The Soul-Drinker and Other Decadent Fantasies

Gothic horror aficionados and dark erotica seekers will drink up translator Stableford’s second collection (after Nightmares of an Ether-Drinker) of the stories of French Decadent Lorrain. This batch is focused on tales of erotic perversity, problematic obsession, and the “sensuality of Death.” The first five pieces, lush in language and simultaneously distant and intimate, appeal to voyeuristic fascination as their narrators catch glimpses of secret lives or hear friends gossip about the disturbing, deadly outcomes of adultery, nymphomania, and unscrupulous behavior. The remaining eight stories are literary fairy tales that reimagine ancient history and feature princesses as archetypes of human folly and the world’s strangeness. Though several are quite beautiful in the telling, their stylized nature and sometimes abrupt endings lack the emotional frisson of the earlier tales. Details about Lorrain’s personal life, which Stableford shares in his extensive introduction, are a dramatic bit of fin de siècle history in their own right, titillating the imagination as well as providing vital context for the 21st-century reader. (July)