of them, the historical Mary Ellen Pleasant, escapes censure because no one realizes she was involved, and the other, the fictional Annie Christmas, is captured, works in a Confederate convict gang, and is eventually freed by emancipation, whereupon she retreats to a hermitage-like house and only interacts with the inhabitants of a near-by leper colony, most whom are people of color, because doctors at the time believed leprosy was more likely to afflict POC than whites. Most of the inhabitants miss the outside world and their families but consider the hospital, on the whole, preferable to lynching and slavery, which they have all experienced or witnessed.
First off, Gothics are the whitest genre ever, in my experience, and a lot of the ones written before about 1980 have offhanded racist or occasionally anti-Semitic comments or stereotyping similar to what you find in mysteries of the same era. (Some more contemporary ones probably do too, but it's less pervasive.) I will try to avoid or warn you about those, but I apologize in advance if I accidentally steer you toward something with random offensive material.
Also, older women and first wives = evil, except when they're housekeepers (who always know more than they're telling.) And the heroes are generally unlikable alpha males. Just so you know. I'm in the genre entirely for the crack, myself.
Jane Eyre is a classic Gothic: brooding hero, big spooky house, intrepid orphan heroine, mad wife in attic. I know you've read it, but it's fun to keep it in mind as one of the prototypes.
If you've never read Bram Stoker's Dracula, it's a really fun Gothic that isn't the usual Girl Meets House
( ... )
I sadly managed to not read Dracula or Rebecca, so I will probably start there!
I'll check and see what I have! I think you've given me a Barbara Michaels and a Mary Stewart, so here's to hoping they're ones on your list. Also, YA Gothic? I am so there.
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I am also impressed you made it through this whole book.
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When I was, like, ten I sneak-read an incredibly trashy book called Aztecs, about Aztecs, in which there is a long gruesome leprosy description to set us up for the moment when the sidekick voluntarily offers himself as a sacrifice and gets his heart cut out because he found out that he had leprosy.
In the same book, the hero takes magic mushrooms and has sex and comes like mad. It made a big impression on me.
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Michelle Cliff's Free Enterprise is about two black women who are involved in the slave rebellion planned by John Brown; one of them, the historical Mary Ellen Pleasant, escapes censure because no one realizes she was involved, and the other, the fictional Annie Christmas, is captured, works in a Confederate convict gang, and is eventually freed by emancipation, whereupon she retreats to a hermitage-like house and only interacts with the inhabitants of a near-by leper colony, most whom are people of color, because doctors at the time believed leprosy was more likely to afflict POC than whites. Most of the inhabitants miss the outside world and their families but consider the hospital, on the whole, preferable to lynching and slavery, which they have all experienced or witnessed.
Reply
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First off, Gothics are the whitest genre ever, in my experience, and a lot of the ones written before about 1980 have offhanded racist or occasionally anti-Semitic comments or stereotyping similar to what you find in mysteries of the same era. (Some more contemporary ones probably do too, but it's less pervasive.) I will try to avoid or warn you about those, but I apologize in advance if I accidentally steer you toward something with random offensive material.
Also, older women and first wives = evil, except when they're housekeepers (who always know more than they're telling.) And the heroes are generally unlikable alpha males. Just so you know. I'm in the genre entirely for the crack, myself.
Jane Eyre is a classic Gothic: brooding hero, big spooky house, intrepid orphan heroine, mad wife in attic. I know you've read it, but it's fun to keep it in mind as one of the prototypes.
If you've never read Bram Stoker's Dracula, it's a really fun Gothic that isn't the usual Girl Meets House ( ... )
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:::waves flags:::
It, like Daphne duMaurier's Rebecca, totally deconstructs the genre and plants a foot in its backside, if you're paying attention.
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I'll check and see what I have! I think you've given me a Barbara Michaels and a Mary Stewart, so here's to hoping they're ones on your list. Also, YA Gothic? I am so there.
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