Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber
Hello, Stranger.
Primary Driver: (Plot, World, or Character)
Bechdel Test: Pass
Technobabble: Moderate.
Review: This is a horror story. Atmosphere is excellent. Book begins with some truly unsettling images and world building. The narrative itself is slow and frequently self-indulgent, but atmosphere stays on point. A qualified recommendation; but some scenes from this will stick with me for quite a while.
His gaze dropped to the studio bed, still half-unmade. On the undisturbed half, nearest the wall, there stretched out a long, colorful scatter of magazines, science-fiction paperbacks, a few hardcover detective novels still in their wrappers, a few bright napkins taken home from restaurants, and a half-dozen of those shiny little Golden Guides and Knowledge Through Color books—his recreational reading as opposed to his working materials and references arranged on the coffee table beside the bed. They'd been his chief—almost his sole—companions during the three years he'd laid sodden there stupidly goggling at the TV across the room; but always fingering them and stupefiedly studying their bright, easy pages from time to time. Only a month ago it had suddenly occurred to him that their gay casual scatter added up to a slender, carefree woman lying beside him on top of the covers—that was why he never put them on the floor; why he contented himself with half the bed; why he unconsciously arranged them in a female form with long, long legs. They were a "scholar's mistress," he decided, on the analogy of "Dutch wife," that long, slender bolster sleepers clutch to soak up sweat in tropical countries—a very secret playmate, a dashing but studious call girl, a slim, incestuous sister, eternal comrade of his writing work.With an affectionate glance toward his oil-painted dead wife and a keen, warm thought toward Cal still sending up pirouetting notes on the air, he said softly with a conspiratorial smile to the slender cubist form occupying all the inside of the bed, "Don't worry, dear, you'll always be my best girl, though we'll have to keep it a deep secret from the others," and turned back to the window.
It's two paragraphs that do a perfect job of establishing both the protagonist and a sense of unease. This feeling that things are just not right is the selling point for this book. The pacing switches between slow and glacial, often involving people telling stories or reading passages from books - or simply musing on things that they have read before. A fictional science/mythology is a major part of the story, so we need to be walked through what it is and how it works, mostly laid out in one book. We then need history of the author. It's a lot of steps. These are broken up by long-winded geography lessons on the layout of the Bay Area.
The protagonist is an author. Some dialogue and musings feel a bit self-congratulatory - that authors are so very clever and the like. The inclusion of some references to other authors (Lovecraft and his ilk) can feel like Leiber trying to say that he fits among them.
Despite all of this griping, however slow the story itself may progress, I felt palpable dread while reading. It is quite rare for a horror story to exude as much menace as this one does, even when it drags.
It is worth a read for atmosphere - but be ready for slow going.
If you'd like to get this, I'd be much obliged if you could use the link below. I'll get a few cents at no extra cost to you!I am the link in question.
A pale brown shape had leaned out of his window and waved at him.What was going through his head was a couple of lines from that bit of silly folk doggerel which begins:Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief.Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef.But it was the ending that was repeating itself in his head: I went to Taffy's house, Taffy wasn't home.Taffy went to my house and stole a marrowbone.Now for God's sake don't get so excited, he told himself, taking hold of the dangling binoculars and raising them again. And stop breathing so hard—you haven't been running.He was some time locating his building and the slot again—damn the dark sea of roofs!—but when he did, there was the shape again in his window. Pale brown, like old bones—now don't get morbid! It could be the drapes, he told himself, half blown out of his window by the wind—he'd left it open. There were freakish winds among high buildings. His drapes were green, of course, but their lining was a nondescript hue like this. And the figure wasn't waving to him now—its dancing was that of the binoculars—but rather regarding him thoughtfully as if saying, "You chose to visit my place, Mr. Westen, so I decided to make use of that opportunity to have a quiet look at yours."
After convincing himself that it was nothing, that it was a different apartment, he hangs an identifiable picture in the window before going out again. He is relieved to note that nothing is amiss, until:
He took another look into his window slot before the shadow swallowed it. Perhaps he could see the drawing if he 'fined the focus...
Even as he watched, the oblong of fluorescent cardboard was jerked out of sight.
From his window there thrust itself a pale brown thing that wildly waved its long, uplifted arms at him. While low between them he could see its face stretched toward him, a mask as narrow as a ferret's, a pale brown, utterly blank triangle, two points above that might mean eyes or ears, and one ending below in a tapered chin... no, snout... no, very short trunk— a questing mouth that looked as if it were for sucking marrow.
In fact, each description of the monster - the same Scholar's Mistress from the beginning, of course - is vivid and haunting. It is a rare horror story where seeing the monster does not make it less frightening.
I was happy that I had read this one, though it did feel like a bit of a chore. This could be edited down to a superb short story instead of being a decent book that somewhat overstays its welcome.
Maybe you should take the books off of your bed, Stranger.And don't forget to read a book!
Comments
Post a Comment