You can't go home again, thinks Jenny in NYC, of her past life in the south, of River House and all of its memories. But home she goes, to reunite witYou can't go home again, thinks Jenny in NYC, of her past life in the south, of River House and all of its memories. But home she goes, to reunite with the family, after a quick and angry flight away from them all that has lasted a decade. Home to see her perhaps-crazy mother and to learn more about her mysteriously vanished father, presumed dead, all that's left a hazy but golden memory of a man she thinks she cherished. Daddy's Little Girl shall be the key figure in this family reunion, which will also include shredded clothes, toppled furniture, terrible whispers, a mysterious straight razor, a slaughtered chicken, messages in blood, and a lunatic on the prowl. Fun reunion!
Harrington is a superb writer in all the ways that count most to me: an excellent builder of atmosphere with the very Southern dialogue at home in the sweaty weather, the bright landscape, a dilapidated mansion full of nooks and crannies, a hoarder's kitchen, an isolated trailer; deep, believable, surprising characterization; a rueful tone in our heroine's voice, matched by the odd melancholy of the story itself. Plus the creepiness! This author knows how to do creepy. As well as dread, and foreboding, and even a low-key romance and kid characters who aren't cloying. And she knows how to place memory at the center: remembering the buried past; how the memories of the past impact the present; how memory can't always be trusted.
Probably would have been a 4-star book for me, but a surprising (and graphic) child rape scene just really took me out of the story. A perhaps necessary scene, but I'm a squeamish sort and there are some things having to do with kids (or with animals) that I'd really prefer to not have to deal with and which make me kind of angry with an author. Unreasonable of me, I think, but there you have it....more
an excellent novel, needing rediscovery. the narrative breaks its story in two, within two different time periods, both equally compelling. the first an excellent novel, needing rediscovery. the narrative breaks its story in two, within two different time periods, both equally compelling. the first part details the forced landfall (due to sabotage) of a colony ship full of religious adherents, and their building of a society on this uncharted and inhospitable planet. the second part takes place 23 years later and is a portrait of two very different communities: the primary being 'agrarian' (view spoiler)[scare quotes because the harvest is... a meat harvest (view spoiler)[ugh gross (hide spoiler)](hide spoiler)] and made up of the faithful, a relatively safe community moored in place both physically and mentally; their mysterious and threatening rivals a more holistically-inclined band of fierce hunter-gatherers made up of the unbelievers (mainly the ship's crew and their descendents) who fled from the unsurprisingly fanatical theists. the latter group now follows weather patterns and the herds of native animals. the titular character is Jan Andrax, scout, who has a history of religious fanaticism that he has since renounced, and who is tasked with making this new colony succeed - until it turns against him. he is the protagonist of the first half; by the time of the second half, 'Jandrax' is a near-legendary character and the new protagonist is his son, born in the colonist community but soon to explore the greater world.
I was so impressed by this thoughtful, often melancholy book. Logsdon is a careful writer, rather austere and monochromatic in his style, always eschewing melodramatic flourishes despite the drama and bloodshed frequently on display. he is consistently nuanced and subtle in his exploration of ways to build a community, the pitfalls of religious systems that don't allow differing beliefs, and "what makes a man" (as well as how idealizing masculinity impacts disability). I appreciated how much the author avoids easy answers and binaries. although the agrarian society is clearly headed towards failure, the hunter-gatherer society has its own issues - e.g. kidnapping mates and children is not exactly a positive trait for any community, no matter how respectful of nature they also strive to be.
the book has an increasingly complex engagement with religion. in this far future, all spiritual practices have been combined into the "Universal Monist" faith:
"A religious group founded by Louis Dumezil in S.Y.767. The premise of this group is that all religions were founded by the same spirit (deity?) and that a true religion can be found by collating the elements common to all religions while rigorously discarding those elements confined to particular religions... After his death, further revisions led to the splitting of the Universal Monists into denominations based on increasingly fine points of doctrine... Several ecclesiastical wars have been fought..."
there is one sequence that was mind-boggling. Jandrax's son's landing on a mysterious island, where he encounters the planet's extinct, time-shifting original inhabitants (plus their pets!) and - most surprisingly - this planet's God. these chapters were like nothing I've read before. in terms of examining the nature of God, the only book that comes close would be Dick's VALIS - although Logsdon's portrait of divinity is less gnostic in nature. his is both a transcendental and a materialist conception of deity reminiscent of some of humanity's faiths, while also being an utterly alien god as well. fascinating ideas, fascinating book....more
synopsis: due to a certain experience in his childhood, a young man becomes obsessed by satyrs; this obsession causes him to engage in a lot of researsynopsis: due to a certain experience in his childhood, a young man becomes obsessed by satyrs; this obsession causes him to engage in a lot of research, which leads to several strange experiences.
"delicious" is such an effete, decadent adjective to use for a book... I guess I'm an effete decadent, because this book was savory, rich, delicious. but tastes differ, so I imagine it wouldn't be as enjoyable a meal for many. there is such an insular quality to it, as if it were written for a select audience and, perhaps, mainly for the author himself. the novel was Weighell's last and it felt both very niche and very personal: the obscure subject matter; the diffident tone and slow pace and the formal, decidedly old-fashioned prose; the smorgasbord of characters inspired by real authors, mystics, artists, musicians; the episodic quality of the narrative and the perhaps autobiographical elements of the protagonist's personality and journey; the bookishness of it all.
although this is squarely within the 'weird fiction' genre, where ambiguity reigns supreme, there are still several sequences that were overtly Horror or even Thriller: a bundle of rags in the corner of an abandoned basement suddenly taking a sinister shape; a hunt on a mansion's grounds with human prey; a conversation in a rest home with an evil old wizard that ends in an unpleasant curse being directed at the protagonist. all of that and much more was delightful. I really love the rather starchy yet sometimes arch way that Weighell writes. it was also very interesting to read about the different permutations of "satyr": archaic nature and fertility figures in the myths and legends of many cultures, artisans and architects credited as Etruscans in history books, Satanic figures, members of chthonic cults, tempters who will lead the unwary astray, guides who will lead the curious to new paths and old dimensions....more
If you're reading this so-called review, you are different from many of the people around you: you are a reader. Apparently, reading for pleasure is dIf you're reading this so-called review, you are different from many of the people around you: you are a reader. Apparently, reading for pleasure is declining; it has increasingly become a niche activity. Your niche does not make you better, but it does make you different. You are, in this particular way, outside of the mainstream - despite how well you may blend in with that stream. Pleased to know you, brother or sister outsider! The criminally underread Ken Greenhall is solely concerned with illustrating the outsider perspective. You should read him. He gets you.
