The Necronomicon

 

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So, for a little bit of context, I have decided to constantly have at least two books on the go: one that I read during to day, either on my way to work or during my lunch break, and the other to read in the morning and evening. I started this practice when I read my way through Edgar Allen Poe’s collected works (which took me ages, but I did finish it) and have since then closed the cover on another epic bedtime-reading adventure: Lovecraft’s The Necronomicon.

This 800+ page monstrous tome has taken me months and months and months, but I can finally say that I have read it! For those wanting to get into H.P. Lovecraft, it’s a good place to start, featuring many of his most celebrated works including At the Mountains of Madness, Shadow Over Innsmouth, and The Curious Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Stories filled with a chilling blend of horror and science fiction.

I am proud to have achieved such a feat, and am very happy to now be able to say, ‘yes I’ve read some Lovecraft’, but I have to admit it was a looong journey. For those not familiar, Lovecraft (while cool and celebrated) is hard to read. His prose is dense, wordy, and oftentimes pretentious, favouring long and ponderous words that have fallen out of common vocabulary. But while the writing itself can be very tricky to wrap ones’ head around (don’t even get me started on dialogue), one can’t deny that the drama and narratives of the stories still make their way unimpeded into the reader’s mind through incredible imagery and wholly creepy and original ideas of the horrific. The plights of the protagonists are made more compelling because a lot of the horror that Lovecraft writes about is beyond the comprehension of the human mind, thus fear culminating in madness is a common theme throughout his stories. The unreliable narrator treads a fine line in various tales, as most are recounted by a witness or survivor who makes it plain to the reader that they can’t even trust in what their own senses perceived. 

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The stories of Lovecraft are fun and exciting, though the reading experience can be a long, dense, uphill struggle: a little like wading through a tar pit. However, the payoff is there and there is a second layer of pride that comes with being able to say, ‘I’ve read the Necronomicon’. For horror novel fans, Lovecraft is a canon must-read, and if you can get past the intense racism, his stories and exciting, spooky, and enjoyable. 

Author: H. P. Lovecraft

Published: This commemorative edition was compiled and padded with editorial material by Stephen Jones, 2008. First published in Great Britain by Gollancz, an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, London, 2008.