THE IRON KING BY MAURICE DRUON. THE REAL GAME OF THRONES.

The Iron King by Maurice Druon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“It must be admitted that such things were common coin of the period. Kingdoms were often handed over to adolescents, whose absolute power fascinated them as might a game. Hardly grown out of the age in which it is fun to tear the wings from flies, they might now amuse themselves by tearing the heads from men. Too young to fear or even imagine death, they would not hesitate to distribute it around them.”


Philippe IV, the Fair, of France

Philip IV, known as Philip the Fair, came to the throne at the age of 17 and ruled France for 29 years. He was a dispassionate, imperial man. His ice cold blue eyes betrayed nothing of the workings of his mind. He fought with Edward I King of England. He defied the Pope. He expelled the Jews in 1306, over 100,000 of them were frog marched out of the country. On Friday the 13th in 1307, Black Friday as it famously came to be known long before it became a celebrated day of Walmart shopping, he arrested the Knights Templar and seized all their property.

He simply owed the Jews and the Knights Templar too much money. Of course a king can not say the reason he is forcibly expelling one group or torturing to death another group is because he is...well…a welcher. The Jews are one thing. You can just give them a boot in the buttocks on their way out of the country and no one will care, but the Knights Templar are quite another thing. In fact they are a rather dangerous lot, skilled swordsmen, warriors for Christ none the less, and they have more than money enough to curry favor with those that can extract them from the clutches of the crown.

This is delicate matter that can not be handled delicately.

Philip The Fair must have sat down and made a list of every dastardly thing that a man or an entire organization can be accused of. The short list: apostasy, idolatry, heresy, beastiality, obscene rituals, financial corruption, fraud, secrecy and of course the ever popular sodomy. After all it gets cold in those Middle Eastern desert climates at night, sometimes a pair of saddlebags are not a pair of saddlebags. (Those aren’t pillows!)

This all leads to torture and more torture.

Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar was of particular interest to the crown. He was tortured for seven long years.

”And more recently he had undergone the torture by stretching, the most appalling perhaps of all those to which he had been subjected. A weight of two hundred pounds had been tied to his right foot while he, old as he was, had been hoisted to the ceiling by a rope and pulley. And all the time Guillaume de Nogaret’s sinister voice kept repeating, ‘Confess, Messire, why don’t you confess?’ And since he still obstinately refused, they had hauled him from floor to ceiling more hurriedly, more jerkily. He had felt his limbs becoming disjoined, the articulations parting, his whole body seemed to be bursting, and he had begun to scream that he would confess everything, admit every crime, all the crimes of the world.”

Now I have never looked at a goat with desire or had any inclinations for devil worship, but if you swing 200 pounds off my leg and jerk me up and down until all the joints of my body dislocate I will admit to fornicating with the devil while he fornicated the goat or any other thing you want me to confess to if you will make the pain go away. De Molay, after a valiant effort to resist, has admitted everything that Philip needs him to confess.

This book starts in 1314 with a few strategic flashbacks to catch us up on how things happened, but I wanted to give a little background on Philip before discussing Maurice Druon’s book The Iron King first in a series of seven novels published from 1955 to 1977.


That stench in your nostrils is the reek of betrayal.

So after seven years Philip has what he wants so it is time to start piling up the wood and get ready for the smell of singed flesh. He brings de Molay and a few of the remaining high ranking Templars to the final show trial so that the charges can be publicly read. De Molay puts a damper on the event by renouncing all the charges and placing a curse on Pope Clement V, de Nogaret, and Philip IV.

“Accursed! Accursed! You shall be accursed to the thirteenth generation!”

The crowd is swayed for a moment by the spirited defense offered by the Knights Templar, but they really came to see the show and once the first lit torch is dropped:

”A huge sigh rose from thousands of breasts, a sigh of relief and horror, excitement and dismay, a sigh made up of anguish and of revulsion and of pleasure.”


Blanche of Burgundy, one of the scandalized cousins.

All three of Philip’s sons have been married to a girl from Burgundy, political alliances. The three girls are cousins, muses of beauty, and thick as thieves. Isabella, Philip’s only daughter, has been married off to the King of England Edward II with the hope that peace can be achieved and sustained. Philip would like to see his grandson on the throne of England. Druon makes the case that Isabella may have had bigger plans than that for her infant son.