Except for this excellent historical novel, Greenhall is primarily known - if he is known at all - for writing quasi-horror. His outsiders are either quirky mystery-solvers (Childgrave, Deathchain) or psychopaths (Hell Hound, Elizabeth, The Companion). No matter the health of their mental state, all of his narrators hold the mainstream world and its denizens at arm's length. These narrators often comment ironically on the bizarrely boring behavior patterns of normies; depending on the book, they then will shrug and ignore them, or easily manipulate them, or scornfully reject them, or sometimes just kill them.
Lenoir is another of Greenhall's outsiders: a black man in 17th century Europe, first a slave to art dealer/swindler Mr. Twee, then a freedman able to travel on his own. And travel he does - but still saddled with the friendly, gay, utterly amoral, extremely self-interested Twee, who has treated the enslaved and then freed Lenoir as, basically, his friend. Lenoir, an artist's model and occasional practitioner of juju (white magic only though!), starts in Amsterdam, travels briefly with an actor's troupe to Rotterdam, and ends the novel in Antwerp. The book is less about adventure and more about a fish out of water who wouldn't go back to his first home even if he could (despite his longing for it, and for his children); it is about a black outsider looking at the strange world of white Europeans, consciously and continuously rejecting being a part of that world, but still of it, still in it. Much to his frequent wonder, or amusement, or confusion, or chagrin. As the saying goes, white people are crazy.
Although a fictional creation, Lenoir himself is based on actual person: the model for Rubens' Four Studies of the Head of a Black Man (1883).
The story is both lightly comic and deeply melancholy. As always with Greenhall, the prose is superb. Despite this being a historical novel, this is not a lush portrait of a fascinating era in Europe. The details are often there, but this is a rather stripped-down and streamlined narrative, as detached and distant as Lenoir himself - but as thoughtful and as soulful as well. Despite two extremely tragic murders, the book is also highly amusing. Lenoir both understands and misunderstands the people around him regularly: he sees the heart of them, but often can't fathom why they must do the things they do. The novel is a study of an outsider who sighs rather than shouts at life and its fortunes and catastrophes. Sometimes that's all a person can do....more
It's wild that this wonderfully out there story was written sometime in the 1930s or 40s. Jūza Unno i
"What a terribly thoughtless death sentence."
It's wild that this wonderfully out there story was written sometime in the 1930s or 40s. Jūza Unno is apparently considered the "father of Japanese science fiction" and that's also wild. The story reads as if it were written by a drunk middle-school kid obsessed with mind control, post-apocalyptic dystopias, sexy lady androids, trans ideology, soap operas, and William S. Burroughs. All of that and so much more. "Eighteen O'Clock Music Bath" is about the end of post-apocalyptic Japan, now greatly reduced in population, living underground and under the thumb of its authoritarian yet very wussy president. All citizens must submit to a "music bath" at precisely 18 o'clock each day, which renders them both productive and patriotic for the busy hour following that painful infusion. The rest of the day is spent in aimless, lethargically horny discontent.
A typical scene: the power-crazed Secretary of State, mistress to the President, unsuccessfully tries to feed her parrot a bloody chunk of android meat - from the same android that she had tried to stab in the heart the previous day, in a hysterical fit of rage after catching the President excitedly eyeing the comely humanoid.
The writing is laughable and I'm not sure it's all the fault of the translator. *shrug* Who needs quality prose or a competent translation when the story is this berserk.
I loved this tender scene:
"Hey Paul. You'd better be careful about Bara. She was making a big fuss about how you were a scrap battery. If she gets wind of your big secret, it's not going to be pretty."
"Penn, Bara is your wife. As long as you don't screw up, there's no fear of her finding out."
"Yeah, but that woman is as shrewd as any man. I can't tell her what to do."
"Penn, for a husband you sure whine miserably."
"Actually, I'm considering giving up being a husband. Being married to a woman like that completely sucks out the life from me."
"Really, are you serious? If you got divorced I'm sure you'd just find another wife. Do you have someone in mind?"
"Are you kidding? There aren't any nice girls out there who are right for me. Hey Paul, to be honest... I think it would be great if you weren't my guy friend, but my girl friend."
"Girl friend?" Paul blinked his eyes, mouth agape. "Penn, do you really mean that?"
"Do I mean it? Of course I do. Why would you ask that sort of thing?"
Paul grabbed Penn's hand and silently led him behind a dividing partition in the corner of the room.
There was the sound of clothes shuffling. Paul's shirt appeared, draped over the top of the partition. There was a clang as a belt was drooped over the partition.
At that moment, a startled yell came from behind the partition; Penn's screams drowned out the voice of Paul trying to calm him down.
"Oh... That's what she meant by the rumor you were doing dissections on your own body. This is some surgery you've done. You disgust me!"
Don't worry, romance fans: Penn eventually gets over his unseemly transphobia and settles down with Paul. And Bara gets her own sex change, after realizing that turning into a man will help her get past the boredom she has with life.
SPOILER: literally the whole country dies at the end due to overexposure to the music bath. All except its wily inventor Professor Kohak, who becomes the leader of the new "Android Nation of Kohak." Fun!
this is a fascinating horror novel about adults who won't let go and kids who have to pay the price. the novel literalizes the idea of parents living this is a fascinating horror novel about adults who won't let go and kids who have to pay the price. the novel literalizes the idea of parents living their lives at the expense of their children: appalling thrill-seeker Renee may now be virtually braindead, but she still wants to live the wild life, even if that means inhabiting the mind of her daughter, bending that little body to her will and sucking her soul away, bit by bit. Renee was a student of the left-hand path and those lessons served her well; fortunately for her daughter, Renee's ex-husband is willing to literally give up everything to free their child of this puppeteer.
the book is grim, grimy, and unpleasant. and very well-written. the scenes of Renee's practice run mind controlling her sister were difficult for me to read, they were so full of the complete degradation of a person's body and spirit. Jeter makes this novel a compelling and fearful experience, full of night sweats and terrible dreams. he was clearly committed to maintaining a certain kind of narrative, one that doesn't spell things out for his readers, and to creating a certain kind of atmosphere, one of creeping dread and feelings of imminent doom. his vision of an unspoken fraternity of divorced fathers, only somewhat in their children's lives, moodily traveling the freeways on Fridays and Sundays, was a surprising concept. even more striking is the novel's central location: a failed suburban planning experiment now mainly empty, the funders out of money halfway through the project, leaving only the skeletons of homes that will never be lived in. and at the heart of that dead neighborhood, a body in a coma, hooked to feeding tubes, nearly dead itself but still desperately yearning for life. never have I read a will to survive depicted so repulsively. just die already, monster!
the strange and perfect collage art cover on my edition is by Dave McKean, whose covers for Sandman disturbed and enchanted me when much younger....more
All of Tom Reamy's fiction under one cover, minus his Bradbury homage, the novel Blind Voices. (I read the hardcover edition of this collection, but tAll of Tom Reamy's fiction under one cover, minus his Bradbury homage, the novel Blind Voices. (I read the hardcover edition of this collection, but that's not appearing on Goodreads.) Reamy was a fascinating author and many of his tales are wonderfully strange. He had a lively intelligence that makes me wonder what more he could have brought into the world, if he hadn't left the world so soon.
