Reviews26 September 2026
Why Carmilla still unsettles
Twenty-six years before Dracula, a quieter vampire arrived in a Styrian schloss. We reread Le Fanu’s novella by lamplight.
Le Fanu’s Carmilla is short enough to read in one sitting and strange enough to stay with you for weeks.
“I live in your warm life, and you shall die, sweetly die, into mine.”
What makes it work is restraint. There is no castle full of wolves, only a lonely house, a guest who arrives by carriage in the moonlight, and a friendship that curdles into something far stranger.
A different kind of monster
Where Stoker gives us a hunt, Le Fanu gives us a confession. The horror is intimate, told by the person it happened to, years later, still not quite able to name it.