Gwen, In Green by Hugh Zachary
Mother nature goes on a murderous rampage
Tell me a book is from a different era without telling me a book is from a different era…
Okay, so there’s this newly married couple. The wife is shy and innocent to a fault. But her prudish nature causes her husband to be dissatisfied with the lovemaking he receives, and so he submits her to the local psychiatrist. Eventually, she becomes a sex-mad feral woman and everyone lives happy ever after.
No really. That is, in essence, the basis of Gwen, In Green. Only with a whole lot more eco-horror and gore thrown in.
Look, the book was originally published in 1974. It has some very outdated sensibilities in multiple aspects. But make peace with that and you’re actually in for an engrossingly enjoyable read.
To expand on the glib summary already shared; Gwen and her husband, George, buy an isolated dream house to start their new lives together. It is there, while swimming in their private pond, that Gwen encounters apparently sentient plant life that bestows her not only with a raging horniness, but also a telepathic awareness of the local flora and a deadly determination to protect it from harm.
George is perfectly happy with his young wife’s much-improved libido, and indifferent/accepting of her newfound fondness for greenery (especially the strange Venus fly traps she has a particular obsession with).
The problem is there’s a crew of construction workers tearing a course through the local wilderness. The plants, naturally, are none too fond of this. Fortunately, they have Gwen to avenge the massacre on their behalf. And what is an early-70s construction crew if not a bunch of dumb horndogs who are only too happy to be seduced to their deaths? Meanwhile, their foreman is oblivious to the immediate danger they’re all up against.
Silly, silly men.
Gwen, In Green is a fun and diverting throwback horror that feels very much of its time both in terms of substance and style.
On numerous occasions while reading it, I felt it would make a good companion piece to the also-early-70s movie, Let’s Scare Jessica To Death. That film shares a similar setup to this book, although the horror there is something altogether different.
(Another film the book inspired me to recall was Carnival of Souls, but mostly due to the shared hokeyness of their doctor subplots. Gwen’s shrink repeatedly half-remembers a previous case involving a suddenly sex-hungry murderess that previously lived in Gwen’s house, but it takes him almost the entire book — and much longer than your average bear — to connect the dots.)
So yes, there is plenty of old-fashioned detritus on offer in Gwen, In Green, but dare I say that is part of its charm? And in a way, to give credit where credit is due, it might even be argued that the book was at least somewhat ahead of its time with its environmentally conscious subject matter.
I recognize that Gwen, In Green might not be in everyone’s taste, but I’ll freely admit to thoroughly enjoying it. Despite being a relic of post-summer of love patriarchal horror, it absolutely scratched my trashy genre paperback itch and absolutely recommend it.
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