The collection has three new additions to his prior collection, the excellent San Diego Lightfoot Sue and Other Stories. None of them amazed me, and two of them were mediocre - but all three are still interesting for completists like me.
"Sting!" is a screenplay about an alien invasion in a small town. Goofy fun but clichéd and not particularly memorable.
"M Is for the Million Things" is bleak and repulsive. Bad things happen to people, perhaps randomly and perhaps not, and maybe this is the start of the end of the human race. The talent is there but I'm not sure why this was written.
"Potiphee, Petey, and Me" is very hard to describe. In some kind of society - post-apocalyptic maybe? - mutated or bio-engineered men live a certain kind of way, without women. The overlords of this society keep the men "horny, happy, and ignorant" which basically involves a lot of sodomy and the designation of some males as female-labeled "butterflies". The plot: after the death of their butterfly, three men hope to reconstitute their group marriage by finding a new butterfly, which will get some female-labeled energy back into their home and will mean they can finally stop fucking each other. Our hero, the aptly-named Horse, stumbles upon a plot by a group of rebel butterflies who seek to escape into the outer world. This novella was strangely light-hearted and incredibly bizarre.
✄
I'll just copy & paste some of my review of San Diego Lightfoot Sue to describe more of this collection:
"Twilla" was super fun - a dark kind of fun, but fun nonetheless: a thrilling battle between an elderly schoolteacher, living out her days in a dusty small town, and a vicious little witch, trapped in a schoolgirl's body and armed with spells, homunculi, and and an enslaved djinn. That horrific, demonic, rape-happy djinn is the story's biggest character, in all definitions of the word, but what I loved in particular was how Reamy fully invests in his brave heroine - still virginal after all her years, but still an intrepid maverick who knows how people think and who knows exactly how to take care of business.
"Beyond the Cleft" and "Dinosaurs" are about the end of things: in the first, the end of human life as we know it in a small town (and perhaps everywhere) and the beginning of something terrible and new to take its place; in the second, the end of human life on our earth and the beginning of something new and perhaps not so terrible, ready to take our place. The first story was pitch dark, deadpan horror; the second was incredibly imaginative science fiction that is at ease in depicting completely alien cultures - human and otherwise - with a bleak and mournful tone. Sad and memorable stories depicting sad, terrible things. Ah, the sad, terrible cycle of life!
I had so much fun reading the slightly amateurish "Insects in Amber" - and the feeling I had of this story being written by an excited writer just developing his skills actually added to the fun. It was slapdash and speedy and I smiled constantly. The plot: a number of strangers find that a storm has trapped them all in an old dark mansion, one that comes complete with an eerie, elderly mistress, her sinister servant, a strange supernatural force, psychic powers galore, and a couple memorable deaths. What's not to love? I have literally just described everything I'm interested in when it comes to old dark mansions.
The cynical, snarky appeal of urban noir that stars police detectives and private detectives is fully present in "Under the Hollywood Sign" and "Detweiler Boy". The careful putting together of clues, the stubborn protagonists, the untrustworthy suspects, the sudden plunge into a bleak existential darkness - all there, alongside a rich vein of disturbing, surreal fantasy that involves inexplicable angels (the winged kind) and a mysterious twin (the bloodthirsty kind). And mixed in with all of that is what felt like a kind of homoeroticism, one not curdled with any sort of loathing, self- or otherwise. I'm not sure what the sexuality of the author was, but the feel I get is that of a person not just completely at ease with their own sexuality, but open and nonjudgmental of the spectrum of sexuality itself. That was a good feeling and a surprising thing to find.
That openness is certainly present in the highly regarded and awarded "San Diego Lightfoot Sue," which has a sweet, very naive teen from a small town, new to Los Angeles, taken in by two very flaming and, much more importantly, very kind queens. I completely loved that the depiction of these two embraced both the stereotypes and how genuine and nurturing they are. Reamy was certainly not an author who Othered those outside the mainstream. The boy falls in love with the much older prostitute-painter next door; tragedy soon follows. The story is actually barely even genre fiction - outside of the opening and the tragic closing, this is more of a coming of age tale featuring a remarkable and very sympathetic cast....more
a unique experience for me. this is a cold case murder mystery set in the searing heat of the Australian bush with a protagonist who is basically the a unique experience for me. this is a cold case murder mystery set in the searing heat of the Australian bush with a protagonist who is basically the story's only character. (two other characters do appear: one via journal entries read by our protagonist, and another in just the last few pages.) the cold case: who started the blaze in an isolated farming community that claimed the lives of nine residents and hundreds of animals? Officer Hamilton wants to know what happened to his friend, a teacher in this community, so he sets up a campsite and begins digging throught the burnt remains of this tiny town. S.H. Courtier is a calm and deliberate writer and his first-person narrative makes no missteps in terms of characterization or realism. I was surprised at how absorbing this mystery turned out to be. especially after Hamilton discovers an entrance to a tunnel system that leads to a bizarre underground lair. creepy!...more
this enjoyable murder mystery was published in 1941, two years after the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction" but belonging squarely to that tradition. ithis enjoyable murder mystery was published in 1941, two years after the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction" but belonging squarely to that tradition. it all takes place in a cushy cabin during a blizzard, close enough that a detective and his squad are able to helicopter in to try to solve the crime, but far enough away (and with all of the roads closed) that its cast of richie riches are forced to remain in each other's company despite one murder and then another. there's just something about the combination of cold, cabins, the wealthy, and murder that makes my heart sing. Christopher Hale does a great job conveying the shifting loyalties and many motivations of his cast through the eyes of his nervous, lovelorn, and not particularly brave heroine. also, interestingly, he makes it clear that she's a better match for the handsome detective than for her nervous and secretive twit of a fiancé, then never bothers to make that more satisfying match happen.
