49 pages • 1 hour read
T. KingfisherA House With Good Bones
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: T. Kingfisher
T. Kingfisher is a pen name for well-known children’s book author Ursula Vernon. She publishes adult-oriented fantasy and horror under the pen name to avoid confusion with the children’s books published under her own name. Ursula Vernon grew up in Oregon and Arizona, earning a degree in anthropology before turning her attention to art, which eventually led to writing and illustrating children’s books. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and several chickens (“About the Author.” Red Wombat Studios, 2023).
Ursula Vernon is the author of 19 children’s books, including the Dragon Breath and Hamster Princess series, and Hugo Award-winning webcomic series Digger. As T. Kingfisher, she published a series of fantasy novels set within her “Temple of the White Rat” Universe, including The Clockwork Boys and Paladin’s Grace. These novels combine fantasy elements with romance and Kingfisher’s signature humor. She has also published horror novels as Kingfisher, including The Twisted Ones, The Hollow Places, and What Moves the Dead. The Twisted Ones and The Hollow Places won the Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel in 2020 and 2021, respectively. What Moves the Dead won the 2023 Locus Award for Best Horror Novel in 2023. Her work is lauded for its mix of slow-rising tension, imaginative horror, fantastical elements, and humor.
Genre Context: Southern Gothic
Southern Gothic is a genre of fiction that originated in the American South beginning in the 19th century. It is heavily influenced by Gothic literature, a genre originating in England in the 18th century and centering on fear, paranoia, and transgressive desire. Southern Gothic literature is deeply rooted in the largely white, post–Civil War American South and reflects the era’s racial, economic, gender, and regional tensions (Bjerre, Thomas Ærvold. “Southern Gothic Literature.” Oxford Research Encyclopedias, 28 June 2017). Edgar Allen Poe is an early foundational author, and William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O’Connor are among the genre’s most important figures.
Southern Gothic focuses on the irrational, horrific, and transgressive, often containing monstrous or grotesque characters, irony, and dark humor. The genre usually portrays a veneer of Southern beauty and gentility and a romantic nostalgia for the antebellum era, beneath which lurks darkness and evil. Thomas Ærvold Bjerre asserts that the genre “brings to light the extent to which the idyllic vision of the pastoral, agrarian South rests on massive repressions of the region’s historical realities: slavery, racism, and patriarchy” (Bjerre).
A House with Good Bones is a Southern Gothic novel with horror and fantasy elements, which commonly appear in Southern Gothic literature. Though magical elements are not a requirement of the Southern Gothic genre, it often overlaps with the fantasy genre, as in A House with Good Bones. The “monstrous” characters in Southern Gothic can be metaphorical or literal monsters, naturally pushing Southern Gothic into the realm of fantasy and horror. While Southern Gothic tropes abound in A House with Good Bones, it also borrows from fairy tale tropes, such as evil witches and the magic of roses.
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