Poor Piers Gaveston lying dead at the feet of one of his assassins Guy de Beauchamp. Was he killed because he was having pillow fights with Edward in the bedroom or was he killed because he’d gained too much influence too quickly?

Despite Isabella’s renown beauty, Edward likes to spend his time with boys, spilling his royal seed other places than in the fertile womb of his queen. When he becomes too close to Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall, his wife proves to be more like her father than her three brothers. She arranges to have Gaveston ran through with a sword and beheaded. His body left on the very road he was executed on. Gaveston irritated more than just the queen with the special attention he received from Edward. It wasn’t hard to find men willing to take him off the chessboard.

When Isabella hears her sister-in-laws might be committing acts of adultery she concocts a plan that will hand irrefutable evidence to her father. She doesn’t like her sister-in-laws and doesn’t mind exposing their conduct even if it embarrasses her father and the French court. This scandal was called the Tour de Nesie Affair named for the tower in which these royal women and their young lovers were “supposedly” meeting. There is speculation that these accusations were all part of Isabella’s grand plan to eventually see her son ruling France.


Queen Isabella

Now with three brothers you would think that there would be no chance for the future Edward III to ever be next in line for the French throne. Each of the three brothers became King in quick succession, all died young, and all failed to produce a male heir touching off a little dust up called The Hundred Years’ War. Edward III, was the closest male heir to the House of Capet, but the French slid around that issue by declaring Edward III unfit under the rules of the Salic Law. This law covers a lot of different aspects of the rules and conducts of the Franks, but the section we are most interested in is the part where it states it is against French law for a female to sit on the throne of France nor shall any male heir from her line be qualified to be King of France either.

Knowing Queen Isabella, as I’ve come to know her under the guiding hand of Druon, I can only imagine how much stewing, plotting, and conniving she will be doing with the hope of seeing her son in her father’s chair despite the stipulations by the Salic Law.

I have stretched out the history, giving everyone some of the lead up to the events in this novel and also flashed forward a bit to see where things will be going. George R.R. Martin has been leading the surge in bringing this series back into print. He has said that he was heavily influenced by Druon and states that ”This is the original Game of Thrones’”.
If you love Game of Thrones you might just like this series. If you don’t like Game of Thrones you might just love this series. There is intrigue, uneasy alliances, betrayal, lust, gamesmanship, and a minor Italian character named Guccio Baglioni who when he meets a mother and daughter can’t decide which he will try to seduce first. Ahhh those Italians.

I’m looking forward to book two called The Strangled Queen. Now isn’t that quite the tantalizing title.


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The Lost Generation in Paris

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
1933
Reviewed by Diane K. M.
My rating: 3 out of 5 stars


Pablo Picasso! Henri Matisse! Ernest Hemingway! F. Scott Fitzgerald! Sherwood Anderson! T. S. Eliot! Djuna Barnes! Ezra Pound! Georges Braque! Ford Madox Ford! Jean Cocteau!

All of these artists and writers were bumping into each other in Paris in the 1920s, often at Gertrude Stein's apartment, the famous salon at 27 rue de Fleurus. (And if you're wondering who the hell Alice B. Toklas is, she was Stein's longtime partner and lover, and calling it an autobiography but yet it was written by Stein was Stein's idea of a joke.) 

I'll be honest and say I was keen to read this book because I had hoped for some delicious gossip about these famous people, and while there were some good stories, Stein's writing was more difficult to read than I expected. This was my first Stein book, and I would describe her style as a conversational stream of consciousness that frequently turns into babble.

Here is a good example of her style: "This was the year 1907. Gertrude Stein was just seeing through the press Three Lives which she was having privately printed, and she was deep in The Making of Americans, her thousand page book. Picasso had just finished his portrait of her which nobody at that time liked except the painter and the painted and which is now so famous, and he had just begun his strange complicated picture of three women, Matisse had just finished his Bonheur de Vivre, his first big composition which gave him the name of fauve or a zoo. It was the moment Max Jacob has since called the heroic age of cubism. I remember not long ago hearing Picasso and Gertrude Stein talking about various things that had happened at the time, one of them said but all that could not have happened in that one year, oh said the other, my dear you forget we were young then and we did a great deal in a year. There are a great many things to tell of what was happening then and what had happened before, which led up to then, but now I must describe what I saw when I came."