BIG SPOILERS FOLLOW but really, are you ever going to actually read this?
the ending was fantastic fun: the heroine is being confronted by who she assumes is the secret killer, and who is at the very least the most obnoxious guest (and way too handsy), when suddenly the real killer skis right into him, knocking him out and into the snow, and then literally carries our heroine off. lengthy and very psychotic monologue soon follows and I took that time to slowly pull my jaw up off the floor, trying to picture what just happened. the fact that the real killer is the tall, horsey lady who is an amazing athlete and is the most sympathetic character by far, as well as someone who pretended that her evil, exulting laughter were the shaking sobs of fear and mourning... honestly, I fell in love. I sorta want to reread this one just to see if there were clues there all along....more
an amusing English village comedy. Professor Pounce has tracked down the legendary Stone of Chastity, which apparently causes any woman of lost virtuean amusing English village comedy. Professor Pounce has tracked down the legendary Stone of Chastity, which apparently causes any woman of lost virtue who sets foot upon it to slip, and into the river she falls, the lascivious slattern. the indomitable professor seeks to use the censorious residents of the village where the stone has been found as his test subjects, aided by his aimless, horny nephew. hijinks ensue.
I'm not overly familiar with this subgenre, although I loved the Mapp & Lucia books and Miss Marjoribanks is perfection. but this seems like a pretty good example? so light and charming. the writing here is effortlessly witty, as well as generous in its view of human foibles. the high-handed Prof. Pounce, by turns distracted and bullying, and a surprising charmer with the ladies, is a splendid creation. I think Margery Sharp is mainly known for her Rescuers books featuring heroic mice (adapted by Disney) and the romantic comedy Cluny Brown (adapted by Lubitsch). I really like her offhand style - like an urban sophisticate slumming but not judging - and would certainly read more by her....more
synopsis: a little girl is haunted but is she really?
When is a haunted house story not a haunted house story? When it is a Weird Fiction™ haunted houssynopsis: a little girl is haunted but is she really?
When is a haunted house story not a haunted house story? When it is a Weird Fiction™ haunted house story, of course. The old Weird Fiction Masters blood runs through Walton's veins: some Arthur Machen, a little bit of Lord Dunsany, and a lot of Algernon Blackwood. That blood is not interested in classical ghost stories; it doesn't particularly want to scare you, except perhaps on an existential level. It is fascinated by the extradimensional spaces between and beyond, psychic residues and psychic attacks, the natural world's transcendent qualities, the Lessons of the Ancients, the right-hand path and the left.
This will be a difficult and probably very annoying book for some. Hard to recommend. It is eerie and disturbing but it is far from a traditional tale of horror. The poor reviewer Dan was appalled at the lengthy middle section, which is basically conversation and interrogation. I get it; for someone who doesn't love the in-depth yet strangely stylized, chapters-long conversations that dominate many of Algernon Blackwood's books, this will be a slog. But that and so much else delighted me. I love those sorts of things, the reading and often rereading of multi-level conversations, the thought put into each query and response, the respect for the reader who is expected to be just as interested in such contemplative sequences, one who takes their time and is not reading the book simply to turn pages rapidly.
I also love the characters. The four supporting characters (two brothers, a wife, and a child) are all well-characterized, portrayed in varying shades of villainy and victimization. Best of all, the protagonist and the mother who employs him. Dr. Carew comes from a long line of "psychic investigators" like John Silence (Blackwood again) and there is something so compelling about how these types of characters radiate both a calming ease with transcendental mysticism and an innate decency and quiet strength that I suppose can only be called "goodness" if that word didn't come across as so corny. Elizabeth Stone is just as interesting and admirable: an heiress who escaped from a controlling evil and who is forced to return to it, a student of the occult absorbed by the supernatural but never taken over by it, and in the end, a woman whose struggle is basically about not allowing her own will and independent thought to be taken over by any dominating force, whether by an evil aunt's will or a cousin who loves her. Elizabeth resists being subsumed; being her own individual is key to who she is. These are two very attractive characters.
Walton's prose shines. So many surprising phrases and sentences stuck in my mind; she's both a perfectionist and someone who wants to describe things in new and unusual ways. A complex and nuanced writer who trusts her audience. And much like Blackwood (yet again), she has no interest in viewing non-Western spiritual practices with anything approaching condescension. I really appreciated the depth and sympathy in which she portrayed the mystical traditions of other cultures and her ease in imagining some sort of afterlife. As well as how the present world is affected, sometimes infected, by the past.
[image]
looks like a ghost messed with that hair a bit
also there is a creepy apparition that takes the form of a hare and who doesn't love that?
This book is incredible and was a real paradigm-shifter for me. Way back in the year I was born (1970, I'm old), Albert Murray was mainly a music critThis book is incredible and was a real paradigm-shifter for me. Way back in the year I was born (1970, I'm old), Albert Murray was mainly a music critic. But he was also writing fiery polemics on race and racism, from the perspective of a black man who saw the many flaws in this nation while also celebrating its many strengths. And in a voice that is so acerbic, witty, angry, humorous, empathetic, bitchy, and above all, masterful. The guy knows what he's talking about. His mind is all spikes and spokes, constantly poking and turning, his writing all switchbacks and sudden, surprising connections. Truly enlightening stuff.
I'd heard of him before, as I had read many sociopolitical classics in college. But I had mainly learned of him in the context of being the counterpoint to James Baldwin, a writer who Murray is famous for critiquing. It's telling that while I was assigned many of Baldwin's works, Murray was never on the curriculum. Clearly a dynamic was created between them similar to Booker T. Washington versus W.E.B. DuBois, with Washington often seen these days as upholding a white supremacist value system (spoiler, he didn't).
Murray seethes about the treatment of African-Americans by white America, I do want to make that clear. But he seethes against anyone who would flatten the black American experience, who would turn a complex ethnicity into a race of victims. And so his seething isn't just against clueless, vicious white racists or against the many horrible and familiar examples of systemic racism; he also fumes against sociologists and politicians and cocktail party liberals who turn black Americans into portraits of misery. Just as he speaks out against black writers who he feels do the same. This is not a man who would appreciate much about Ta-Nehisi Coates or Nikole Hannah-Jones or Ibram X. Kendi, let alone Robin DiAngelo or the tenets of Afro-pessimism. If you read this and end up admiring him, I'd recommend modern black writers like the very-different-from-each-other Coleman Hughes and Chloe Valdary and Kwame Anthony Appiah (but not so much Glenn Loury or John McWhorter, both of whom I imagine he'd dismiss as bougie af).
Murray's ideas (and ideals) can perhaps be summarized as:
(1) The black American experience is a layered, complicated experience and anyone who would paint it as solely a history of being demeaned - for whatever goal, positive or negative - well, that person is either a grifter trying to get some clout by trucking in stereotypes about "Negro inferiority" without actually saying that openly, or is just your garden variety stupid asshole with their head in the dirt.
