We Live Here Now

We Live Here Now utilizes many of the tropes and conceits of the Gothic genre. Location is central to the book’s atmosphere, as the bleak and untamed Dartmoor landscape amplifies the novel’s narrative tension. The “desolate majesty of the frozen moors” in Pinborough’s novel recalls Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (25), where the environment mirrors the inner turmoil and unruly passions of the characters. Emily’s observation that “[t]he weather seems to change in an instant on these moors, the wild land’s moods swinging violently from one extreme to the other” draws attention to how the location’s exposure to dramatically shifting elements echoes her own unpredictable emotions (111). The remoteness of the Bennetts’ home, “alone on a hill” (5), also emphasizes the vulnerability and isolation of domestic life cut off from society.

Throughout the novel, Pinborough employs familiar Gothic imagery, including the haunted house. Larkin Lodge takes on an active, malevolent role by attuning itself to the psychology of its residents, much like Hill House in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Playing on the conceit of supernatural possession, the Lodge influences its inhabitants by exploiting their flaws and weaknesses. The house’s history also contributes to its sinister energy, as it is the location of several murders and the burial site of individuals who died by suicide. While building on these classic tropes, the author also occasionally parodies them. For example, Russell’s declaration, “Don’t tell me this house was built on an old Indian burial site” (53), alludes to a conceit used in several horror novels, including Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror and Stephen King’s The Shining.

A factor that distinguishes Gothic literature from horror fiction is its focus on psychological suspense. While horror novels often provoke a visceral fear through gory violence and terrifying entities, Gothic literature creates a mounting sense of dread through the intangible and unseen. For example, in the primary suite, Emily senses that “[a]n invisible foulness covers every surface in the room like a sentient oil, clinging to it, spoiling it like rot” (35). The description conveys an evil that is overwhelming yet imperceptible to the eye. The supernatural element is also often ambiguous in this genre, leading readers to question whether events are paranormal hauntings or a projection of a character’s state of mind. The possibility that Emily’s eerie experiences may be the result of post-sepsis recalls Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, which never resolves whether the protagonist sees real ghosts or suffers delusions.

The influence of classic Gothic literature on We Live Here Now is highlighted via literary allusions throughout the text. The novel is most specifically in dialogue with Edgar Allan Poe’s work. The Raven’s narrative perspective deliberately evokes Poe’s poem, “The Raven.” Pinborough also includes references to Poe’s short stories, highlighting the link between their sinister subject matter and her characters’ experiences. Emily’s description of “The Tell-Tale Heart” as “a dark little story of murder and guilt” foreshadows her own fate (82). She also sees parallels between the raven’s carcass she finds in the fireplace and the body in the chimney discovered in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The protagonist’s description of her marriage as a “pendulum of instability” recalls “The Pit and the Pendulum” (141), while the name of Sally’s former rival, Georgina Usher, evokes Poe’s story, “The House of Usher.”

A further characteristic of the Gothic is the genre’s use of the eerie to explore aspects of the human condition. In We Live Here Now, the characters’ division into “good” and “bad” opposing selves recalls the dual personas of the protagonist in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In both novels, the device is used to illustrate The Duality of Human Nature and the costs of denying or repressing one’s darker attributes. Meanwhile, Emily’s conviction that the patterns in the Lodge’s flock wallpaper are moving is an allusion to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” foregrounding both texts’ exploration of the potentially damaging impact of marriage and domesticity. Marriage is portrayed by both authors as a Gothic prison, trapping the female protagonists within the suffocating intimacy of domestic unhappiness.

We Live Here Now is both a homage to and an evolution of the Gothic novel. The novel’s atmosphere, tropes, and themes firmly root the story in the traditions of the genre. At the same time, Pinborough updates the genre for a contemporary audience. Her focus on the disintegration of a modern marriage and a supernatural method of “fixing” these issues provides a fresh take on the Gothic tradition, blending it with domestic noir.