I did not change anything about that quote -- you get a sense of Stein's run-on sentences and her laissez-faire punctuation. Often when I was reading this book I felt as if I was listening to a confused storyteller, someone who just kept talking and talking and rambling and trying to convey a message, but that they themselves had forgotten what the message was. 

There were some nice quotes and turns of phrase, such as: "[Stein] was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, of a very respectable middle class family. She always says that she is very grateful not to have been born of an intellectual family, she has a horror of what she calls intellectual people." But I had to slog through quite a few pages before I found a quote worth marking.

So, why would someone read this book? Maybe you would be brought to it, as I was, by the Woody Allen movie "Midnight in Paris," which had scenes that were inspired by this memoir. Or maybe you want to hear more about Picasso and Matisse and Hemingway, which were my favorite parts of the book. Maybe you want to read about Paris during World War I, and how empty of men the world had seemed then.

For me, I'm still fascinated by the Lost Generation and will read more Hemingway and Fitzgerald, but I may have had my fill of Stein for now.

Helluva Writer: An Interview with Jason Brant

Today's guest is Jason Brant, author of the West of Hell trilogy.

Was Gehenna your first published work? What have you written besides the West of Hell trilogy?
Gehenna was the second piece of fiction I published. It was also the second work that I'd ever written. Before January 2012, I'd never attempted fiction.

My other books include The Hunger trilogy, The Gate, The Dark, and the brand new Asher Benson series.

What made you decide to go the self-publishing route?
I've never submitted anything to a publisher or an agent. Screw that.

I have zero interest in writing a book, waiting six months to get an agent, waiting another six months to find a publisher, then twiddling my thumbs for a year while it's produced. For all of that bullshit, I would get a lofty 15% royalty for a novel that I produced.

Self-pubbing has allowed me to write and release seven novels and three novellas in two years while keeping 70% of the royalties my work earns. I'm not tearing down people who go the traditional route, but it's definitely not for me.

West of Hell is infinitely more polished than 99% of the self published books out there.  Did you hire an editor or do all the toiling yourself?
I'm much too stupid to edit my own work. My brain automatically fills in missing words. Only my wife and editor can see my unedited manuscripts - they already know I'm 'special'.

What was the inspiration behind the West of Hell trilogy? Are you a fan of weird westerns?
The first book was initially going to be called Zomboys and would have been purely a black comedy. As I got a few chapters in, the humor, while still there, was rapidly taking a backseat to the violence and biblical undertones. When I did some research on scripture that seemed to hint at the dead rising, I ran with the idea.

How much was etched in stone when you started? Any big changes to the story occur during the writing process?
I'm a pantser. I come up with a handful of characters and then throw them in a really screwed up situation. Most of the time, I have no idea how my novels will end or who will survive. I'm just as surprised as the readers when certain things happen.

If money were no option, who would you cast in a West of Hell movie?
Hmm. That's tough. Viggo Mortensen or Karl Urban would be great as McCall. Katee Sackhoff or Rhona Mitra as Karen. A guy can dream, can't he?

Favorite western movie?
Tombstone.

Favorite western novel?
The Dark Tower series. Does that qualify? I think those books hit just about every genre possible.

Could John Wayne kick the shit out of Clint Eastwood?
Yes. I should add though, that the awesomeness of watching those two throw down might make my head explode like that guy in Scanners.

What are you reading these days?
Just started 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill. Damn, that family can write.

Who would you say is your biggest influence?
King. I know, I'm a cliche.

What is your favorite book of all time?
IT or The Stand, depending on what day of the week it is. I swear, King isn't paying me for all of this ass kissing.

What's next on your plate?
I just finished Ravaged, the final book in The Hunger trilogy. If you liked West of Hell, that should be right up your alley.