(2) Black people are central to the American experience and what it is like to be an American and what constitutes the American character. He believes that black culture(s) and white culture(s) are often different, of course. But blacks and whites have deeply influenced each other. The impact on one from the other and back again means "American culture" is black, white, all the colors. And so black Americans have more in common with white Americans than they do with people in other nations who have black skin. Murray despised both white and black separatism. To him, there are no "black Americans" or "white Americans"; thus the "Omni-" of the title.
(3) To look at race rather than culture as the central part of identity is to be both a fool and a dullard.
(4) The history of the U.S. is not simply the story of white heroes & white villains with black identity defined by how black people coped or benefited from the various villainous or heroic acts of those white people. Instead, American history is a history of so many white and black heroes, all of whom have one unifying factor: they are each Americans, and should be celebrated as such.
some things that amused/interested me:
- oh how he rails against the reasons behind "the natural look" for black people that was being embraced by hippies and counter-cultural black people and various fashion magazines of his day. all of that was hilarious and eye-opening to me. Murray points out that not only has black American culture often celebrated artifice and flash and stylization as key components of style, he points out that if you really want to be that person looking at African roots as key to black American culture - and he is decidedly not that person - then you need to at least realize that African culture has fully embraced stylization, flash, and artifice - including body modification - since before the U.S. was even a country.
- oh how he rails against sociologists and social workers who would demean black female mastery and, well, the entire concept of matriarchy, by positing that one of the key problems of black culture is the fact that many black kids are raised by single moms. Murray celebrates these women.
- oh how he rails against photographers and "ethnologists" who paint places like Harlem as anything less than complex, vibrant, and full of beauty & joy, and instead focus on the poverty and pain and sorrow that is also - but only - a part of that world. And far from the most important let alone influential part. Such diminishments are often celebrated as "realism" - all the better to earn the acclaim of various white liberals, who can then condescend to Harlem and other black-majority places as hellholes in need of rescue.
- oh how he (more gently) rails against James Baldwin! (who I love.) this was shocking, but he has a point. Baldwin started his career speaking against "propagandistic" books that would flatten the black experience and portray black people as a race of victims. but then Baldwin went to France and... changed. Suddenly he was full of sorrow over the poor, poor black Americans and their supposedly miserable lives that contained no joy or richness, and so that's what he talked about in interviews and that's what he wrote about in essays and in books like Another Country. Murray sees Baldwin as a man who betrayed his own former ideals and his own formerly realistic and nuanced perspectives, a person who once railed against books that transformed black people into victim archetypes, and who then - after he was included in the circle of hip literati & American expats of the day - apparently decided that providing such misery porn was maybe not such a bad idea after all.
(I'm not sure where I land on this perspective and I'd probably need to read a biography of Baldwin to truly form an opinion. but I get where Murray is coming from.)
- he also has, let's just say, some thoughts on Norman Mailer & his essay "The White Negro." I'm less interested in Mailer than I am in Baldwin, so I'm not going to go into detail. But those thoughts are Murray at his scathing best. Haha Mailer, wonder what you thought about that.
an excellent article on Murray by another one of my favorite black writers (and perhaps the one who hews most closely and most explicitly to Murray's ideals), Greg Thomas:
"American intellectuals, like those elsewhere, are profoundly preoccupied with the abnormally wretched predicament of contemporary Western man in general... almost every significant work of art of the twentieth century contains some explicit and often comprehensive indictment of the shortcomings of contemporary society and the inadequacies of contemporary man... As soon as any issue involving Negroes arises, however, most American social science theorists and technicians... seem compelled to proceed as if Negroes have only to conform more closely to the behavior norms of the self-same white American middle class that writers like Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and Sherwood Anderson had already dissected and rejected long before the left wing political establishment of the nineteen thirties made it fashionable for even the average undergraduate to do so."
"Most Negroes have always had enough inside information about the history of this great hit-and-miss republic to know that other people have been deliberately writing Negroes out of the history books, even as the same people permitted newly arrived immigrants to write themselves in."
"Identity is best defined in terms of culture, and the culture of the nation over which the white Anglo-Saxon power elite exercises such exclusive political, economic, and social control is not all-white by any measurement ever devised. American culture, even in its most rigidly segregated precincts, is patently and irrevocably composite. It is, regardless of all the hysterical protestations of those who would have it otherwise, incontestably mulatto. Indeed, for all their traditional antagonisms and obvious differences, the so-called black and so-called white people of the United States resemble nobody else in the world so much as they resemble each other. And what is more, even their most extreme and violent polarities represent nothing so much as the natural history of pluralism in an open society."...more
An ideal vacation: the isle of Capri, warm and sunny; a community of idiosyncratic expats, amusing and lively; ferocious natives, sardonic and sly; coAn ideal vacation: the isle of Capri, warm and sunny; a community of idiosyncratic expats, amusing and lively; ferocious natives, sardonic and sly; colorfully dressed religious cultists, rustic and merry. Conversation and parties and conversation and art forgery and conversation and natural disaster and conversation and a deadly street battle and conversation and murder and so many conversations on all sorts of fascinating subjects. Art forgery is fine if it becomes a reason for a billionaire to hand money over to a proud friend. Natural disaster is fine if it's only ash to be dealt with; the volcano's eruptions mainly harm those boring mainlanders. A deadly street battle is fine if it's natives versus cultists, plus it gives everyone something to talk about for a little while. Murder is fine if the victim is a swindling louse and the murderess doesn't make a bloody fuss about it. A history is delivered: the island once ruled by an eccentric despot; his eccentricity has become the lifeblood of the island itself. A visitor arrives, an Anglican Bishop of Africa, already shown a different way of living in Africa; now ready and open to new ways of thinking. This rather stuffy but kindly gent finds his mind suddenly opening to all sorts of new possibilities. Now rename the isle of Capri: it shall be called "Nepenthe". The south wind blows hot, dry, and strong in this beautiful place; it causes all sorts of minds to expand in all sorts of directions.
The author was a scandalous man and an expat himself, on the island of Capri and elsewhere. He wrote lauded travel books and was friends with a variety of fascinating people. A suave perspective on the vicissitudes of fortune and life, an exciting interest in exploring all the different ways of thinking and being. Prose that is deliciously descriptive but never overcooked, sophisticated and ironic, pitiless and empathetic, amused and always highly amusing. I think this was his only book of fiction. Or should that be "fiction"? No doubt much of this was cribbed from his own life, the actual people he knew and the actual place he lived. Either way, the book is perfection; why bother writing more fiction if you've said all that you need to say?
This is a dream of a book and I wanted to stay dreaming, so I prolonged the experience as much as possible. The wit, the elegance! It gave me so much to smile at, be shocked at, and above all, to think about. So much food for thought. I love being around smart, individualistic people and I love being around people who enjoy life and I love being in a setting that is warm, breezy, colorful, surrounded by water. Full of things to do, people to meet, and above all, ways to relax. I love when something makes me both think and feel. I want to live in this book.
