LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
“A true ghost story about watching ghosts on screens,” as author Claire Cronin sets out in her introduction, Blue Light of the Screen: On Horror, Ghosts, and God presents a fascinating blend of personal memoir, passion for the horror genre, and critical insights.
The book’s episodic structure interweaves the author’s story - how she grew up in a committed Catholic household, how she battled depression, her experiences of grief and hauntings – with her thoughts on cultural theorists and philosophers like Derrida, Kristeva and McLuhan.
At once raw and ethereal, the writing is as compelling and shifting as a supernatural chiller — “If this is a memoir, it’s a memoir of a mood. If this is a story, it’s a ghost story. If this is philosophy, it’s about the spectral interchange between seeing and believing” — making it a satisfying experience for readers who share the author’s obsession for the genre, and students of critical theory.
Joanne Owen
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Blue Light of the Screen On Horror, Ghosts, and God Synopsis
Blue Light of the Screen is a memoir about the author's obsession with horror and the supernatural.
Blue Light of the Screen is about what it means to be afraid -- about immersion, superstition, delusion, and the things that keep us up at night.
A creative-critical memoir of the author's obsession with the horror genre, Blue Light of the Screen embeds its criticism of horror within a larger personal story of growing up in a devoutly Catholic family, overcoming suicidal depression, uncovering intergenerational trauma, and encountering real and imagined ghosts.
As Cronin writes, she positions herself as a protagonist who is haunted by what she watches and reads, like an antiquarian in an M.R. James ghost story whose sense of reality unravels through her study of arcane texts and cursed archives. In this way, Blue Light of the Screen tells the story of the author's conversion from skepticism to faith in the supernatural.
Part memoir, part ghost story, and part critical theory, Blue Light of the Screen is not just a book about horror, but a work of horror itself.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781913462055 |
| Publication date: |
13th October 2020 |
| Author: |
Claire Cronin |
| Publisher: |
Repeater Books an imprint of Watkins Media |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
220 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Biographies & Autobiographies
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| Other Genres: |
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Press Reviews
Claire Cronin Press Reviews
Part memoir, part philosophical rumination, Blue Light of the Screen is a love letter to the darkness inside and out...and the flicking light of the screens around which we cluster, seeking not warmth but truth.
Blue Light of the Screen is an original, compelling and genuinely unclassifiable book that is by turns insightful, moving and disturbing - as well as an informative introduction to cinematic horror.
A book written from deep within the horror genre, Cronin's Blue Light of the Screen annuls the distinction between confession and possession.
A poetic and highly personal account of the ghosts that chase us.
A striking memoir of a demon-haunted life. Cronin elegantly articulates the way horror (from the art house to the grind house) is often the most personal genre, leaving its viewers with powerful metaphors to decode the sometimes even more terrifying world on the other side of the screen.
A dreamlike, at times hallucinatory journey through memory and nightmare. Cronin's fragmentary approach takes a litany of horror movies as grist to explore deeper questions of uncanny belief. A strange and thoroughly enjoyable read.
