A New Horror Novel Lives Up To Its Lofty Ambitions

emily m. danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines is a doorstop, but every page is ripe with delight and terror

“‘You can see how uncomfortable it makes her,’ Elaine said as if Harper were now her conspirator. ‘Even now, even with the book written, she’s still embarrassed by how messy and fleshy it is when I forget to keep it only in the past for her — the stink of it has her wrinkling her nose. That’s history for you, darlings. When you dig it up, it always carries a whiff of rot.’”

emily m. danforth’s astonishing adult debut, Plain Bad Heroines, is a novel about a cursed book, a book about that cursed book, a film adaptation of that book, and a film about the making of that movie. It’s illustrated with enchanting old-fashioned drawings, and is peppered with footnotes that resemble the asides of a cheeky, good-humored character addressing their audience in a movie. It’s an ambitious story that from a lesser author would be an incomprehensible mess, but in danforth’s capable hands, it’s an absorbing, funny horror romp that I would recommend for anyone but those with a debilitating fear of yellow jackets.

It begins with a death. Two deaths, actually: Clara Broward and Flo Hartshorn. Clara and Flo are two wealthy students at the Brookhants School for Girls, a progressive boarding school in Rhode Island in 1902. The…