"Something had been stirring with him; new points of view had floated into his ken. He was no longer so sure about things. The structure of his mind had lost that old stability; its elements seemed to be held in solution, ready to form new combinations."
"They produce a new kind of public, a public which craves for personalities rather than information... Men cannot live, it seems, save by feeding on their neighbour's life-blood. They prey on each other's nerve-tissues and personal sensations. Everything must be shared. It gives them a feeling of solidarity, I suppose, in a world where they have lost the courage to stand alone. Woe to him who dwells apart!"
"That venerable blunder: to think that in changing the form of government you change the heart of man. For surely we should aim at simplification of the machinery. Conceive, now, the state of affairs where everybody is more or less employed by the community - the community, that comfortable world! - in some patriotic business or other. Everybody an official, all controlling each other! It would be worse than the Spanish Inquisition."
"What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings - they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race, and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong. How easy that seems! Has any one ever done so? Never. Has any man ever attained inner harmony by pondering the experiences of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through the fire."...more
boy falls for older boy while at boarding school. is it a crush, true love, or the relationship that will come to define him? was he "in the making" aboy falls for older boy while at boarding school. is it a crush, true love, or the relationship that will come to define him? was he "in the making" and then, at the end, finally made, set, his trajectory predetermined? the idea is a dark one.
the imagery is intense; the prose is like honey. very easy to get lost in all of the beautiful sentences, the good kind of lost. a Faulkner kind of lost, with a Jamesian style. the characterization of this boy is so deep and rich, the story must include autobiographical elements.
the first chapter, exploring his world as an often solitary child lost in his thoughts and imagination, finding symbolic meaning in the world around him, was so beautifully written, sensual in its details, and resonant to me on a personal level. later chapters as he finds himself adapting - surprisingly successfully - to his new world outside of his home, at boarding school, were equally resonant. I really saw a lot of myself in this kid. the longest and most important chapter recounts a Halloween party and the moments when the two boys are at their closest. this is one of the most incredibly written sequences I've ever read in any book. layers of meaning meets layers of imagery meets layers of deep characterization. *swoon*
the last few chapters portray the coming apart of their relationship, the boy's fall from grace with the school, his defiance, and then his disinterest in engaging with anything at his school, now that he recognizes this part of his life is over. and yet the last chapter as he leaves this school makes clear his life is far from over. given the time in which this book was written, I really appreciated the assumption that his life will go on, very much changed, but it will still go on, and the boy will continue living in this strange world.
he is no longer in the making, no longer a formless thing reacting to the world, an inchoate shape. he has been made, he has become fully formed: the "patterns of his life were achieved." this is the last sentence; it is a tragedy but also a reality. many of our adult selves were made in our childhood. my wish for this child is that he could move beyond those patterns. but it does not appear as if G.F. Green thought that could be possible.
the psychologist Kazimierz Dąbrowski wrote of "positive disintegration" which is a theory about personality development. it is a potential "third stage" that comes for some, after nature and nurture. a person who strives to understand themselves and the world around them can embrace a temporary form of personality disintegration, where they let go of what they know and what they think they know. if they are truly capable of redevelopment - mainly due to possessing a characteristic that Dąbrowski calls "overexcitability" - then they are open to new inputs, new ideas, new ways of thinking and being. and so a person can remake themselves, they can develop a conscience and an outlook that does not stay chained to nature or nurture. the boy of In the Making experiences this disintegration. it made for the most compelling moments in this book and is why this was a uniquely affecting experience for me.
unfortunately for the boy, his positive disintegration is not a temporary thing. which according to Dąbrowski, is what is key to the development of an open, curious, flexible personality. the disintegration must be temporary and it must be not lead to fixity. the boy's emotionally overexcitable persona indeed disintegrates during this period of openness, but he does not come back from it; all that is left behind is a yearning but essentially loveless pattern that will now be repeated. rather than a new understanding of how life need not be a fixed line. this was instructive and also deeply sad. as are all such fixed states.
the introduction is by Peter Parker. it is a brief but still excellent overview of the author's immaculate prose style, his troubled life, and the writing of this book. it does not explore his suicide in 1977, at the age of 66. it is clear to me, from what I know of his life, that George Frederick Green did not escape the patterns that controlled his own trajectory....more
well at last I have read something that could be considered The Great American Novel, while also being um incest porn? a surprising book!
Who was Earl well at last I have read something that could be considered The Great American Novel, while also being um incest porn? a surprising book!
Who was Earl Thompson? This portrait of America during the Depression, and its author, were complete unknowns to me. I actually have no recollection of how my mildewed and battered, torn and tattered paperback even came into my possession. The book was apparently A Big Thing when it came out, yet I've read nothing about it. Why is that? The author's talent with the prose is amazing: as poetic and as earthy as Steinbeck, with an interest in the same themes, the same era; but Thompson is somehow more empathetic, more alive in how writes about people, places, and times. There is no remove, no distance between author and subject, of the kind that I've experienced with Steinbeck. Thompson is right there in the dirt with his characters. The book feels beyond lived-in; it reads like an autobiography that was written while events were actually occurring, rather than being reminisced about when older and wiser. There is a palpable energy in this book, a livewire sort of aliveness that makes every description sing and sting, every person both Dickensian grotesque and fully recognizable, every horrible occurrence feel like something out of a rural gothic horror and also like something the author personally experienced, full of the kinds of details and character traits that make each and every scene feel completely authentic.
On top of all that, despite all of the despair on display, all of the broken lives and crushed dreams, this book is really, really funny. Sometimes the humor is meanly sardonic, other times warmer, based on recognizable human foibles and physical flaws; never in a way that feels like the author scorns who he is writing about or even the repulsive places where they struggle to eat, let alone get ahead. To me, the ability to illustrate the tragically humorous folly and smallness of life, while not actually being contemptuous of those lives, is the mark of a truly brilliant book.
...and yet, this masterpiece is impossible to recommend. Just have to get this out of the way: besides the over the top sadistic violence that occurs frequently, I'd say fully a third of this book details the extremely explicit fantasies or actions of our pre-pubescent hero and his sexual desires for his mother. Emphasis: extremely explicit. Wild to imagine this book being reprinted in our modern times. Jack alternately hints, begs, pleads, and demands the satisfaction of both his curiosity and his needs. He's constantly ogling her or finding ways to place his hands or mouth on her belly, breasts, groin, anywhere, when she's awake, when she's asleep, most usually in the twilight state in-between. He guilt trips and scolds her, molests her when she's out cold, he practically assaults her on more than one occasion. For a period of time he sleeps with an oversize makeshift pillow that has been fashioned into a pretend-person, fucking it furiously whenever he can as he imagines it as his mom. At one point, his degenerate step-father aids him in his goal (an especially grueling sequence); more frequently, stepdad gets in the way of young Jack's dreams, much to the boy's chagrin.
