Book Review: Breed, by Chase Novak

4/5 - MA-LSV             

Blurbs keep comparing Chase Novak's debut* novel Breed to Rosemary's Baby, and there is something there, in that both books tell the stories of well-off Manhattanites and their unusual offspring. And indeed, there's a scene early on that feels very much like an hommage to Levin's classic, but that's really where the similarities end.

A more satisfying comparison might be: Breed is to the dark side of contemporary parenting as American Psycho is to the cutthroat financial world of the Reagan era. Violent, creepy and at times unexpectedly touching, Novak's novel delivers the squicky medical/body horror, and reads as a vicious satire on the lives of the mega-rich who know they'll get everything they want simply because they have the money to pay for it. (And pay they do.) Breed might also be read as a smack upside the head to helicopter parents, a tweak of the nose to the fertility industry, or a Frankenstein-ian take on the hubris of tampering with the natural order. But I digress . . .

Meet Leslie and Alex Twisden, New York power couple. They have satisfying careers (he's a high-profile attorney, she's a respected editor), old money, and a fabulous Manhattan townhouse full of antique heirlooms. They are also madly in love. The one thing they don't seem to have is the ability to conceive. After three years and going on a million dollars spent on "everything from laser surgery to Chinese tea," they've had no luck. So when Alex and Leslie run into old friends from an infertility support group, now hugely with child, the Twisdens  pull some strings to learn their secret. (Weirdly, I liked the Twisdens, particularly Leslie, in spite of themselves. They sound terrible on paper, but they felt authentic, if not quite sympathetic.)

Cut to the Ljubljana, Slovenia clinic of one Dr. Kis, purportedly a cutting-edge pioneer in "fertility enhancement treatments." His unorthodox methods clearly worked for their friends, so Alex made the arrangements and convinced a tired and reluctant Leslie to try this one last treatment. Within the week, they are standing in a bleak waiting room, swallowing their dismay at the shabby premises, the doctor's inability to speak English, and his uncouth bedside manner. Shortly, they will undergo Dr. Kis' groundbreaking procedure: painful injections filled with genetically questionable material, administered with a roughness that could be confused with assault.

But back at their hotel that night, Leslie and Alex fall on each other like teenagers. Like animals.

Ten years later: The Twisden twins, Alice and Adam, are thriving, and well-loved, if more than a little sheltered. The Twisdens have always been a close-knit family, needing or wanting few outside connections. But of late the twins have become concerned -- frightened, even -- about their parents' increasingly erratic behavior. The nearly raw meat they eat at dinner, the strange, animalistic sounds coming from the master bedroom, and also sometimes the basement. And then there's the fact that Leslie and Alex lock the twins into their own rooms each night . . . from the outside. Finally, Adam's fear and curiosity lead him to buck the status quo, and his actions trigger a bloody and disturbing series of events that will have repercussions far beyond just the Twisden family.

To say any more about the plot would deprive you of discovering its twisted joys, but I will say I've never read a horror story -- and I've read more than my share -- that addresses this truly taboo territory.  Breed is inventive and propulsive reading. It's hard to put down, even as you're pretty sure you don't really want to know what's going to happen next.

Breed certainly isn't flawless -- sometimes it's difficult to suspend disbelief in the characters' actions, for example the key bit about flying off to get an experimental treatment from a creepy doctor in an unfamiliar Eastern European city with seemingly no medical regulations. Never having been desperate to, um, breed, maybe I just don't understand the lengths to which people will go. To me it seems like a colossally stupid idea; but -- something like climbing Everest with no mountaineering experience -- perhaps it would appeal to those with more money than sense.

One other flaw is that the denoument of the book, though emotionally satisfying in its way, is completely rushed. Some of that may be stylistic choice, an attempt to indicate heightened stakes and anxiety levels, but for me it was like an episode of "24" -- too much happened, too fast and too conveniently. If I hadn't been told there was a sequel in the works I'd have thought Breed full of dangling and/or unnecessary plot threads. I'll suspend critique on the dangly bits until I see where Novak's overall arc is heading, but the main events of this book did wrap up just a little too neatly.

Still, I'd highly recommend Breed to anyone who's looking for something innovative in the horror field; it's frequently disgusting, and its theme just plain wrong (in the right way). Not even remotely for the squeamish. 

* Since the cat is already out of the bag on this nom de plume, it can't hurt to tell you that, while this is Chase Novak's first novel, the talent actually belongs to two-time National Book Award nominee Scott Spencer, author of 11 novels, one of which is Endless Love. (Don't worry, the book was way better than the movie. It was stalkerrific!)

Book Review: The Horror of Lisa Mannetti

4.5/5 -- MA-LSV

3/5 -- MA-LSV

                    

 (Spoiler warning in full effect.)

This has been a damnably difficult review to write; I read both of these back-to-back a couple of weeks ago, and am still not sure what to make of Mannetti's freaky and deeply disturbing modern gothic. The Gentling Box won the Bram Stoker for Best First Novel in 2008; Deathwatch is made up of two novellas -- Dissolution (a 2010 Stoker nominee for Long Fiction) and Sheila Na Gig. All three tales, though varied in setting, explore similar psychological ground, and some of the themes -- including necromancy, blood sacrifice, possession and (in particular) medical horror and taboo sexual transgressions -- are most unpleasant. As in, "WTF is wrong with Lisa Mannetti?" unpleasant. Of course I intend no insult; from the interviews I've read she seems like a warm and intelligent woman with a quick sense of humor, someone you'd like to chat with over tea or a beer. Which makes these dark, unforgiving, and ultimately rather misogynistic stories all the stranger. But in the horror field, the provocation of, well, horror, in the reader is kind of the point . . . right?