Next up is my second Asher Benson novel, Blaze, which is about a snarky, alcoholic ex-soldier who can read minds.

Any words of wisdom for aspiring writers?
Get your ass in the chair and write. Don't talk about writing, or wish you had time to do it, just take a seat and put some words down. Don't listen to haters.

This is the best time, EVER, to be an author.

Embrace the grind.

West of Hell - The Whole Bloody Trilogy

Gehenna by Jason Brant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When the two men fighting in the street turn out to be undead cannibals, the tiny town of Gehenna is thrown into flesh-eating chaos. The only people who seem to keep a cool head are Karen, the prostitute with a heart of bitter gold, and Mad Dog McCall, an outlaw trapped in the city jail...

Weird westerns have always been an easy sell for me. Know what's even better than a weird western? A FREE weird western!

Gehenna is told in two parallel threads for most of the book. One thread follows Karen and the people at the saloon. The other focuses on Mad Dog McCall, an outlaw gunfighter who is locked up waiting for the Federal Marshals to decide his fate.

The gore level is extremely high, I'd say four and a half out of five exploding zombie heads. Head explosions, flesh being torn from bones, and all sorts of moaner-killing goodness, which leads me to my favorite quote from the book:
"You keep calling them 'moaners'."
"Well, they moan. A lot."
"But the best you could come up with was 'moaners'? What about 'the living dead', or 'the eternal hungry.'"
"I'm shooting them in face, not writing a book."

The ending was really similar to the ending of Those Poor, Poor Bastards but there are only so many ways you can escape a tiny western town crawling with moaners.

The writing was a cut above what I expected, especially from a self-published book. Brant did a good job making me care about characters I knew were doomed to be devoured before the story's conclusion.

No complaints, especially since I have the second installment primed and ready to go. 4.5 out of 5 stars.


Tartarus by Jason Brant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With Gehenna in flames, Mad Dog McCall and Karen jump aboard the train heading west, toward the Tartarus River. Too bad there's also two criminals and a moaner on board...

The second installment of West of Hell picks up seconds after the first left off. McCall and Karen are on the train but so are a lot of passengers who think they are full of shit, a moaner that's already attacking people, and two criminals named Jones and Evans.

I'm happy to say Tartarus doesn't suffer from middle book in the trilogy syndrome. It's a satisfying installment on its own and is on par with the original. Zombies on a train, bitches!

The relationship between McCall and Karen is further developed, including McCall's past, and I'm happy to say they've neither fallen implausibly in love nor done the hokey-pokey, as it was called in those days.

As with Gehenna, the gore factor is high, maybe even a little higher than the original. Evans and Jones took some of the sheen off of McCall's armor and the hardened outlaw shoes that has a tender side. Karen continues to be a tough woman in a tough world.

Jason Brant's writing is quite polished. From now on, I'll cite him as an example of self-publishing done right. Not a typo nor grammatical error to be found. Not only that, he's a good storyteller and a good writer. I have no complaints.

Jason Brant has a great thing going with West of Hell. I'll be sad to see it end in the final volume, Sheol. Four out of five stars.

Sheol by Jason Brant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An army of moaners a thousand strong converges on Sheol and Karen is the only one who can stop them. Too bad she's standing on a gallows and the last time she saw McCall, the moaners were upon him...

Sheol brings the West of Hell trilogy to a conclusion. Loose ends are tied up and the end was part awesome, part WTF? I half-suspected what was coming but it was still a surprise.

The amazing thing about the West of Hell trilogy is how far Karen and McCall end up from where they started, both location-wise and as characters. The murderous outlaw and the feisty prostitute go through one hell of a journey, pun intended.

As with the earlier volumes, the gore level is high. Moaners and regular people alike get shot, stabbed, and torn apart with frightening regularity. If possible, Sheol had even more tense moments than the previous two volumes. When an undead army is heading for your town, you can only gun down so many of them.

I can't stress enough how this series should be held up as an example of self publishing done right. It's tightly edited, well-written, and feels like a labor of love.

The West of Hell trilogy now occupies a place of honor high in my Weird Western hierarchy, right up there with the Dark Tower and The Merkabah Rider series. Four out of five stars.

