Carmilla and Laura – review

Author: S D Simper

First published: 2018

Contains spoilers

The blurb: In the late 19th century, Laura lives a lonely life in a schloss by the forest, Styria, with only her doting father and two governesses for company. A chance accident brings a new companion, however – the eccentric and beautiful Carmilla.

With charm unparalleled and habits as mysterious as her history, Carmilla’s allure is undeniable, drawing Laura closer with every affectionate touch and word. Attraction blossoms into a temptation Laura fears to name, a tantalizing passion burning brighter than the fires of hell. But when a mysterious plague begins stealing the lives of young women in her home and the village beyond, Laura wrestles to reconcile the truth – that the gentle, fragile woman she loves may be a monster cast out of heaven.

Carmilla, the classic vampire novella written by J Sheridan LeFanu, receives new life in this gorgeous retelling, centered on the provocative, controversial leads of the original, Carmilla and Laura.

The Review: This novella is a retelling of the LeFanu classic, not a sequel to it. It treads the same ground that the classic vampire story trod before but it does expand on the lesbianism, making it less an undertone (though I do think the main attack that we see on Laura in the original goes far beyond undertone) and makes the sexuality of Laura and Carmilla explicit – I will say the sexuality is explicit but the sex within it isn’t explicit and is tastefully done.

The question becomes, is there a point? After all Le Fanu’s story is well written. The wraparound with Dr Hesselius is modernised, with the good doctor reading a discovered manuscript as she waits for a delayed flight. This, in a literary sense, is window-dressing and the main event is set in the same time period and, at first, follows the same story. I say at first because the story does morph and change. Not only with Laura responding to Carmilla’s flirtation and them becoming lovers but in aspects such as General Speilsdorf not only losing his niece to the vampire (off page) but Laura’s father seeking to arrange a marriage between her and the General. With Carmilla revealed (and accepted, by Laura) as a vampire she is able to offer her backstory (or at least as much as she can work around her vow of secrecy). Thus we discover that her vampirism was born of suicide and that she had been married to an ancestor of Baron Vordenburg – hence the family hunting vampires through the generations, though the husband was a rapist and abuser.

There are changes that seemed an affectation for little reason. For instance, the author changes Laura’s father from English to French, a change that had no impact bar cosmetic or, as another example, the discovery of Mircalla’s portrait was due to a search in the attic rather than it being a picture returned following cleaning/restoration. Perhaps these were to try and distance from the text a little. Some parts vanished altogether – the tinker is not in this. Other parts change quite radically, with Laura, Carmilla and her father attending a funeral, rather than Carmilla and Laura seeing the procession pass. This had two lore impacts – whilst Carmilla in the original seems to find the religious dirge accompanying the funeral distressing, in this she states that she is definitely impacted negatively by religious icons/artifacts etc. They also travel in the morning, this eschews the original’s implication that Carmilla is active from midday to midnight – my reading being that Carmilla is not in her room at the other times but has locked the door to prevent entry and returned to her coffin. There is one idiosyncrasy that I picked up on, with Carmilla stating that (in the 17th Century) her husband’s breath smelt of bourbon – unlikely as apparently the first advertisement to use the word bourbon was in the 19th Century and the use of rye and corn to make spirits in the Americas was not widespread until towards the end of the 18th century. It’s a little picky, I understand, but idiosyncrasies lift you out of the story.

That said the writing is evocative and the volume novella size and so a quick read. If you have not read the original Carmilla then this is not a starting point, the original is. But if you are a fan who wants to see a twist that has a love aspect writ large or just an expansion of the queer aspect then this is worthwhile. 6 out of 10.

Thanks to Sarah, who bought me the volume for Christmas.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK