Gothic manor? Check. Ghostly hauntings? Check. Finding out you’re the reincarnations of lovers separated by societal strictures whose ghosts are maybe a little bit steamy? Check and check. A paranormal Gothic romance, Ghosts of the Forbidden by Leanna Renee Hieber is preoccupied with echoes, reincarnations, and reverberations, and is the first in Hieber’s Glazier’s Gap series. When Lillian Anders—recently unemployed, recently single—is invited to a retreat hosted by a defunct Gothic literature publisher, her problems are seemingly solved. As Persephone Publications resurrects, however, so do memories of past lives and a witch’s curse that sweeps the town of Glazier’s Gap, Colorado. After a tragedy at the retreat, Lillian’s encounters with a ghostly presence lead her to recognize herself in Camille, an ancestral habitant of Glazier’s Gap, whose doomed romance in the nineteenth century threatens to repeat itself. Along with journalist Nathaniel Lynd, whose own memories of a past life surge when he meets Lillian, she must put an end to the curse that could tear the lovers apart—again.
Ghosts of the Forbidden is a true Gothic revival in more ways than one. It seeks, Scream-like, to comment on the elements of the Gothic and romance genres in which it traffics. Even its tagline—“She should run. But can she?”—signals Lillian’s awareness of the genre in which she exists. Author of over a dozen novels of the Gothic, gaslamp fantasy, and supernatural suspense, Hieber is obviously schooled in the Gothic tradition and in the academic rumblings surrounding its pitfalls (at the retreat, a pair of writers commiserate over Orientalist fetishism). Armed with this knowledge, Hieber pulls her novel into the twenty-first century, wherein ghosts can be spotted over Zoom and consent is paramount to the steamier moments. Yet, while it is refreshing to witness the novel’s chosen genres adapted into a modern sensibility, Ghosts of the Forbidden’s endeavor toward metatextual criticism falters.
The narrative’s awareness of its genres should function as a treat for readers well-versed in Gothic romance. The copious references to canonical Gothic texts across mediums—allusions like that to Jane Eyre (1847), one of the most famous Gothic novels of the past two hundred years, and the 1994 film The Crow—succeed in little other than proving that its characters are slightly more adept at traversing the generic trappings. Lillian, who identifies with the Goth subculture, sighs and pines as she mulls over the mystery in which she has found herself. “A delicious situation for someone who dearly loved all those aching Victorian novels,” the narrator comments. “Now, to make sure they survived the rigors of one.” This familiarity does more to lessen the novel’s stakes than it does to provide incisive analysis; such gleeful winks become increasingly tiresome. Ghosts of the Forbidden hopes to be a tongue-in-cheek love letter to Gothic romance. Instead, it never emerges from an off-putting feeling that we are waiting for the camera to pull back, to reveal we have been tricked into watching a movie within a movie, a heightened version of the more tempered one we hope will come.
As part of its self-awareness, Ghosts of the Forbidden plays with the intricate framework of the more sophisticated novels from which it clearly draws inspiration. Like their narratives, Gothic novels often reflect their complicated histories in a winding structure—epistolary, for example—that emphasizes the genre’s keynote theme: the return of the past. Though linear and structurally facile, Hieber’s novel is thematically invested in this complexity. The novel opens in Colorado, 1979, as the Gothic novelist Martha Green sprints through a Gothic manor, the Persephone publishing house. Warned against fictionalizing a local family, Martha is killed in this brief introduction. Jumping forward to Lillian’s present, the threat which the writer’s retreat presents is obvious: Martha’s novel, The Curse, wasn’t just any novel. It really happened. [1] Martha fell victim and now Lillian is in trouble. She blithely laments, “‘Can the past try … not to repeat itself right now?’” Similarly, when Nathaniel shows up to Glazier’s Gap to write about regional ghosts, his past life is plain: doomed lovers reunited. This ever-extending mirroring that Hieber offers is itself intriguing yet unsuccessfully executed.
