Book Review: The Great Night (2011) by Chris Adrian

It takes a bold person to try and write a serious novel through the medium of fantasy fiction. The problem is that your book is likely to be reviewed and shelved with novels featuring lovelorn vampires or armoured cats or characters with names like Stabhappy the Slayer. Chris Adrian's novel is a modern-day re-imagining of A Midsummer Night's Dream set in San Francisco's Buena Vista Park. And, yes, the novel has a full complement of fairies, including Titania, Oberon and Puck.

The human characters are Henry, Will and Molly, all of whom enter the park separately one summer night to take a shortcut to a party being held in a house on the far side of the park. Unbeknownst to the trio of humans, Titania, depressed by the end of her marriage to Oberon and the death of their adopted (stolen) son, has given Puck his freedom. Puck is not a twinkly, giggly fairy; he's a lord of misrule, an agent of chaos, the devil in fairy form, and he'll quite likely destroy the world, but only after he's eaten all the fairies and humans he can catch before dawn.

The fantasy elements in the novel are brilliantly done; so much so, in fact, that at times I found myself wishing that this was a full-blown fantasy novel. What The Great Night is actually focused on is the sometimes unbearably high cost of love. All the main characters, including Titania and Oberon, have known great love and it's flip side, great loss. The novel begins with a description of the slow and painful death from leukemia of Titania and Oberon's adopted son. Their boy was one of a series they'd stolen from the humans (always leaving a changeling in its place), but this time they fell madly, deeply in love with their child, and when he died it ended their marriage. This opening section of the novel comprises the most devastating description of a child's decline and death from illness that one would think it's possible to write: the rollercoaster of emotions his "parents" go through, the hideousness of the medical treatments, and the pain of his final passing. It's an unflinching and bravura piece of writing (Adrian is a pediatric oncologist, so he knows what's he's talking about), but its ferocious honesty may stop some readers in their tracks.

Henry, Will and Molly have all suffered from love and its sudden, tragic absence. The bulk of the novel describes their back stories, which are equally poignant and well crafted, and even include some more supernatural elements. The novel can be criticized for having an excess of heartache and heartbreak at times, but Adrian's prose and imagination are always first-rate. It's a very short list of novels that combine serious themes with fantasy, but two that I've read in the last few years are The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill and Fairy Tale by Alice Thomas Ellis (click on the titles for my reviews). Both are excellent, but The Great Night has probably moved to the head of the class.

Book Review: The Locktender's House (2007) by Steven Sherrill

Steven Sherrill is an all-around talented guy; a five tool player, as they say in baseball. He's a novelist, poet, painter, and he plays the banjo. His first novel was The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break (my review here), and it was an audacious success, placing the Minotaur from Greek mythology into everyday life in North Carolina. Locktender's is almost as audacious but not as successful. The audacity comes from trying to mix William Faulkner with Stephen King. Sherrill is a fine writer, with a real talent for deftly describing roadside America and the thoughts and feelings of its average citizens. Here's an example from Locktender's:

"Janice sat at the cramped kitchen table and wondered if he had all the pomp and circumstance the military liked to muster up as filler for the void left by doubt and sorrow. Thanks for dying. Here's your twenty-one-gun salute, and a seriously folded flag."

In three short sentences Sherrill neatly sums up the bitterness and meaningless of a life wasted in the war in Iraq. The Faulkner side of things comes through in this passage:


"What happened in the smokehouse was almost more than she could endure. Endure. She had to endure. Despite the unknowing, she felt closer--beaten, tired and hungry and sore to the core of her being--but closer to, within reach of, that nebulous and fleeting sense of understanding something."

It's a bit opaque and elliptical, just like Faulkner, but it sets a mood perfectly. The main character is Janice, whose boyfriend dies in Iraq as the story begins. This event gives Janice a psychic shock that she reacts to by abandoning her life in North Carolina and setting out on the highway with no clear idea of where she's going. Janice, whose nervous breakdown soon begins to border on madness, ends up at a seemingly abandoned house in Pennsylvania located at the end of the portentously named Sabbath Rest Road. The old clapboard house sits by an abandoned canal and has no running water or electricity. Oddly, though, the kitchen is provisioned with preserves of various kinds. Janice's breakdown moves closer to madness as she begins to have dreams about a horrible event in the past which took place when the canal was operational. She then meets Stephen, a sculptor who lives a relatively short distance away. Stephen befriends her, but even his kindness and warmth can't stop Janice's decline. It's at this point that Janice's dreams seem to come to life, and what began as a nervous breakdown may in fact be a haunting. I'll stop here to keep things spoiler-free.

