(Another review originally posted on Facebook.)

I’m a fan of Biller’s films, so getting hold of her first novel, Bluebeard’s Castle (2023, USA) was a no-brainer. And it’s pretty much everything I would have expected from her, although with some strange narrative choices. It’s also the book that features the word “chiffon” more times than any other book I’ve read.

Judith Moore is a successful writer of pseudonymous Gothic romances. At her sister’s birthday party at a hotel in Cornwall, Judith is approached by a man who claims to be a fan of her fiction. He’s handsome and charismatic, and sweeps Judith off her feet. They marry quickly. He tells her he is the son of the Baron of Hastings, and buys a castle in Sussex. But his business ventures seem to repeatedly fail, so he relies on his wife for money. She, meanwhile, finds herself in thrall to him – entirely changing her wardrobe and appearance to please him, and obeying his every whim in bed…

The plot is a straight re-working of the Bluebeard story, as Judith is gaslit and abused by her husband, attempts several times to break free, but is always drawn back to him. She begins to fear for her sanity, and then for her life. There are lots of references to 1940s and 1950s movies, especially their female stars. The story is set in the UK in the present-day, which I thought an odd choice, given how focused the story is on the aesthetics of the middle of last century. Biller handles her English setting reasonably well, although it does feel at times it owes more to Hollywood movies set in the South of England than it does to present-day Britain. There’s a lot of interiority, and awareness on Judith’s part of her situation and what her husband is doing to her…

It’s a knowing take on the story, rather than a dark post-modern version of it, as perhaps Angela Carter would have written (did she write one? Yes, she did: the title story in her collection The Bloody Chamber (1979, UK)), but seen through a soft-focus lens and tinted by Golden Age Hollywood. Not entirely successful, but an interesting read.