 Sleeping With the Lights on by Darryl Jones is one of those books that after reading the first couple of pages you end up feeling somewhat daunted by the prospect of reading the whole book, and yet you cannot stop yourself from gorging on it. There are a multitude of books on the market that take a scholarly approach to horror criticism and history of horror, most of the ones I have read have either been somewhat dry or lacking an in-depth analysis of the subject matter. Sleeping With the Lights On, bucks this trend to deliver one of the most fascinating and erudite discussions on our most beloved of genres. Darryl Jones is an English Literature Professor and Dean of the faculty of Arts, Humanity and Social Sciences at Trinity College Dublin, (which is just what a dyslexic semi-literate book reviewer needs when writing a review) and it shows throughout the book. It is clear that Jones is a gifted educator with his ability to disseminate his thoughts and theories on the history of horror and its place in the socio-political landscapes of horror existence is a joy to read. The complex notions that he puts forward can be challenging, however, he presents them in a way that it encourages you to think on what you have read, and then deliberate, cogitate and digest, and reach your own conclusions. Some sections required a few rereadings followed by many periods of faux intellectual chin rubbing before I fully understood some of the passages of this book, but at no point was I made to feel lacking at my comprehension of the text. Jone's introduction sets out to map the history of horror in our culture with a look at horror in civilisation. Starting with a list of descriptions of some of the staple shock scenes found in nearly every horror novel or films, such as an eyeball shooting out of its socket, a child returning from the dead, and a mother tearing her son to pieces. These scenes can be found in any of the so-called video nasties from the 80s, but as he rightly points out they can also be found in any bookshop. "safely inside the respectable covers of canonical literary classics" Straight of the mark Jones lays his cards on the table, you know that this isn't going to be a hack job on why horror is terrible, you know this is man fighting our corner. Touching on Euripides' The Bacchae , Pasolini's Medea and Shakespeare, Jones shows that throughout history the respectable face of literature has always contained elements which when used in the horror genre have always elicited a response of shock and outrage from the chattering classes. The section on Gothic, Horror and Terror, is one of the highlights of the book, here Jones gives one of the best comparisons between the three terms that have now become so overused and used in the wrong contexts that they somewhat lost their true meaning. "...terror poses existential questions for the nature of reality... often expressed in the supernatural... it is productive of fear." "horror might best be thought of as embodied, corporeal, articulated through pain... It can be productive of shock." His use of a glass of milk to describe the gross-out is sublime, but I'll et you read that description for yourself. To put it in my layman's terms horror brings us face to face with our mortality and our weaknesses brought on by being a barely held together bag of meat, that is so easily broken and subject to decay. There is also a fascinating discussion on how horror has always been transgressive, and it always creates its monsters by which we can hold up a mirror to the world we live in. The rest of the book is broken up into sections on the specific monsters and themes from vampires, zombies, shapechangers, the Occult, the horror of science, the mind and body and finally a look at horror since the millennium. In each chapter Jones delivers a comprehensive and detailed look at the history of these subgenres and how the each of them has changed and morphed to fit the ever-changing sense of morality and political thinking. Some of them you may already know such as the those put forward for zombies, no self-respecting horror fan doesn't know what the apparent metaphor is in Dawn of The Dead, but there is more than enough food for thought presented here to give even the most ardent fan something to chew on. His thoughts on horror and how it has been used to discusses our fears of outsiders is enlightening to to say the least. Sleeping with the Lights On is a book that every fan of the genre should read, it is also a book that every fan of the genre should give to that one person they know who thinks the genre is a just shock for the sake of shock, devoid of all artistic or intellectual merit. If this book doesn't change their mind, then nothing will. We all talk about the essential texts and films when it comes to the fiction side of the genre, but very few of us ever discuss the vital books that make up the non-fiction side of the genre with that in mind, Sleeping With The Lights on is to Horror as A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking was to popular science.  Ranging from vampires, ghosts, and werewolves to mad scientists, Satanists, and deranged serial killers, the cathartic release of scaring ourselves has made its appearance in everything from Shakespearean tragedies to internet memes. Exploring the key tropes of the genre, including its monsters, its psychological chills, and its love affair with the macabre, Darryl Jones discusses why horror stories disturb us, and how society responds to literary and film representations of the gruesome and taboo. Should the enjoyment of horror be regarded with suspicion? Are there different levels of the horrific, and should we distinguish between the commonly reviled carnage of contemporary torture porn and the culturally acceptable bloodbaths of ancient Greek tragedies?  
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