November Night Tales: Stories of the Supernatural, by Henry Chapman Mercer

9781943910045

Valancourt Books, 2015

197 pp

paperback

"How often must we account for the origin of human responsibility in nothing more definite than shifts of chance?"

**

The back cover blurb of this book says that Mercer

"channeled his antiquarian interests and his love of Gothic literature into November Night Tales (1928), a volume of highly imaginative weird tales in the mode of M.R. James."

I went into the book as I normally do, without expectations, but it wasn't too long into the first story, "Castle Valley," when I started thinking "I've read something like this before." Sorting through all of the clutter in my head, I realized that in its own way, "Castle Valley"  sort of reminded me of James' "View From a Hill."  In James' story, an archaeologist gets a view of the past with the help of some rather sinister binoculars; here, a painter and his friend discover a scrying stone that does much the same.   But this doesn't mean that November Night Tales is a James ripoff -- au contraire -- it is quite an original collection of stories that should be read and appreciated on its own merit.  This book gathers together many facets of Mercer's personal interests, including  the natural landscape, local legends, mythology, and above all, castles.  As the introduction notes,

"Indeed, to Mercer, the very presence of a castle suggested an almost infinite number of possibilities. 'Castles, Castles, Castles -- Where do their stories begin or end?"

As happens often with James (especially in his Antiquary stories), Mercer's  characters tend to find themselves in the position of coming across something they probably shouldn't be messing with, but are all the same compelled to explore further in hopes of some sort of satisfactory, rational answer.  In the process, these people end up discovering that there are often things that exist well beyond their understanding, but they also tend to realize something about themselves as well.

The table of contents is as follows (I won't go into each story here, since it's best to discover Mercer on one's own):

"Castle Valley"

"The North Ferry Bridge"

"The Blackbirds"

"The Wolf Book" 

"The Dolls' Castle"

"The Sunken City"

"The Well of Monte Corbo"

I will say that while I thought all of the stories in this book were quite good, I found three I enjoyed just a bit more than the others. There's  "The Dolls' Castle," a great gothic haunted-house sort of story that was just downright creepy, as was "The Wolf Book," which starts in an old monastery in the Carpathians.  I don't know about anyone else, but the combination of old text, monastery and the Carpathians is a definite draw for me,  a scenario I can't resist; there were other very cool historical bits in this story as well as a look at how local legends and myths can transform a community.    "The North Ferry Bridge" was also quite fun, with a little dark, pulpy creeposity  in the telling  which was a definite plus for me; added to that aspect, I also got the horrific tale of an escaped madman, another story type that I can't not read.  While these three elevated my heart rate for a while, all of the stories in November Night Tales were definitely "highly imaginative" and "weird," as promised.  Then, of course, comes the added bonus of finding a previously-unknown (to me) author and reading his work ...

While the stories may not exactly scare the pants off of readers, they are highly intelligent, well written and they set the brain into high gear while reading them.  These are dark tales for thinking people who don't need everything spelled out for them and frankly, they're just plain fun.

As always Valancourt, thanks for bringing the obscure back into the light.

brain break: The People of the Pit and Other Early Horrors from the Munsey Pulps, (ed). Gene Christie

9781928619963
Black Dog Books, 2010
202 pp

paperback

If you're reading this book on an airplane, prepare to be stared at as people go down the aisle and check out what you're reading.   The scantily-dressed women (and the two naked babes in the background) certainly drew attention from passers-by, and I felt a bit squirmy when I'd meet people's eyes.  How do you explain a cover like that?  On the other hand, I love love love these old covers  --they're an art form unto themselves and should be appreciated as such.

The first thing that caught my eye was the foreword by Robert Weinberg. In it he notes that the old pulps were written with "a modicum of "good taste" as contrasted to some of today's modern horror, most notably splatterpunk, which "murders good taste."  I agree -- when writers write mainly for effect, to see how much "blood and guts and brains and gore" they can get on a page, well, to me that's just tasteless. Try writing.  Not that these old pulps are great literature, but like good horror, in most of these tales, the horror is implied. That's another point Weinberg makes -- that

"The pulp horror stories require that the the reader possesses some smatterings of intelligence. The tale assumes that you can follow a plot and don't need to be force fed every clue or every twist and turn of the story."

Oh, Robert Weinberg, your entire foreword is singing my song.  

