ABSTRACT
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2011) and Hollow City (2014) by Ransom Riggs-the first two parts of an emergent series to be followed by a third novel on which the author is currently working (Hickam, n. p.)— narrate a young adult fantasy tale in which the Gothicization of World War II is both a prominent narrative feature and an object of self-aware scrutiny. Still, despite Riggs’ own initial inspiration by the “Edward Gorey-like Victorian weirdness” of a series of antique photos he calls “these haunting images of peculiar children” (Riggs qtd in Russo n. p.), the possible classification of his books can hardly be reduced to Gothic horror, as they mix it in varying proportions with adventure, fantasy, mystery tale and time travel. Such genre complexity may have a dissolving effect on the intensity of the uncanny, yet it also contributes to the refinement of Gothic paraphernalia. Their significance is extended onto the structural level of both novels, affecting not only the protagonist but also the cultural context of the narrative in a way that is characteristic of the Gothic as a convention driven by its socio-cultural “self-consciousness” (Spooner 23). While some readers have found the lack of condensed horror in Miss Peregrine books confusing or disappointing,1 numerous enthusiastic comments of YouTube users under the author-directed trailers of both volumes, as well as the overall positive reception by users of Goodreads, where the novels have so far reached the average ratings of, respectively, 3.78 and 4.03 on a scale of 0 to 5, confirm the books’ overall success. Miss Peregrine’s has also become a New York Times bestseller,2 and the novel’s officially announced dramatization with Tim Burton as the director is planned for 2016 (Collier, n. p.).
