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
"I want to know whether you think I would be an adequate parent. I mean, I would be willing to dine out less often, and if necessary I would change my"I want to know whether you think I would be an adequate parent. I mean, I would be willing to dine out less often, and if necessary I would change my tailor. But would that be enough?"
spoilers ahead but not really
he gets the award for worst fucking father of the year that's for sure. not because he's abusive or because he lacks love or doesn't care for the kid. it's because he puts his needs above hers time and time again. leaving her alone when she shouldn't be. giving her what she wants when he shouldn't. moving her to a small town that has an annual murder & cannibalization ritual featuring kids just her age.
they say we sacrifice things for love but does that include your own kid?
that amusing quote above isn't even from our hero-dad, it's from his best friend. who turns out to be a model of common sense compared to worst father of the year.
enough about the dad, more about the book itself!
it's been described as a slow burn and that's correct. it's quiet horror. it builds slowly and surely. and quietly. it quietly builds and builds and doesn't go anywhere noisy. it wants you to understand its world and its father and his daughter and the mysterious lady he's fallen deeply - too deeply - in love with. the father and the mysterious lady both love the little girl with all of her strange, quiet little quirks. but the father loves the lady even more and the lady loves the strange traditions of her quiet, quirky hometown more than anyone. all three of them come to hate the noisy normality of new york city. and so off to a deadly little village upstate they go. never go upstate.
film noir is all about shadows and ambiguous motivations and hidden murders, lying women, weapons in the dark. is there such a thing as film blanc, its opposite? this would be the book version of that. no shadows; everything is made clear, even the ghosts that appear in the photos with the little girl, they are right there for all to see. no ambiguous motivations; everything is said clearly and truthfully, just not blatantly, you only have to really listen to truly understand, it's just that most people don't really listen. no hidden murders; they told him from the start what the town's founder did and these are people who adhere to their traditions. the woman never lies and they keep the knife right there, in the church for all to see. that title.
Ken Greenhall is one of my favorite authors. elegant prose, eccentric characters, deep ideas. the novel didn't disappoint. only the dad did. fuck that dad....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
Happy Halloween! If you are interested in a quick but still quite disturbing horror read, then please consider this little gem - a vastly underrated aHappy Halloween! If you are interested in a quick but still quite disturbing horror read, then please consider this little gem - a vastly underrated author's debut novel.
Elizabeth is a young witch, and not the good kind. Totally without empathy and responding to the siren call of a long-dead ancestor haunting her from mirrors, our antiheroine embarks upon a life of orderly indolence as she carefully curtails any intrusions into how she wants to live that life. Despite being 14 years of age, she's definitely her own woman, with her own personal life goals. As the back cover notes, her career starts with the killing of her parents. Soon she finds herself in just the place she'd love to stay: the family manse, complete with a sinister matriarch, a creepy cousin obsessed with snakes, a charming uncle (her lover) and a charming aunt, a new tutor (her aunt's lover), and of course a sex-attic. All seems to be proceeding swimmingly until a mysterious disappearance occurs, and a troubling murder mystery develops in which prim tutor and amoral student seek to discover who exactly is responsible.
The tone and the narrator's voice are so well done. Flat and without affect, hypnotic, weirdly seductive. Ken Greenhall is masterful with the prose - so many strangely ambiguous asides and pointed ways to describe things, and all done with elegance and subtlety. This is one of those novels where the reader is slowly drawn into the mind of a murderous psychopath, eventually realizing - aghast - that they fully understand her. And maybe even sympathize with her. Eek! But the girl just wants to live her life and solve some mysteries, who can blame her. Except for the incest and the murders, I really get where she's coming from....more
bAXTER Is sUch A sWeEt doGgiE! yoUR hEart wILl Just meLt oVeR thIs LiL cuTiE!!
The book is a chilly wind blowing away all of those notions that humans bAXTER Is sUch A sWeEt doGgiE! yoUR hEart wILl Just meLt oVeR thIs LiL cuTiE!!
