Carmilla - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Laura’s isolated life in a remote Austrian castle takes a wild turn when a carriage accident drops the enchanting Carmilla on her doorstep, sparking an intense and eerie friendship. As Laura grows weaker and Carmilla grows stranger, the story unfolds into a seductive, gothic vampire tale that won’t let you down.

Now, I’m taking a different approach with this review, as the book stands apart from anything I’ve read before. I want to unpack this as best I can because boy does it deserve the attention. Apologies if it’s essay-like, my tiny mind has a lot to say.

I don’t usually read horror classics, and I rarely enjoy traditional classics in general, but Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla completely surprised me. It’s extraordinary and captivating from the moment I sat down with it. Unlike many other older novels such as Frankenstein or The Great Gatsby, Carmilla is genuinely easy to read despite its dated phrasing, both in description and dialogue. I was thrilled by this, because I cannot stand when a book forces me to stop and decode every single sentence. I simply don’t have the energy for that, and the story ends up slipping away from me, which feels like such a loss.

I love stories. I want to understand them, to be immersed in the worlds authors work so hard to create. But that becomes impossible when I’m faced with lines like this from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: “It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things, or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my enquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.” (p. 39). It’s beautiful, I can’t deny the power of the language, but I still find myself pausing, trying to fully grasp what Shelley means before I can move on. The flow breaks. The experience becomes stop‑and‑start, and eventually frustrating.

That leaves me with two choices: either I give up because I’m tired of not understanding, or I push through and finish a story that ends up meaning nothing to me because the language kept me at arm’s length. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate classics though—they’re the original foundations of so much modern storytelling, and I truly believe the world needs them. Their themes and messages are powerful in ways few contemporary works can match. But Carmilla stands out because it lets me enjoy those timeless qualities without making me fight the prose to get there.

‍ ‍ So, without a doubt, Carmilla is one of the prettiest novels I’ve read - if you can call a book pretty? I think you certainly can, and if you give this one a whirl you’ll understand the vibe.

Carmilla is basically the queen of the Female Gothic, and honestly, she knows it. The whole story takes place in super domestic, feminine spaces—castles, sickrooms, cosy little drawing rooms—and somehow Le Fanu has made it all absolutely terrifying. I had chills. It was strange. I was horrified. Carmilla and Laura’s relationship is the perfect mix of “aww that’s sweet” and “oh god she might kill you,” which is exactly the kind of emotional whiplash I think a Female Gothic thrives on. And underneath all that lace and candlelight is a very real critique of how vulnerable women were in a patriarchal society. Basically: men are useless, women are in danger, and the vampire is the only one getting things done.

Then, obviously, my favourtie feature - in honour of Pride month, again: Le Fanu kindly provided us with queer subtext, which - if i’m being honest - isn’t even subtext half the time. Carmilla is out there making heart eyes at Laura, and Laura is quite understandably, confused, flattered, and mildly dying. It’s one of the earliest vampire stories (origninally published in 1872) to openly explore same‑sex desire, and it does it in that classic Victorian way where everything is both deeply romantic and deeply repressed. It was a beautiful experience reading it. Carmilla’s affection is tender one moment and predatory the next, which creates this delicious tension between lust and danger. It’s like the book is whispering, “Being gay is beautiful… but also maybe deadly… but also beautiful again.” And because of this captivating back‑and‑forth, I ended up getting this weird ASMR effect from the writing during the more intimate scenes. Books rarely give me physical sensations, but this one? It was like the words were literally whispering to me. I swear I could feel Carmilla’s eerie yet lascivious presence in my own bedroom, which is not something I was emotionally prepared for on a Saturday night.

It’s safe to say I was freaked out by Le Fanu’s protagonist, but at the same time I was completely absorbed by her beauty and that unnerving sense of calm she carries around like a perfume. She terrified me, enchanted me, and honestly? I didn’t know whether to run or offer her a cup of tea.

And as if all that wasn’t enough to get me excited about a classic novel that I did in fact doubt I’d enjoy before I bought it; there’s the whole vampirism side to it and it’s brilliant hidden metaphor, which is basically a buffet of symbolism. You want repressed sexuality? It’s there. Illness? Absolutely—Victorians loved a good tragic cough. Fear of the foreign “other”? Yep, Carmilla literally strolls in from nowhere and everyone panics. Carmilla isn’t just a vampire; she’s the embodiment of every Victorian anxiety rolled into one very pretty, very chaotic woman. And honestly? She slays. Literally and poetically. I honestly couldn’t be more into this life than I already am.

Finally, with all that said, I definitely think you need to read this. It’s not a long novel — just 156 pages — but it’s jam‑packed with greatness.

Buy your copy of the book here: https://amzn.eu/d/0beXiP2n