Set in the Romany culture of Hungary and Romania in the 1860s, The Gentling Box is as claustrophobic as a gypsy caravan, and as bone-chilling as an open grave. Through skillful, atmospheric prose, intense research and a wicked imagination, Mannetti recreates a world where fear, superstition and magic still hold sway; impeccably detailed, exotic enough to feel like a dark, bloody fairy tale, this book is definitely not for the squeamish. The Gentling Box is the tragedy of horse-trader Imre, his Romany wife Mimi, and their daughter Lenore. The two women become targets (and in Mimi's case, a meat-sack) for the ghost of Anyeta, Mimi's scheming mother, in life a powerful gypsy witch with a lust for immortality (among other things). Anyeta's power springs from "The Hand of the Dead," a repulsive fetish that grants the possessor power over life and death, and her goal is the acquisition of a fresh body. Anyeta's assault on the family includes poisoning the desperately protective Imre with disease and hallucinations, particularly sexual illusions -- she seduces and mocks him while possessing his wife's body, and curses him with unbearable and humiliating desire for the adolescent Lenore. The more Imre struggles to save his family from Anyeta's foul gypsy curse, the more it  tightens around him, until he's left dying and helpless, faced with an impossible choice. There's no question this deserved a Stoker: The Gentling Box, though unrelievedly dark and dreadful, is ambitious and uniquely haunting.

However, the novellas that make up Deathwatch are more problematic for me. That they again feature wicked women wielding supernatural powers to manipulate men into destroying other women (children, really) is what disturbs and somewhat dismays me. In Dissolution we meet another ghost, the mother of twelve-year-old conjoined twins Abby and Ellie, who seeks to live again through the body(ies) of her daughters. Again the ghost plays manipulative erotic tricks, this time upon the young surgeon  burdened with separating the twins, and to even more disastrous and disgusting results. In Dissolution, the medical/body horror works, but the young doctor's slide into madness and pedophilia plays like a repetitive and far less subtle version of The Gentling Box's horrors. And in Sheila Na Gig, an Irish crone uses ancient fertility magic to keep her family and its fortunes firmly under her control. If I told you her manipulations result in several deaths and an adolescent girl incestuously impregnated, I think that might be enough of the plot with which to make my point.

So here it is: the but-face. You know I love me some horror, the darker and more hopeless the better. I also  love the way Mannetti writes . . . The Gentling Box is unforgettable and alone warrants her a place at the big kids' table. But so far my experience with her work has left me equal parts impressed and repulsed. I think her various violations of the body -- possession, radical surgery, and the twisting of the erotic to make it unpalatable and unnatural -- work, even as they are profoundly disgusting. But I can't say that the repetitive theme of violence done to women by other women  (using men's lust and gullibility as their weapons) is a good look for any writer to be stuck in, let alone a woman. I'm pretty shock-proof, so when something makes me want to throw up on a book, that's news. Dissolution in particular openly crosses a line that is difficult to stomach. I'm no prude, but there were points at which I felt contaminated by the text.

Now . . . is that good horror or not? 

Book Review: Kin, by Kealan Patrick Burke

4.5/5

 Kin begins at what is more usually construed as an ending: on the well-trod path of the "final girl" staggering away from a massacre, the lone survivor after a family of backwoods cannibals takes an unhealthy interest in a group of teenage backpackers. (What's the big deal?, I thought, slasher movies and torture porn. Yawn.)

But then . . . the story turns itself inside out and slaps the reader upside the head by becoming not merely revenge fiction (though it's that, too), but an investigation of the ripple-effects of an unthinkable crime, and the ways in which formidable bonds can form from even the most tenuous connections in times of crisis. For Burke, the word "kin" is key, and the story clearly implies a broader sense of "family" than just that of the bloodthirsty Merrill clan.

Kin is told from multiple, disparate points of view, all of which cross and weave together seamlessly as the hold-your-breath climax approaches. Among the sharply delineated characters are Claire, the survivor of unthinkable horrors; Peter, a slow but kind farm boy who, along with his father, finds the dying Claire on the road and takes her to the local doctor; Finch, a struggling Iraq war vet and the brother of Claire's boyfriend (now numbered among the cannibalized dead); and Luke, eldest son of the God-fearing, torture-loving, and flesh-eating Merrill clan. Burke's acute psychological profiles invite the reader to empathize not only with the crippling PTSD and survivor's guilt of victims, but also to approach an understanding of the repugnant family values that breed savages.

You should know what you are getting into when you pick up Kin: the violence level is exceptionally high and graphic (although one might intuit that from the blurb). Burke's book is certainly not for the faint of heart, but once you get through the first few raw, stomach-churning chapters, you'll find the payoff in beautiful (and hideous) prose, imaginative detail that takes you places you never wanted to see, well-turned dialogue and believable characters, and a tautly constructed plot that keeps twisting until the very end. Kin gets four-and-a-half stars and not five because of one scenario that felt a bit hard to swallow, but it's a major spoiler, so I won't share it here. Suffice it to say, I won't be able forget this novel anytime soon.