Literary horror doesn’t equate to horrific

Literary horror is sort of just highbrow horror and horror is more or less a narrative that attempts to horrify, terrify, disgust, etc to tell its story along with using “horror” elements (ghosts, werewolves, spooky houses).

Fear is subjective. What horrifies, terrifies, or disgusts me might not horrify, terrify, or disgust you. I’m sure there are people that find this book super scary and others that don’t. Neither of those things on their own mean it is or isn’t horror.

This also means that just because something is a horrific topic doesn’t mean it’s horror. There are plenty of books about awful, terrible topics that aren’t horror.

Beloved, in my opinion, gets classified as literary horror because it is essentially a ghost story and a haunted house story. It uses that framework to tell its story. Her work, especially Beloved, also seems to have some gothic elements. To me, I consider Beloved to be a masterful example of the American gothic and, because I have a pretty broad definition of the horror genre, I also consider it to be a horror novel.

There will be plenty of people that have a much stricter definition or a different understanding of the topic that will disagree with me. It’s one of those books that is hard to shove into one specific genre. Either way, Toni Morrison was an absolute genius!