Another Great Jimmy Veeder Fiasco

Reviewed by James L. Thane
Five out of five stars

Anthony Award winner Johnny Shaw returns to the Imperial Valley (“as far south and as far east as you could go in California”), for another Jimmy Veeder Fiasco. Shaw introduced Jimmy in 2010's Dove Season, and it's great to have him back.

The Imperial Valley is hard desert country full of tough, resilient people. It's a difficult place in which to try to eke out a living, but having returned home and taken over the family farm, Jimmy is determined to make a go of it, to provide for his family and to be as good a father as he can for his young son.

The biggest stumbling block in the path of Jimmy's road to solid citizenship is his long-time best friend, Bobby Maves. Bobby is recently single again, partying harder then ever, and all too often calling Jimmy in the middle of the night, luring him out of his home and away from his responsibilities, to go on another "Mavescapade." These adventures always involve a great deal of drinking, more than the occasional bar fight, and assorted general mischief such as "borrowing" a police car for a joyride. The hilarious opening chapter, which details the development of one such evening, is worth the price of the book all by itself.

As the story opens, Jimmy and Bobby are roused from a night of debauchery by the news that Bobby's sixteen-year-old daughter, Julie, has gone missing. Bobby barely knows the girl; he and Julie's mother, Becky, had a brief fling, and Bobby didn't know until a good deal later that he even had a daughter. Now that Julie is missing, though, Becky reaches out to Bobby for help and Bobby, in turn, reaches out to his best friend.

Bobby's idea of looking for his daughter seems to consist of creating the maximum amount of mayhem and seeing what shakes out. Julie has fallen in with a very bad crowd, and Bobby's basic plan is to beat the crap out of everyone she hung with until he finds out where she is. Jimmy tries to moderate Bobby's violent streak and take a more sensible approach to the search, but that ain't gonna happen.

Throughout the book, Jimmy is torn between his responsibilities to his own family and those he owes to Bobby, who has been his best friend since grade school, and a major theme of the novel involves the ties and the sometimes competing obligations that a person has to his family and to his friends. Being the best friend of a man like Bobby Maves is no picnic at times, and Jimmy is forced to make some impossibly hard choices.

As the search for Julie continues, both the violence and the hilarity escalate. There are some pretty serious villains in this book and some truly disturbing developments. But Shaw has a gift for walking a very fine line between humor and the genuinely darker side of life, and the result is a story that is often hilariously funny while at the same time extremely scary and often very touching.

In addition to being the author of three great novels, Shaw is also the editor of Blood & Tacos and the creator of another fantastic character, Chingon, "The World's Deadliest Mexican." It's clear that he knows the Imperial Valley and its people very well and that he has a deep affection for both. He's also a very talented writer who has created here a violent, bloody, drunken, rollicking adventure. Jimmy Veeder is a great character, and while I don't think I'd like to have Bobby Maves for a best friend myself, I'm eagerly looking forward to Jimmy's next fiasco. 

Rating Records

The Billboard Book of Top 40 Albums by Joel Whitburn
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Get me some stats, stat! Quantifying and qualifying, I did it to everything. I used to give my own 5-star ratings to the albums I'd buy. Hell, I even rated my own music, the stuff I'd play and record on my boombox! But then you must be wondering, why didn't I become a statistician? Damn good question, but we're getting off track...

My love for numbers and rankings drove me to buy The Billboard Book of Top 40 Albums, a book that lists the charting achievements of popular music acts. You get the group or artist name and a little background such as when they formed or were born as well as where. Then comes a list of their albums and the date they entered the Billboard top 40, alongside that is the album's peak position and then the number of weeks it stayed in the top 40. If the album sold enough units to attain gold or platinum status it's given a designation symbol beside the title. As a bonus, in the back of the book you also get a bunch of record holder lists like Top 100 Artists of the Rock Era, Top 25 Artists by Decade, Albums of Longevity, etc.

It wasn't just about the numbers (I'm not a complete spazz!). You could learn a thing or two of use from this book if you really tried. For instance, the group Ram Jam was an "East Coast rock quartet led by Bill Bartlett (lead guitarist of The Lemon Pipers). Member Howie Blauvelt played bass in Billy Joel's group The Hassles." As of 1977, Ram Jam has put out one album which charted for four weeks and made it as high as #34. So there you are! Now go forth with this new information and become the life of the party!