The book is a chilly wind blowing away all of those notions that humans are truly capable of compassion, selflessness, thoughtfulness, altruism. Life is essentially meaningless. All of our various gestures that pretend to be reaching higher, to be connecting with others in real ways... all of those gestures are actually rooted in sentimentality, nostalgia, and a need to be perceived by others that we are acting in a way that is appropriate to the given situation. Human nature itself is an example of pointless form over genuine meaning. All we really want to do is live in our boxes, our compartments that we have built for ourselves, burrow into our little holes, stay safe within our little minds.
dOgs eXisT tO ProVidE prOtecTion anD cOmPaniOnsHiP tO loNely huMAn BEings. aLL tHey Ask foR iN reTurn iS yoUr afFectiOn!!
The book laughs coldly at your notions that animals are here to provide us love and affection rather than simply needing a warm place to live and food to eat. The book smiles condescendingly at your idea that humans are able to understand each other, let alone animals. The book is not sentimental, to say the least. The book is... dark.
wHen BaxTer looKS aT yOu, hE's lOOking aT yoU wiTh noNjudgmeNtal LOyaLty aNd deVotIon, likE aLL DoGs dO!
My understanding of the basic difference between "psychopath" and "sociopath" is that the former is able to blend into society by hiding their inability to empathize, while the latter is unable to blend. The book provides two examples of the former: the not so loving dog Baxter, and his third owner, the loveless child Carl. Both murderous, both nihilistic. A match made in, well, not heaven.
aniMAls bRinG oUt thE beSt in huMaNity! ouR FurRy coMPanioNs reMinD Us aBouT whAt Is moSt imPorTanT iN liFE: naMelY,(view spoiler)[
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My favorite part of the book (probably the same for most readers): those passages from Baxter's perspective. Some ingenious writing there. Baxter's thoughts are by turns dryly amusing, sadly accurate, hilariously inaccurate, disturbing and threatening (Baxter's plans often made me surprisingly tense), and eventually for this reader, entirely sympathetic. Sympathy for a psychopathic killer? Yes!
humANs and AniMaLs arE aLL gOD's cHiLDren! NuRture wILL cHanGe nATure! aS The sOng goEs, "alL YoU neEd iS LoooOOOOooooVe!"
I am far from a nihilist and I certainly don't share the dire perspective of this icy novel. That said, Hell Hound was all of the things I love in a book: gripping, thoughtful, mordantly witty, and full of ambiguity when it comes to the human condition and why we do the things we do. I admired its circular structure, the terrible inevitability. Greenhall is a phenomenal writer: sardonic, unsentimental, elegant with the prose, clever with narrative, and both damning and subtly empathetic with the characterization. This is a very smart and layered book, one that gave much food for thought - albeit food that was bitter to the taste. It is not about showing off that intelligence in a way that calls attention to itself. Ambitious but modest, slim and trim, decidedly a "genre" novel. It is also a perfect work of art....more
This amusing, barbed, surprisingly empathetic death-farce is my first real find of the Halloween season, despite being a murder mystery rather than a This amusing, barbed, surprisingly empathetic death-farce is my first real find of the Halloween season, despite being a murder mystery rather than a horror novel. Still, the foolishness of myopic humans can always be considered horrible. Chain chain chain, chain of fools. Ken Greenhall is a clever and polished writer; I really wish he had written more books. This one was excellent enough that I'm compelled to read everything by him - thank you, Paperbacks from Hell, for introducing me to him. And thank you, Ken Greenhall, for writing a protagonist with whom I so completely identified, pretensions and weaknesses included. The eccentric but tender relationship between equally odd father and son was moving. The characterization overall was spot-on and sometimes unsettling. The prose is relaxed and easy going down but the book itself contains hidden depths and many things to contemplate - in this case, about relationships, art, and how to live a life. That's the sound of the men, working on the chain gang. In summary: I enjoyed every page! Strange that a book containing multiple murders left me feeling delighted, and positive about humanity. I can still hear you saying, you would never break the chain. Well, mainly.
Synopsis: foolish residents of a small town murder one another at the behest of some manipulative chain letters; a lazy dilettante eventually and begrudgingly intervenes....more
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