Book Review: "Gothic: Four Hundred Years of Excess, Horror, Evil, and Ruin" by Richard Davenport-Hines

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Subtitled "Four Hundred Years of Excess, Horror, Evil, and Ruin," this book is not what you should buy for your weird teen Goth nephew who wears a nose ring, black fingernail polish, listens to Marilyn Manson, and hangs out at the food court in the mall. Davenport-Hines' book is strictly a historic work, tracing Gothicism from the Middle Ages to today. While most of the book is interesting, the field is so big that the author can only bring surface examples to light without analyzing them too deeply. He has a section on the music of the Cure, and the literature of Poppy Z. Brite, but chose not to, or just could not, interview either one of them.

The author's biggest mistake is the amount of pages spent on Gothic architecture. The first half of the book is full of castle names, earls and dukes, and is of little interest to those who want to read about the Gothic lifestyle. The author does deconstruct the literature of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne rather well, in addition to a myriad of British authors whose names I am not familiar with, but might be interested in now. His coverage of Gothic art is average. The book includes photographs of many pieces of art, but the author must resign himself to describing pieces he could not include in the pictures, leading to reader frustration. I do slightly recommend this book, but do not be fooled by its dark cover. This covers four hundred years of Gothic HISTORY (despite the cover and marketing), not four hundred years of your Emo nephew hanging out at the mall and listening to Marilyn Manson, who is not covered here.