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Are You The Murderer?

The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Agatha Christie is such a crafty devil that midway through a novel she might have you believing that YOU are the murderer!

Indeed, The ABC Murders uses slight-of-hand most deftly. Again, I was thrown off the scent of the real killer and was ready to blame others. I feel a bit foolish when she dangles bait in front of me, and although I guess it for what it is, I take it anyway. And yet, if ever it felt good to be played the fool, it's while reading a cracking good mystery.

Ah, but never fear, Hercule Poirot is here! Christie may make him out to be the retired old sleuth past his prime, but she's used that line on us before and we know the little man with the peculiar accent and fantastic mustaches won't let us down! In this story, he is put on his guard by the personal nature of the murderer's actions. He is not quite as flippant as he can be, in fact, he seems downright disconcerted at times. It makes for a nice change in the character.

After sampling a few shorter Poirot stories, it felt liberating to read something that stretched and breathed a bit more. While the shorts feel like wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, this makes you feel like you've been wined and dined. Christie even gets all psychological on this one! Not only in how she delves into the minds of the suspects, but the 1st person/3rd person narration switches made The ABC Murders seem that much more cerebral! Seriously, she may not go down as the most clever author of all time, but I like that she tried these sorts of techniques.


Rating: A 4 star book that gets an extra star for captivating me almost from start to finish!

A Drink Before the War

Dennis Lehane
Avon Books
Reviewed by Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary

Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are tough private investigators who know the blue-collar neighborhoods and ghettos of Boston's Dorchester section as only natives can. Working out of an old church belfry, Kenzie and Gennaro take on a seemingly simple assignment for a prominent politician: uncover the whereabouts of Jenna Angeline, a black cleaning woman who has allegedly stolen confidential Statehouse documents. But finding Jenna proves easy compared to staying alive once they have. The investigation escalates, implicating members of Jenna's family and rival gang leaders, while uncovering extortion, assassination, and child prostitution extending from bombed-out ghetto streets to the highest levels of state government.


My Review

Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are offered big bucks to find a cleaning woman who made off with some confidential documents. It sounds like a simple case, but there’s a lot more to those documents than just state secrets.

Kenzie and Gennaro both grew up in blue-collar Dorchester and even though they’re tough, dealing with sleazy politicians and dangerous gangs takes all their energy, resolve and determination.

The detectives have their own issues to deal with too. Angie is married to an abusive husband, yet harbors some feelings for Patrick, who is her childhood friend. Patrick can relate, having suffered abuse at the hands of his own father.

I loved this dark, gritty, and violent story that explores racial and class conflicts, politics, and the evil that lurks in people’s hearts. I love the witty banter between the detectives and their growing relationship. A believable and realistic urban setting, gun battles, car chases, and a rich cast of secondary characters help make this a very fun and worthwhile start to a series.

Also posted at Goodreads

A Meandering, Didactic Plot

Death of the Black-Haired Girl

by Robert Stone

Published by Houghton Mifflin Company

Reviewed by Amanda
1 Out of 5 Stars

Maud Stack is a beautiful, vivacious, intelligent, and careless student. Professor Steven Brookman is a handsome, Hemingway-masculine, intelligent, and careless instructor. Of course, we know what this means. It's not long before office hours become after hours, and the classroom becomes the bedroom. In terms of plot, there's nothing new or shocking in Death of the Black-Haired Girl. Professor Brookman is, of course, a very married man who, despite his occasional sexual liaison, is very much in love with his wife, who has recently discovered she is pregnant with their second child. Taking a personal vow to be a better husband and a better father, Brookman decides to end his relationship with Maud, but hell hath no fury like an undergraduate scorned. It's not long before Maud spirals out of control, leading to her eventual death under questionable circumstances in front of the Brookman home.

