Chloe's Not Scared

In her debut novel Blue Light of the Screen: On Horror, Ghosts and God, musician and poet Claire Cronin constructs a series of abstract essays about her Catholic upbringing, experiences with depression and love of horror media. The narrative starts slowly, piecing together ideas about horror, bringing in the memoir vignettes about her mother’s religious fervor, and eventually, Cronin’s experience with mental illness. Peppered throughout, the illustrations in the book (Cronin’s own) are penned horror movie stills. Many essays conclude with a one sentence blurb of a horror movie, summed up like a succinct tv guide. Also included in the book are lists such as “Scenes from horror films that don’t exist,” “horror movie ad taglines,” and “scary things that haven’t happened yet” (the latter inspiring me to create my own list of the same name, to use my anxiety for good and not evil). I recommend this book for the horror fans who also are into theory and criticism.

Overall, Blue Light of the Screen had many strengths. The beginning essays on technology & horror convey the uncanny elements of tech in horror fiction, like in The Ring, and also the real life tech-horrors, like targeted ads or social media accounts of loved ones who have passed away. The essay about headlessness and the film Hereditary was also a highlight of the book. Cronin was not afraid to assert that while losing one’s head can be a metaphor for divorcing mind from body in literature and cultural studies, while in horror, it’s usually a technique simply used for scare-factor. Also strong was Cronin’s ability to articulate the nonsensical yet all-encompassing symptoms of depression. I especially appreciate the self-awareness, evident in a portion at the end of an essay “If I’ve written depression as poetic, I hope I’ve not romanticized a power which, when one is in its grips, does not feel like a beautiful aesthetic experience.” 

In one short section, Cronin recounts her experience going on a ghost tour in New Orleans and her disappointment in the callousness of the paranormal industry. “The ghost stories I heard on the streets of the French Quarter didn’t serve a restorative purpose,” she writes. From this observation, and a story later in the book about going to a movie theater alone, I surmise that Cronin views consuming horror as an action between herself and the spectral narrative. Some people love to watch horror movies with others, but I personally get a lot from the experience of watching horror movies alone. I’m wondering if that is because I too use horror movies to process my mental health, or if we are just unusually empathetic towards the dead.

My only qualm with Blue Light of the Screen was that the abstract writing style didn’t always flow. A reviewer on Goodreads said that Cronin tried to jam ideas together “like pieces of a jigsaw that didn’t fit,” which was a perfect way to explain the disjointness of the narrative. However, I personally kind of prepare for this when I read prose written in an experimental style. 

In conclusion, Cronin’s memoir was highly relatable (especially to horror fans with mental illness or a Catholic upbringing), and her ideas about the genre were all quite thought-provoking. I’m not sure if every reader will get something out of Blue Light of the Screen, but I sure did. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Repeater for an ARC of this title. Please note that quotations of Blue Light of the Screen were taken from the e-ARC.