The problem with the novel is that Sherrill doesn't commit fully to the idea of telling a ghost story. He trots out all the tropes of the modern ghost story (is it all in her head or is it real? Is she possessed or haunted?), but he seems to get shy about going the whole Stephen King. I mention King because the supernatural aspect of the plot has certain similarities to King's Bag of Bones, the only King novel I've ever read, as it happens. Locktender's could probably have stood on its own as a psychological study, but once things that go bump in the night are introduced they can't be left underdeveloped; it's a genie that can't be put back in the bottle. When Sherrill does concentrate on making things creepy he's quite effective, but then Stephen gets in the way, and I don't mean King.

The character of Stephen is the shoddy weld that joins the spooky and non-spooky parts of the novel. He's that stock character of romantic fiction: the artist who's hunky, healing, sensitive, cool, just that little bit kooky, and fun to be around. Janice shows up on his doorstep acting strangely and just gets nuttier as the story unfolds. Despite the abundant evidence that this is not a woman to get hooked up with, unless it involves steering her towards the nearest hospital, Stephen continues to help and comfort her, and even romance her. I know people in ghost stories are occasionally supposed to make unwise decisions ("Let's see what's making that screaming sound in the basement."), but Stephen's actions make no sense at all. And their scenes together are further marred by bantering dialogue that sounds like it was generated by a rom-com bot. It could also be argued that Stephen has no real role in the novel except as someone for Janice to bounce her craziness off of.

Early in the novel there's a hint that the madness and violence on display might be a symptom of contemporary (and historical) life in the U.S. This idea isn't developed, which is unfortunate because it might have given the book some resonance. The best modern ghost story I've read is The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. It's set in a decaying English manor house in 1947, and the upper crust family to whom the house belongs are living in genteel poverty. They're also having poltergeist problems. On one level the story is about whether the male protagonist is the source of the ghostly problems. On a whole other level the novel is about the sweeping cultural and political changes taking place in Britain thanks to the Labour Party. The occupants of the manor are seeing their wealth greatly diminished, their social status eroded, and their land is being sold for council housing. For the aristos, it would seem that Britain's zeitgeist has manifested into a poltergeist. The Locktender's House is missing this extra layer of meaning to make it more than just a well-crafted piece of Southern Gothic spookiness.

It's always a pleasure to read Sherrill's prose, but his ability as a storyteller isn't up to snuff here. It feels like he wasn't entirely sure which direction to take his novel in and he's ended up with something that's slightly pregnant.

Book Review: The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break (2002) by Steven Sherrill

Even though this novel does have the Minotaur of Greek myth as its main character, this is not a fantasy novel. Nothing fantastical or magical occurs, there are no prophecies fulfilled, no rousing Clash of the Titans battles, and no one wears a toga. If anything, this is closer to being a hyper-realist story than it is an exercise in fantasy. The setting is rural North Carolina in the here and now. The Minotaur, complete with his massive bull head, has found work as a line cook in a semi-fancy steakhouse. Most everyone at the steakhouse accepts or ignores their bull-headed co-worker, and the Minotaur seems to like it that way. Not a lot happens in this novel, but its pleasures aren't plot-based.

This novel is primarily about the mindset of the outsider, the loner. You can view the Minotaur as an immigrant or simply someone who's socially awkward, but either way Sherrill does a superb job of showing the quiet pains and pleasures of a life lived outside of mainstream society. The Minotaur experiences loneliness but he also seems to take some comfort in being detached from the hurly-burly of relationships.

The most remarkable thing about this novel is author's ability to write about manual labour in an interesting, almost loving way. Sherrill shows that work, even the most routine or meaningless variety, is a kind of social and psychological glue that helps keeps us sane. One of the particular pleasures of Minotaur is the way it captures the feel, the nuances, and the small joys of working with your hands. The kind of job that earns minimum wage is rarely featured in contemporary fiction, and if it is the people doing it are usually presented as villains, oppressed proles, or slack-jawed cretins. Sherrill shows that something as mundane as repairing a car or prepping food can become, when done capably and honestly, poetry.

As I said earlier, this isn't a fantasy novel. Yes, a couple of figures from Greek mythology make cameo appearances, but they, like the Minotaur, have had their godly pride and power swallowed up by America. And that, perhaps, is another theme in the novel: America as a labyrinth that confuses and consumes the weak or unwary. Needless to say, this is a fairly unique novel. The prose style is an intriguing mix of the matter-of-fact and the poetic, and in overall terms Sherrill reminds me, in a roundabout way, of Charles Portis or Kurt Vonnegut, two writers who, like Sherrill, tell tall tales in the plainest possible way. I'll certainly be looking for Sherill's two other novels, and if I lived near him and needed some home repairs I'd definitely call him first because I'm pretty certain he must be a hell of a handyman.