Skip to main content

The Merciful Women

Originally published in June 2004, on my original 52 Books blog.

Original Spanish title: Las Piadosas
Author: Federico Andahazi
Translator: Albert Manguel
Year published: 1998 (original), 2000 (translation)
Genres: Fantasy, gothic horror

Where got: Public library

The story:
In the wet summer of 1816, five people arrive at the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Leman: Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin and her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori, Byron’s secretary. Upon arriving, Polidori finds a mysterious letter in his room, written by a monster who proposes a deal with him: something of his in exchange for literary fame. Polidori, who has suffered much humiliation at the hands of his employer, accepts the deal, but not before further humiliations and events that convince the others that he is going mad.

Technique and plot:
The translation is fluid and beautifully done and the book comes across as if it had been written in English. The style is reminiscent of Poe and Lovecraft, and the “monster” is indeed something that Lovecraft could have created. The mixture of third person narrative with the first person epistolatory form gives a nicely balanced account of, on the one hand, Polidori’s despair and irrationality in the company of those so much more accomplished than himself, and on the other, Annette Legrand’s story which is full of horror and strange self-satisfaction. The narrative is darkly humorous, grotesque, cheeky and disrespectful of the main character’s literary and personal aspirations. Andahazi is not kind to his poor protagonist!

I loved the ending, which is something of a twist and would advise anyone who habitually peeks at the ending of books to resist the urge with this one, at least if there is any intention of reading it. But of course the ending isn’t funny unless you have read the entire book...

I have always had problems with authors seizing historical characters and writing novels about them - why can’t they invent their own characters? For example, I hated Brian Aldiss’ Frankenstein Unbound where he writes about the fantasy of fucking Mary Shelley, but I did find this story rather good, perhaps because it is about a person who is more of a footnote in literary history than any kind of contender for real literary immortality (he did write what has been acknowledged to be the first vampire novel, but it isn’t very good).

Rating:
A dark and cheeky vampire story with a difference. 4 stars.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Icelandic folk-tale: The Laughing Merman

Icelanders not only believed in the existence of selkies, but also in mer-people. The mermaids were said to be very beautiful, while the mermen were supposed to be ugly as sin but very wise and able to see things others did not. O nce upon a time a farmer went out fishing and pulled up a merman. He tried to get the merman to talk to him but he would not answer, except to beg him to release him back into the sea, but this the farmer refused to do. The farmer rowed back to land, taking the captive merman with him. When he pulled up the boat on the shore, his wife came to him and greeted him with tenderness and kisses, which he received with pleasure. This made the merman laugh. Then the man’s dog came to him and greeted him tenderly in the way of dogs, by jumping up to him, but the farmer hit the dog. Again the merman laughed. Then the farmer walked up towards his house, but on the way he tripped over a tussock and hurt himself. He got angry and gave the tussock a good kicking. Then...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more