SPOILER ALERT: lil' Jack's dreams come true.
...and yet, the boy is indeed the book's hero, not just its protagonist. Take away his demented obsession with his mother (a hard thing to subtract, I know) and we are left with a portrait in pragmatic courage, dogged individualism, and the refusal to be cruel despite the cruelty surrounding him. This is a boy who is at first abandoned by his mother to the care of his grandparents, then taken up by her and her ne'er-do-well alcoholic husband in the second half of the novel as they traverse America, a boy with no education, very little in the way of guidance (his grandparents do try; they are the book's most genuinely positive and kind characters), constantly neglected and abused and lied to and barely fed and forced to not just survive with next to nothing, but often to support his parents... and yet he retains his intelligence, empathy, strong opinions, an ability to see beauty in life when it does appear, and most of all, a drive to achieve happiness throughout it all. "Scrappy" does not begin to describe him. "Ferocious" is a better adjective, but it is still one that makes him sound harder than he is. I'd use "spunky" but that is just a little too cutesy for a kid who makes it with his mom before he even reaches his teens.
One is tempted to see the relationship between mother and son as an allegory for America at its lowest point. Say, the boy representing the stubborn optimism of an American people that will always cling to its hopeful dreams in the face of their struggles, despite those ambitions being, essentially, the longing for the obliterating comfort of a return to mother's embrace, to the womb itself? Perhaps that would make the incestuous activities so fervently described easier to handle? The author places their actions and the many depredations occurring around them within the specific socio-political context of farmers-turned-itinerants living in the heartland of a supposedly liberal country; a country that dehumanizes its own people, reduces them to beggarly recipients of public welfare or scorns them as deplorable trash, but never deigns to view them as actual human beings. Certainly the portrait of an America hopelessly divided between an elite minority and everyone else, where everything is commodified including the smallest of spaces and especially the bodies of women - an almost Marxist analysis that upbraids the flaccid "good intentions" of liberalism while detailing the evils of capitalism at every turn - all of that critique is front and center. Often coming directly from the mouth of Jack's pro-union yet anti-New Deal grandfather. The story may be the story of America trying to find itself and failing, writ small. Mom & son could very well be metaphors for all I know. But I'm not a particularly deep thinker, so I didn't spend a lot of time trying to see them or their story as such.
Instead I saw a portrait of a woman both weak and strong but mainly weak, a kind-hearted person whose unrealistic dreams of a better life than her parents lead her on an inexorable path to larceny and prostitution, and finally into the arms of the only person who has persistently declared his undying devotion, her son. Instead I saw a portrait of a boy who refuses to buckle under the yoke of a society that embraces fixed identities and destinies, a boy who sees through all of the bullshit, who refuses to be fooled, and yet who maintains his own secret idealism at his core, insisting to himself that he will create his own destiny - society and those who would stop him be damned. The narrative of the book is teeming with human insects, praying mantises eager to mate and to kill, but the book itself is teeming with human life and the need to be alive, the struggle to survive, making a life wherever and however one can make it. The book despairs but somehow, magically, does not depress. It is too busy being alive to be depressed....more
Moody, dreamy, playful, mordant, creepy, soulful, sublime. If this musing on the nature of life and death had been written by a French existentialist Moody, dreamy, playful, mordant, creepy, soulful, sublime. If this musing on the nature of life and death had been written by a French existentialist writer, it would be a cult classic. It certainly has the style, ambiguity, and themes of such novels, while also bringing a deep compassion for the human condition, for people wrestling not just with the questions of life but also with their feelings about transition and death. But instead Companion was mismarketed as some kind of thriller about a deadly caregiver. One can only sigh and roll eyes, alas. Greenhall was a sorely misused writer.
Do 5 stars require a lengthy review? A long-winded review seems to be ignoring the example set by this book, which packs so much into so little. Still, 5 stars to me means this is now a favorite book and I want to explain why I love it.
Things that made The Companion one of my favorites:
- the restrained tone and the elegant prose. despite the potential drama of the narrative, the book is decidedly not melodramatic. it is nonchalant, sly, and subtle. Greenhall writes with an irony that shows a bemused appreciation while analying the trials and tribulations of fallible but still mysterious human beings.
- the interesting characterization. this is a story about a death-dealing caregiver lacking affect, having no allegiance to social norms and a supreme disinterest in shallow interactions, and who barely bothers pretending to be anything other than what she is. she travels with her blind father, a musician and former faith-healer, blinded by the wife he abandoned. the two find themselves mixed into the tense relations that exist within a rich and very divided family, a group that is dominated and often manipulated by one of two twins. the bad twin himself is a striking creation in his malice and mixed motivations. Greenhall dissects proscribed gender roles, misguided parental focus on the gender identity of their kids, and how gender essentialism can create a kind of sickness, a toxic mental state that can control how a person perceives other people and the world itself, a toxicity in the mind that can reshape the body itself.
- the dialogue. it is by turns polished and witty, surreal and absurdist, prosaic and realistic, sharp and acerbic, and best of all, at times quite stylized and layered with meaning - as if the speakers were players on a stage discussing the vicissitudes of existence with the remoteness of aliens discussing the human species. the dialogue is often surprising and always fascinating. dialogue to reread.
- the heart of the story. namely, its contemplation of death. this is a topic of particular personal and professional importance to me, as I work in a field where many of my agency's clients wrestle with the possibility of death coming soon (elders, people with life-threatening illness). I found this book to be a thoughtful meditation on how death can come as a release and as a blessing. something not to always be feared or fought against; something that can be sought out, even embraced. the old women who find themselves in this companion's care are women who are making decisions for themselves - decisions that will end their pain, decisions that actually empower them. their companion is a partner in this journey. I've felt and thought many of the things that this companion feels and thinks when hearing the stories (and wishes) of those in her care; I've been a witness to the lives of those who wanted to make this decision for themselves. despite the ambiguity and strangeness of this not-really-a-pulp novel, its story is one that is very much grounded in my reality. it resonated deeply with me....more
Oh the misty moors of the Highland, they conceal many things. Troops of men, both English and Highland Scots, preying upon each other, spilling blood Oh the misty moors of the Highland, they conceal many things. Troops of men, both English and Highland Scots, preying upon each other, spilling blood and stealing horses. Stealing the hearts of Lowland women as well, visitors to this place far from Edinburgh and its dour world of stifling Presbyterians. And so it is with our heroine, a Lowland orphan now trapped in servitude, suddenly finding herself coming alive, enraptured by this new land and surprised by her own vitality, surprised even more by the infamous Lord Monleigh. This rogue lord, hero to some and horror to others, believes in the freedom of all humans, man and woman alike. He insists upon it, much to the heroine's delight, and then much to her sorrow, she who would prefer to be taken. But insist upon freedom he will: she must make a demand of him, in the end, if she wishes to be taken. He is the beau of this Highland ball, apple of every Highland woman's eye; he is not one who needs to take or to ravish. But she is not the demanding kind, despite her secret pride. She must learn to leave the servitude of the mind and body behind her, if she is to join her life to his, to a revolutionary who prizes freedom above all things.
