The Shape of Fear: Horror and the fin de Siècle Culture of Decadence by Susan J. Navarette (review)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviews215 (227). In sum, that despite the many flaws in his character, he was really the "Grand Old Man" of Victorian politics. This convincing exercise in psycho-history is meticulously researched, objective, and exceedingly well written. Its merit is augmented by an informative endnote apparatus, an inclusive bibliography of Gladstonia, and some very pertinent illustrations. Crosby deserves the accolade of "a job well done". J.O. BAYLEN Eastbourne, England Susan J. Navarette. The Shape of Fear: Horror and the fin de Siècle Culture of Decadence. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1998. xii + 314. $37.95 US (cloth). In The Shape of Fear: Horror and the Fin de Siècle Culture of Decadence, Susan J. Navarette examines the way in which fin de siècle horror fiction reflected nineteenth-century scientific theories and the cultural anxieties these theories engendered. Ranging broadly over disciplines as distinct as biology, philology, geology, physics, and anthropology, Navarette stresses the uniformity of their methodologies, all of which involved reading "distinctive surface patterns and structures" in order to understand "occult mechanisms and processes" (5). Fin de siècle horror writers in turn drew upon this scientific methodology as they sought "to record and reenact in narrative form what they understood to be the entropie, devolutionary and degenerative forces prevailing within the natural world" (6). Ultimately these works register the imminent sense of doom and decay that we have come to associate with the fin de siècle mentality. One of the strengths of the book is its selection of primary texts. Sacrificing quantity of literary texts for quality of analysis, Navarette focuses on five key works. Of these five texts, three are examples of what Navarette calls "literary detritus" or "refuse" (6) — works that have been largely ignored by critics: Walter de la Mare's "A:B:0," Vernon Lee's "The Doll," and Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan. Navarette argues that these works have as much to say about the culture that produced them as do canonical texts such as Henry James's The Turn ofthe Screw and Joseph Conrad's Heart ofDarkness, works which are also included in her study. Her book is divided into two sections. The first section, comprised of four chapters, demonstrates the 216Victorian Review effect o the arts of science's rendering of the body as a text to be read. In this section, attention is give