The language of intimacy in 'An Education in Malice' by ST Gibson

When it comes to ST Gibson’s novels, what comes to mind is vampires, romance, sensuality and the Gothic, but there wouldn’t really be calls for erotica or smut in her novels, even though it’s right there on the page.

That’s because of the languages that she used in those scenes - it changes the focus, the role and the emphasis placed on the intimate scene in a way that I haven’t really thought about before.

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With only a few word substations or additions in the main intimiate scene in the book would make it what we would traditionally view as a ‘spicy scene’ - and it would change the tone of the book completely.

Vampire stories are innately about want, need, hunger, and desire, so spiciness lends itself to the genre very naturally, but ST Gibson deals with that as a backseat to the desire that Carmilla and Laura feel for each other, and their hunger for inclusion and praise from their professor.

The language around Laura and Carmilla’s intimacy cements this focus and the shaping of the themes in the novel in a very clever and understated way.

There’s a sensuality and a softness to the romance, even among the suggestions of power play, the presence of vampires and the inevitable imbalance of power between them.

I’d never noticed the importance of word choice in this type of set up and it kind of blew my mind and made me appreciate the craft of this novel more than I did upon reading it initially.

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