Despite its length (under 150 pages), Ghosts of the Forbidden may struggle to keep readers engaged. Unlike Wilkie Collins’s classic novels—whose pages you might set on fire by flicking them by so quickly—or, more recently, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s anti-colonial revision Mexican Gothic (2020), Ghosts of the Forbidden does not demand that readers return to it. From its onset, the central romance that plays out across generations resists mystery and tension. For readers of the Gothic, the supernatural elements are disappointing in their lack of buildup. Disjointed pacing, in such moments in particular, presents sudden but ineffectual scares, sometimes to the degree that I found myself needing to reread sections to grasp a scene fully. And for readers of romance, the aching delights of a couple straining to unite are defeated by Lillian and Nathaniel’s immediate attraction and lack of social impediments. Their discussion, for example, of their respective convenient status as singles points to the novel’s unrewarding approach to romance. Likewise, they experience none of the class strife that tore Camille and William (the other half of the doomed lovers) apart. Even the sex happens off the page. Though the two must contend against the curse, their relationship offers little accompanying tension.
Paranormal romances have been popularized in the twenty-first century to the degree that they sometimes secure their own shelving unit at corporate bookstores. But the Gothic and romance genres are old bedfellows. Consolidated by the many female authors of late eighteenth-century Britain, the Gothic has delivered shivers of many sorts to authors for centuries. Its eroticization of the macabre—from orgasmic-like faints at the sight of a ghost to Dracula’s double-entendre vampiric lips—teases and mingles the senses. Though sex features more commonly in the most famous Gothic novels through metaphors like the vampire’s kiss, desire—and particularly transgressive desire—is fundamental to the genre. Because Camille and William are hardly resistant to their attraction to one another or their reincarnation as the doomed lovers, Ghosts of the Forbidden offers few charms as a romance novel.
For all its generic failings, unrefined syntax, and strange pacing, Ghosts of the Forbidden nevertheless admirably marries the Gothic literary tradition with the Goth subculture. The connection between the two may be seemingly transparent due to their shared linguistic roots, but Hieber’s depiction of Lillian as a Goth and Gothic writer is the strongest achievement in the novel’s playful metatextuality. Her Goth identity at once gives her insight into her environment, allowing her to call out certain cliches, while also poking fun at the nigh-ridiculous nature of Lillian’s circumstances. When Nathaniel asks whether Lillian’s happiness with him ruins her “Goth cred,” she smartly replies that “‘being an earthly vessel for a consumptive, hundred-and-fifty-year-old ghost who was torn from her lover and died of a tragic fall trying to get to him wins back the points.’” Although Lillian’s “Goth cred” sometimes provides narrative expediency—Lillian, a Goth, of course sees ghosts—who better to head a novel about a paranormal romance than a pale woman dressed head-to-toe in all black?
Likewise, it takes nearly 130 pages, but Hieber’s spin on the curse pays off. Despite the anachronistic invocation of a witch’s curse in the 1880s—this, above all, seems to muddle the Gothic with the older horror sensibilities of the northeastern United States—the Glazier’s Gap curse may not be what you expect in a novel laden with clichés. Lillian confides to Nathaniel, “‘Whatever forces were at work against William and Camille, I don’t know if they’re against us now, but I’m not sure the brutality that tore them apart ever left the town.’” Its thematic resonances highlight the novel’s investments in both reincarnation and mirroring motifs with additional plot devices and generic criticism.
Admittedly, as a scholar of the Gothic, I empathize with the jokes Lillian’s parents make about her—“‘1987 going on 1887.’” And were I to be invited to a writer’s retreat filled to the brim with ghosts, romance, and deadly curses, I would probably be equally delighted by the clichés thrown at me. Ghosts of the Forbidden may not be Hieber’s strongest novel, but it plays to the desires of those who love the Gothic and who prefer a modern approach to the Victorian novel. In its strongest moments, it holds up a mirror to its readers, whom Hieber knows are avid fans of Gothic romance. Although its many false steps will ensure it won’t be enshrined as a classic of a twenty-first-century Gothic revival, Ghosts of the Forbidden, and the longer Glazier’s Gap series to come, offers potential for a clever metatextual critique of what we love about the Gothic and what makes us groan, exasperated, in equal measure.
Endnotes
[1] Delightfully, Ghosts of the Forbidden’s interior cover offers a faux cover of Martha’s novel, instantly gesturing to the novel’s metatextual nature. Mirroring Hieber’s plot, The Curse’s clunky tagline asserts, “We make ghosts out of every joy and sorrow if we leave any of them unsaid.” [return]