To Frances Oliver, writing about Austria means ruminating on the past, ruminating on the nature of rumination itself. An American of Austrian lineage,To Frances Oliver, writing about Austria means ruminating on the past, ruminating on the nature of rumination itself. An American of Austrian lineage, one who has apparently spent most of her life in Europe and England, she writes about displacement with the conviction of a person who has spent much of their own life rootless. Her two Austria novels (this and All Souls: A Family Album) are chilly affairs, featuring strong and vaguely vindictive female protagonists who contemplate their past lives - and the past of a family, a place, a country - without even the faintest whiff of nostalgia or sentiment. The "heroines" of these two novels are displaced in body and mind, and completely disinterested in finding that place. These are women estranged from others, from themselves, from their own histories. There are no golden eras let alone fond memories in the lives of her characters. Just people struggling to get what they want out of life, usually failing, usually taking other people down with them. Oliver's novels set in Austria - despite featuring things like alcoholism, dementia, fascism, murder, incest, suicide - also lack anything approaching melodrama. There is something so bracing about a clear-eyed perspective that refuses to make anything larger than life.
Although this story at first appears to be about how sardonic Dr. Stone will recount the unvarnished truth about her grandmother, the infamous Countess Maria Aurora, muse to poets and authors who were moths to her flame (and subject of various novels, biographies, Hollywood adaptations)... that is only a part of the story. The Peacock's Eye's setting is important: the household of former aristocrats now living in the Austrian countryside, during and after World War II. The details of this era felt very authentic. Authentic as the redoubtable Dr. Stone herself, who sees her past, her family, and her country through a lens that allows no distortions. It is about how her family survived; it is about how her heart was broken and so she became something stronger, harder (she is well-named); it is about her half-brother Felix, a calculating, charismatic villain who plays with the lives of others like a cat plays with birds and mice. The toxic dance of these two siblings throughout this book is one that combines sex and death and constant manipulation, never love. Romantic love doesn't really have a place in the Austria of Frances Oliver. When it appears, it is quickly stamped down. Relationships are a means to an end; the offering of affection treated as another form of currency. Brrrr, I felt chilly just writing that last sentence. Do not come to this book expecting the warm embrace of humanity; instead expect to read of the mating of insects....more
Go into the attic and look through the family albums, explore the trunks with their decaying evidence of days gone by. Those dead lives will come alivGo into the attic and look through the family albums, explore the trunks with their decaying evidence of days gone by. Those dead lives will come alive again, your ancestors become young and then old again, all their little heartbreaks and all their sadness and happiness, their hopes and regrets, like dust in the wind, cobwebs in an attic - but alive again! If only briefly. The book of life has pages that crumble in time, forgotten; you read and restore them, if only for the moments in which they are read. So goes all lives. Will this family album restore you, will you rise above yourself, become more than a memory? No, it shall not; no, you shall not. You are yourself; there is no rescue from yourself because this is life, your life a drop in the rain like all lives.
You are a fat, mean drunk whom no one loves, not anymore. Does your life have any meaning?
Yes it does! Despite yourself. You will murder a man who abuses his wife, who torments his animals. That will be the deed that defines you, despite the story of your life moving on, pathetically, forgettably. The book itself only looks at that deed glancingly. But I saw what you did. Brave murderess - you are a heroine! If only briefly. The book you live in may be heartbreaking, may have been hard for me to read, so depressing and so pessimistic; it is a book I will never want to read again. But you came alive in those moments. All people are alive; all souls have their moments....more
what on earth is that girl up to? surely someone should take her in hand! she's all of 14 years old and off she goes, drinking alcohol on the sly and what on earth is that girl up to? surely someone should take her in hand! she's all of 14 years old and off she goes, drinking alcohol on the sly and getting a crush on a motorcycle-riding young hooligan, interfering in her mother's relationships and criticizing the poor woman's boyfriend, investigating an abandoned village and a forbidding ravine, being quite unwelcoming to guests and interlopers, practicing witchcraft, trying to ward off enemies, casting a dark spell with a certain degree of success. she's too precocious for her years and she better watch out!