Jan Cox Speas wrote a slow and dreamy story suffused with melancholy and loss, full of memories of lives ended brutally and far too soon, of dark histories rewritten as tales of triumph, of dark secrets hidden behind stoic faces, of memories buried that yet still live on in the hearts of heroes and villains alike. An atmospheric tale, steeped in the splendor and wildness of nature, of castles nearly emptied of people but full of tragedies past, of bandit raids at midnight, of love made in the cabin of a ship secretly docked. The book is a slow-moving swoon, the heroine falling fast yet as if sinking slowly in water, a mere month in time that feels like forever. The love at its center is a slow-burning candle, offering the slightest glimmer of hope. But that hope is still a flame, it is still a fire - despite how small it may appear!...more
The Love Pavilion was built by a Chinese merchant in Malaya. Within the Love Pavilion is an antechamber decorated with friezes of dragons, fish, and bThe Love Pavilion was built by a Chinese merchant in Malaya. Within the Love Pavilion is an antechamber decorated with friezes of dragons, fish, and birds; beyond that room is the Golden Room, then the Jade Room, and finally the Scarlet Room. When the Japanese invaded Malaya during World War II, and held it for 3 years, the Chinese merchant was beheaded. His head was displayed on a pole for all of the villagers to see and so be instructed on the new order. During those 3 years of occupation, depending on the whims of the occupying soldiers, villagers were marched to the courtyard of the Love Pavilion and made to kneel there. 42 villagers eventually lost their heads in front of the Chinese merchant's pavilion. The courtyard became known as the Garden of Madness.
The Love Pavilion was written by one of my favorite authors, Paul Scott. It displays many of the virtues that I loved in his Raj Quartet: dense, sometimes hallucinatory prose full of vivid description - of landscapes, places, bodies, faces; characterization that goes deep, so that a certain understanding of his characters is reached, while still leaving them ambiguous, capable of terrible deeds; themes that are concerned with masculinity and femininity and gender roles, the shifting roles of colonizer and colonized, and the metaphysical: what is the nature of the mind, what is the purpose of existence. You know, light stuff.
The Love Pavilion is about Mysticism versus Rationalism. Mysticism is embodied by Brian Saxby, an adventurer always reaching for higher places, less-traveled paths, ways of existence not bound to tradition or by society. Saxby is first mentor to our protagonist, then symbolic father figure, then a person to be hunted; Saxby eventually becomes something very dangerous, murderous, a threat to those who would move on past the now-ended war, an animal in the jungle that must be put down. Rationalism is embodied by every other male character with a speaking part, not including our protagonist. Rationalism is shown at its weakest, most pathetically sentimental, most understandable, in Major Reid: a Good Man, a man's man, father to his troop of soldier boys, guardian of masculine codes, tormented by an inchoate guilt over his ambiguous past failures, a leader who views the slaughter of supposed enemies as a pleasant daytime activity, character-building for his young lions, much like the enjoyment he provides them in the evening: the whores who shall visit and pamper them in the Love Pavilion.
The Love Pavilion's protagonist is Tom Brent, who must find his own way between these two paths. He is a compelling, frustrating, wounded, relatable character. Although perhaps most relatable to... men. This is a man's book in that all women are viewed through a certain lens of condescension by its characters. They exist to please and sometimes irritate men. A man's needs include sexual gratification and it is expected that the Malay women shall provide this on demand. Even relatable Tom feels this, at one point asking his boss Greystone - another Rational Man - if he could have a girl assigned to him during his time working the land, a village girl who can cook his meals, handle his laundry, service his sexual needs at end of day. He asks this as casually as a person would ask for a towel to dry themselves after bathing. Only one man in this novel does not think of women this way: the murderous mystic, Brian Saxby.
The Love Pavilion's love interest is Teena Chang, biracial, mistress of the whores of the Love Pavilion, a whore herself. Teena has two faces that she displays to signal how she will be engaging with her clients: her European mood and her Chinese mood. These faces, these moods, are alternately Rational and Mystical. She puts them on and takes them off as she sees fit. Teena, unlike each and every other male character, recognizes that such moods, such ideas, should not be the sole attribute of any person, they should be adopted as needed, and discarded in the same way. Teena's world is a small one, purposely so; a world that is not concerned with the loftier goals of Mysticism and Rationalism. Of course, Tom falls quickly and deeply in love with Teena. Of course, Teena must die. There is only room for binary thinking in the great big world of men, the men who would create and use the Love Pavilion as they see fit....more
this is a sneaky, subtle, sly little novel. the Laughlins now live in an awkwardly converted mill, passed down generations to the mother in this familthis is a sneaky, subtle, sly little novel. the Laughlins now live in an awkwardly converted mill, passed down generations to the mother in this family of three. strange things are afoot: sensual yet horrible dreams featuring a beautiful woman plague and arouse father and son while the mother is figuring out her own life, and how much impact her cult-leader father has had on her. McNaughton excels in making all of them - and their neighbors, colleagues, and love interests - basically agreeable or at least very understandable people. and so it is a gradual process revealing the layers of disturbances beneath the surface, whether it's an obsession with the Lovecraft mythos displayed by the family lawyer, or a history of incest or a repressed desire for the same sex or actual powers displayed by the friendly and urbane Satanist next door, or most importantly, the subsuming of one character by his long-dead ancestor. the author's elegant but unpretentious prose makes the book move smoothly along, until we are in the middle of the novel's extended set-piece: a Halloween party that turns violent and horrific. and suddenly we are there, a light novel (in tone, at least) turned exceedingly dark, and then after the party we are suddenly in even deeper, down in the sub-cellar, in a battle taking place inside and out of the mental space, all the horror hinted at now made visceral, and all is madness and magic and murder, blood and guts and sadism, arcane books stolen and doorways smashed, bodies ripped apart, bones melting, everyone become victim or villain or both at once. and yet it still remains sneaky, subtle, and sly, as if the author always has still more tricks to play. it is like McNaughton was smiling when he wrote this, except that smile is not a very nice one.
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