Despite seeming like the setup for a by-the-numbers whodunit, Death of the Black-Haired Girl is anything but. For those familiar with Stone's writing, this shouldn't be a shock and many of the negative reviews I've read come from readers who felt misled. I can't say that I blame them. With a title that conjures The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and blurbs and summaries that throw around words like "thriller" and "noir," it does seem to project the wrong image. However, I read and enjoyed Stone's Dog Soldiers, so I was eager to enter into Stone's morally-nebulous universe.

That enthusiasm did not last very long.

Stone uses the aftermath of Maud's death to explore morality in both specific and broad terms. The novel's setting is a prestigious liberal arts college in New England, an academic institution whose motto, Lux in Umbras Procedet, or Light Will Go Forth Into Shadows, hearkens to a vainglorious past, its original mission to bring civilization and God's light to the wilderness. Ironically, in its 21st century manifestation, it has become the place that creates shadows, a place of locks and barriers--no longer seeking to interact with the world, it seems to insulate itself from it. In its attempt to protect itself from outside influence, it's evident that its insular nature is destroying it from within. It is a gray, dismal wasteland populated by the selfish and the insane. As Maud quotes Mephistopheles from Doctor Faustus as saying of the world, "Why this is hell . . . nor am I out of it" (15). After Maud writes a scathing indictment (although, from my perspective, a clumsy, rambling and ridiculously written diatribe that I cannot imagine anyone finding persuasive or brilliant) of the hypocrisy of Christian right-to-lifers that is published in the school newspaper, the college becomes a literal battleground between the secular and the sacred as hundreds of protesters flock to the campus and some go so far as to physically threaten Maud.

Many of the characters here seem to be in hell: Maud; her father, Eddie; the school counselor, Jo Carr; and Steve Brookman carry and create their own personal demons. There are also lesser angels presented in the form of the dean's wife, Mary Pick, whose tragic past in Ireland seems to have only strengthened her faith, and Ellie Brookman, who routinely leaves the college to return to the Garden-like existence offered by her Mennonite community in Canada. A woman of deep faith who believes her life to be firmly in the hands of God, Ellie serves as the embodiment of the platonic ideal for Brookman: a constant presence reminding him to do better and be better in light of his past. Discovering her pregnancy months after leaving their home to return to the fold of her family seems to remove her from the sordid sexual escapades at the college, making her pregnancy seem almost immaculate and her presence in Brookman's life divine.

So, yes, there's a lot going on here in terms of spirituality, repeatedly dancing at the edge of existential angst and then pulling back again. There's a lot going on in terms of abortion, Christian fundamentalism/radicalism, adultery, marriage, and temptation. There's some beautiful writing (the scene depicting the reaction of Maud's father, Eddie, after he learns of her death is heart-wrenching).

So what's the problem? Remember how I said Maud's editorial rant was rambling and clumsy? Ultimately, that's how I felt about the structure of the novel. The story isn't really about Maud's death at all, but splinters off into a dozen different directions, following secondary characters in such a hurried, abrupt way that the reader never finds resolution on any front. It's like Maud's death is a bare Christmas tree from which Stone hangs every vituperative, cynical, and nihilistic bauble he can find. But then he stands back and thinks something is missing. So out come the garlands of devotion and piety as a counterweight. But still, it's not quite right. Maybe some twinkling obvious symbolism lights? The plot becomes so weighted under these conflicting and ponderous messages that I just lost interest.

But the real death knell? The host of unlikable characters. Now, don't get me wrong--I'm not suggesting they should be likable in the sense that they should be good (in fact, it is the intended saints in the novel that I find particularly obnoxious), but there should be something about them that I still find appealing. Not so here. Part of my complaint comes from the fact that the novel does far more telling than showing, so many of the characters seem two-dimensional. It doesn't help that these are self-centered, pretentious, beautiful people who are careless with the lives of others. Surprisingly, the only sympathetic character is the one I thought I would loathe the most: Steve Brookman. Despite everything, there's the sense that he did love Maud in some way that went beyond lust. He doesn't come across as a lecherous Humbert Humbert in that what he loved and celebrated in Maud had as much to do with her intellect and her potential as her youth and beauty.
In the end, I can only state that Death of the Dark-Haired Girl ultimately seems tedious and unnecessary despite its grander aspirations.