“It’s a subtle, underlying discomfort (…), like a fever dream”confides the YouTuber Riley Marie. In the video, the young woman recommends to his community books that caused her a delicious anxiety. She describes these novels as “weird books for weird girls” (“strange books for strange girls”). “This new trend of weird/toxic/unbalanced girly fiction is my new favorite genre, I’m fascinated”comments an enthusiastic reader.
On the forum « Suggest me a book » (“recommend me a book”) from the Reddit network, another claim: “I want books about women who are really weird. Discomfiting, scary, eccentric, disgusting, I want it all.” And under the #weirdbooksforweirdgirls, #weirdgirlbooks from TikTok, the content creators present, facing the camera or in the form of video montagesthe must-haves of the moment. Among them, Rabbit, by Mona Awad (2019, only available digitally for the French language), The Dangers of Smoking in Bedby Mariana Enriquez (Sous-Sol, 2023), and Motherthing, by Ainslie Hogarth (2023, untranslated).
This novel, which tells the story of Abby, haunted by the ghost of her poisonous mother-in-law Laura, since the latter’s suicide, popularized the expression on TikTok domestic horrors with its share of disturbing quotes, fiery criticism and distressing movie scenes taking place in luxurious kitchens or charming living rooms. Or when the home becomes the place of the strange, of horror. “Whether supernatural or not, these stories put their finger on intimate fears – impossible mourning, feelings of failure, isolation and repressed secrets – to which the house gives a materiality. There is a permanent reversibility between the character’s malaise and the house which manifests this malaise.”explains image historian Fleur Hopkins-Loféron. No bloodshed, but paranoia, manipulation and a derailment of perceptions.
“Addressing taboo subjects”
In literary and cinematographic jargon, the term “domestic horror” has many forms that Internet users have appropriated: horror at home (“horror at home”), housewife horror (“housewife horror”) or even gothic domestic… This genre has its source in the Gothic literature of the 18th century.e century, with authors like Samuel Richardson and Ann Radcliffe, at a time when heroines were cloistered in damp monasteries. Today, castles and abbeys have given way to tidy suburban homes and residential neighborhoods for the wealthy.
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