I’ll admit my biases upfront: I’ve been listening to goth music for about thirteen years now and I’ve got a streak of morbid curiosity that compels me to pick up every book I see related to this peculiar musical subgenre. I’ve got Mick Mercer’s books, I bought the Gavin Baddeley book, and a couple like-minded volumes can be found lurking around my bookcases. I feel protective of the goth scene in general; after all, it has gotten me through some very tough times so I like to see books out there that “get it right”. Imagine my delight at seeing The Goth Bible, by Nancy Kilpatrick, and What is Goth?, by Voltaire, on the shelves at my favorite alternative bookshop. Nevertheless, after reading them both it appears that not all tomes are created equal. The Goth Bible is a lovely specimen. It has a wonderful cover of raised black-and-white swirls and each chapter begins with an evocative photograph. However, the writing doesn’t quite live up to this initial artistic promise. The text is littered with factual errors, grammatical problems, and the gross overuse of the exclamation mark. Also, many large blocks of text seem cribbed directly from websites, making this book feel more like a compendium of information published elsewhere rather than a new work. Worse still, many of the facets that Kilpatrick ascribes to the goth scene are tangential at best. (While British high tea is interesting to me I don’t think it’s a particularly key component to gothdom as a whole.) Still, there is a lot of ground covered by this book. It’s just unfortunate that it is marred by less-than-thorough research, often annoying asides provided by some of the people interviewed for this book, and Kilpatrick’s too-purple prose. Any book that ends on the note, “The last rose petal falling could alter the balance and topple the bush. At the very least, the petal decomposes and supports new life. And it makes a great sachet!” is a bit suspect. Voltaire’s What is Goth? take a completely different tact on the subject. Rather than being a large “Bible” of information, What is Goth? is a slim, concise book that sets out to explain the gothic phenomenon with simplicity and humor. Despite its size, it manages to cover all the important bases, including the different kinds of goths out there and what the whole “let’s-wear-black-and-dance-like-the-dead” thing is all about. Voltaire’s use of witty sarcasm is exactly the tone needed to tackle this topic; most goths I know are just as likely to watch a comedy as they are a horror flick, so this approach feels appropriate and rings true. Like The Goth Bible, Voltaire’s book is lavishly illustrated with artwork and photographs, but even so, What is Goth? is a little pricey, being only four dollars cheaper than the much larger Goth Bible. Still, the succinct and hilarious content get a big black-nail-polished thumbs up.

The Goth Bible

What is Goth?

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