Book Review: Gothic Charm School

Gothic Charm School: An Essential Guide for Goths and Those Who Love Them by Jillian Venters

My review rating: 4 of 5 stars

Simply put, this should be highly recommended, if not required reading, not just for goths, but also for anyone curious about the goth community, whether because they are personally interested or because they have an acquaintance, friend, or loved one (spouse, significant other, boy- or girlfriend, relative, child, or secret crush) who counts themselves among the spooky set.

Miss Manners’ more somber-dressed and bat-festooned doppelgänger, the Lady of the Manners, has adapted from and expanded upon columns from her long-running website and assembled a delightful collection of advice for the goth and goth-friendly. Covering everything from the basics (“The difference between being a Goth, a NotAGoth, and not being a Goth yourself but being Goth-friendly”) to social etiquette both online (“The Internet is not Real Life (with an aside about the Great Flounce-Off)”) and off (“What to do when people ask why you’re dressed like that”) to parenting (“How to show support to your babygoth or babybat without relinquishing the keys to the hearse, and everything you need to know to Not Freak Out”), Gothic Charm School quickly becomes, in many small and a few not-so-small ways, the very “Goth handbook” that the Lady of the Manners so often reminds us does not exist.

I can’t go back in time twenty years and hand this book to my teenaged self (more’s the pity), but I canquite heartily recommend this to both old and new members of the goth community, as well as those around them who just might not quite get it.

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Following are a couple of short excerpts, collecting some of the Lady of the Manners own recommendations for further reading, viewing, and listening:

Babybat-friendly books the Lady of the Manners recommends:

• The Vampire Kisses series by Ellen Schreiber
• A Series of Unfortunate Events (beginning with The Bad Beginning) by Lemony Snicket
• The Scary Godmother storybooks by Jill Thompson
• Coraline by Neil Gaiman
• The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
• The Spiderwick Chronicles (beginning with The Field Guide) by Holly Black
• The Witches by Roald Dahl
• The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper
• Bizenghast Volume 1 by M. Alice LeGrow
• The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky A Discworld Novel, and Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett

Thirteen of the Lady of the Manners’s favorite vampire books, in no particular order:

• Drácula by Bram Stoker
• Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
• Those Who Hunt the Night and Traveling with the Dead by Barbara Hambly
• Interview With the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
• The Delicate Dependency by Michael Talbot
• The Blood Opera Sequence (Dark Dance, Personal Darkness Blood Opera Sequence 2, and Darkness, I) by Tanith Lee
• Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite
• Hotel Transylvania by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
• The Vampire Kisses series by Ellen Schreiber
• Gothique A Vampire Novel by Kyle Marffin
• Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore
• The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
• Sunshine by Robin McKinley

Recommendations listed in “The roots of Goth’s dark garden”

Books:

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• Drácula by Bram Stoker
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Anything by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Sandman Vol. 1 Preludes and Nocturnes (and the rest of the series) by Neil Gaiman
• Anything by H.P. Lovecraft
• Any of the illustrated works of Edward Gorey
• Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
• Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite

Films:

• The Addams Family and Addams Family Values
• Dracula (both the Tod Browning and the Francis Ford Coppola versions)
• Nosferatu
• Metropolis
• The Nightmare Before Christmas
• Beetlejuice

Music:

• Staring at the Sea: The Singles 1979-1985 and Disintegration by The Cure
• A Slight Case of Overbombing by The Sisters of Mercy
• Twice Upon a Time: The Singles by Siouxsie and the Banshees
• Crackle by Bauhaus
• Phantasmagoria by The Damned
• Serpentine Gallery by Switchblade Symphony
• Into the Labyrinth by Dead Can Dance
• Let Love In by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
• A Life Less Lived: The Gothic Box from Rhino Records featuring various artists