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Bernice M. Murphy, The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 256 pp.
Although the suburbs have become a dominant space in both the U.S. housing market and in the American popular imagination, few literary critics have studied the fictions they inspire. Bernice M. Murphy's The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture not only offers an important addition to this under-explored field, but also indicates the need for further analysis of the genre. The books, films, and television shows that Murphy examines reveal skepticism toward the rapid expansion of post-war suburbs, and an anxiety about the conformity, materialism, and ecological damage they bring. This anxiety lends itself well to horror and supernatural plots, in which "one is almost always in more danger from the people in the house next door, or one's own family, than from external threats" (2). While she rightly contradicts social critics like Lewis Mumford, who portrayed suburban sprawl as an inherently corruptive force, Murphy does claim that the widespread growth of suburbia has not been accompanied by a proper examination of its demands and effects. This lack of reflection necessitates the study of suburban fiction, as the frequent use of horror tropes reveals lingering concerns about community and belonging in post-war...