where on earth did Frances Oliver go to? who knows where she's at and where's she's been! at one point she surely must have lived on a small Greek island in a small village; she surely must be familiar with the lackadaisical-desperate-needy bohemian lifestyle of a woman of a certain age, the new agey nonsense, the lack of roots and the need to keep moving and the secret hope to have a place she could call her own, to take root in. she writes of this woman, and her brilliant daughter, and the woman's lover, and the small Greek island they vacation on, and their whole odd lifestyle as if she's lived it herself, she writes so persuasively, so briskly, so casually of this strange, fascinating, frustrating, fragile little world. indeed she writes so persuasively that a reader could be forgiven for forgetting that this is a novel of sinister manipulation and ambiguous threats, of fear and death and weird, unknowable horror. Frances Oliver painted a bright landscape full of color and chaos, and then to prove what this landscape is truly about, doused it with inky black, life tumbled into an abyss. I read this fascinating story and suddenly felt a driving need to buy all of her books and learn all I could about her. there was little to find. will she even know that she has a new fan? would she even care?
who on earth are these so-called "Children of Epiphany"? they could be anywhere! why do they feed on life, sucking the vitality out of their prey, leaving only husks behind? they look just like you and me, human, with human needs and prey to human emotions and given to all-too-human habits, foibles, and faults. perhaps you know one of these Children, without knowing their true nature. perhaps one is in your life right now, coddling your worst traits, dampening the good in you, exulting in their secret power over you, sucking your life away. well hopefully you have a precocious young witch in your life as well to help you sort it all out. but you probably wouldn't listen to her anyway....more
The little-known author Frances Oliver is a graceful writer, one whose stories are seamed with wit and wisdom, and an appreciation of life's great cruThe little-known author Frances Oliver is a graceful writer, one whose stories are seamed with wit and wisdom, and an appreciation of life's great cruelties and its little rewards. I read her wonderful Children Of Epiphany earlier this year and loved it. I will be pursuing her more ardently in the future! Her books are a challenge to find but they are out there, ready to be discovered or rediscovered. She really needs to be included more in overviews of modern weird fiction because her writing is top-notch.
This is a collection of often remarkable stories. There's just something about how she creates a world within her stories that draws me in and keeps me - an ambiguity that fascinates me, characters that I can instantly connect with, narratives that hint at disturbances just below the surface. Her clear, nuanced, and flexible style gives each of these pieces their own special flavor, from the amusingly idiosyncratic entries within "The Visitor's Book" to the mundane but inexplicable sadness that permeates the Aickman-esque "The Man in the Blue Mercedes" to the eerie feeling that the world has become a terribly different place outside the walls of "A Walk in the Forest". "Dinosaurs" lacks any sort of supernatural element, but in that story Oliver shows how she is just as comfortable detailing a pathos-ridden reality as she is with those containing fantasy or horror. Well I suppose reality contains both anyway. My favorite was the glorious children's adventure "The Monster Drawing", a sunny tale of dark things that kept me smiling from beginning to end.
"The Visitor's Book": entries in the titular object shall note a strange tapping and stranger deaths in a lovely, lonely vacation cottage...
"Cyprian's Room": the hungry incubus shall be everything your heart desires - maybe even the sickly, talented young artiste downstairs...
"The Black Mare Midnight": a secret children's book shall remind adults of how time must fly and dreams must die... or do they?
"Prester John": an idiot savant shall rant and rage in an archaic medieval style, confounding all, and then he will vanish... or did he?
"The Monster Drawing": a drawing, a spell, and a mouse create a nasty little beast that shall spook the defenseless children... or will it? Perhaps the children aren't so defenseless!
"A Walk in the Forest": in the future, an elderly man committed to an Institution shall visit the forest beyond the walls... or will he? Perhaps there is something else that lies beyond!
"The Man in the Blue Mercedes": a deep Bavarian lake and a friendly stranger shall provide escape for an unhappy wife... or will they? Perhaps this escape is but a trap! Or perhaps the wife's life is the trap.
"Dinosaurs": a suicide, some disturbing drawings, and a museum shall encourage a little girl to act out... or is she? Perhaps she is acting out because her entire world disturbs! Or perhaps it's just a phase.
"The Married Man": a woman shall prattle on about her imaginary lover... a rendezvous occurs...
"Dancing on Air": an enchanting dance shall be witnessed... a contagion is dispersed......more
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