There are fifteen stories in this little book, some of which I've read before:
-- "The People of the Pit," by A. Merritt,
 -- "The Orchid Horror," by John Blunt (which I read in Robert Dunbar's wonderful anthology Dark Forest)
--  "The Ship of Silent Men," by a most obscure pulp writer Philip M. Fisher, whose collection of tales can be found in Beyond the Pole and Other Weird Fantasies (also published by Black Dog)

and beyond those little gems, the rest are new to me:
 -- "Behind the Curtain," by Francis Stevens:   Mummy pulp
-- "Number Thirteen" (excerpt), by Edgar Rice Burroughs, which I must say I did not care for at all, but I can't win them all.
-- "The Tenth Question," by George Allan England:  a tale of revenge where a man's life depends on getting the right answer to question number 10.   Delightfully strange.
--"Disappointment," by Achmed Abdullah: More atmospheric than anything, but still quite pleasing.
--"The Pretty Woman," by Owen Oliver:  I love a good madness tale, and this is one of the best.
-- "The Living Portrait," by Tod Robbins:  Exactly as the title implies.
--"An Offer of Two to One," by Talbot Mundy:  auto-suggestion at work -- great story.
--"Beyond the Violet," by J.U. Geisy: the war leaves a man able to see well beyond the normal spectrum, and you just wouldn't believe what's out there.
--"The Elixir of Life," by C. Langton Clarke -- another absolute stunner.  
-- "The Mystery of the Shriveled Hand," by Sax Rohmer -- set in Cairo, another cool tale of justifiable revenge.
-- Damon Runyon's very well-known "Fear", in which a police chief gets his comeuppance.  Very Damon Runyon.

and last, but by no means least,

--"Monsieur de Guise," by Perley Poore Sheehan (whose name just screams "I write pulp fiction"), which takes place down in the swamp. The atmosphere on this one alone makes it very much worth the read.

For just pure entertainment, this book is worth its weight in gold, and having the names of several new and (to me) obscure authors to look up is a side benefit. Many of the stories here are seeing their first time in reprint since the days of the old pulp mags; some are definitely what I would consider horror; some others are more of a mystery-ish bent, but all (with the exception of the entry by Edgar Rice Burroughs) are just plain fun.  It's an ahhh read, comfort food between two covers, and for fans, a very, very nice collection.  Just put a brown cover over it or something out in public.

The Man Who Sees Ghosts, by Friedrich Schiller

9781901285123
Pushkin, 2003
156 pp

paperback

Despite its title, The Man Who Sees Ghosts isn't actually a novel of the supernatural.  There are a number of supernatural elements in this unfinished story, but they're all there for a specific purpose having to do with the main character, the Prince von **.  These asterisks, by the way, are not a signal to read something at the end of this post -- Schiller just doesn't hand out full names to his characters.  There are many reasons why any serious fan of dark fiction should read this little gem, but one of the biggest is that according to several sources, it is the book that gave rise to a particular subset of popular gothic literature, at least in Germany,  "works intended to expose the machinations of secret societies," * (okay, that asterisk means look at the end of this post) called lodge novels. In fact, since The Man Who Sees Ghosts was left unfinished, a number of people used it as a basis to write their own completed versions, starting as early as 1796.**

Schiller sets his novel in Venice, which at the time was a political powerhouse.  The book revolves around the unnamed, asterisked Prince, who hails from a German state but currently in Venice, waiting for money from home so he can return. There he lives a very unambitious and quiet life, going around incognito, avoiding all forms of extravagance.  His life takes a major turn when one day, he notices he is being followed by a man in the mask of an Armenian, who eventually sits down with him in the Piazza San Marco and delivers a cryptic and ultimately prophetic message.  The Prince shakes it off, but when the situation in the Prince's family come to a crisis, he is forced to take stock of this strange, masked character.  One night while in a gaming establishment, the Prince gets into it with an unknown-to-him very powerful man, which sparks a visit to the State Inquisition, where he watches the same man quite literally lose his head.  The Prince is still sort of stuck in Venice and can't leave, so he and his retinue take a trip where they become involved in a bizarre seance with an odd man known as "The Sicilian", who, according to several accounts I've read, was modeled after the furtive true-life alchemist and occultist Caliogostro, (aka Joseph Balsamo).  When fate steps in and the Prince is allowed to question this strange man, what he discovers  will turn his world on its head, and the consequences will ultimately have tremendous implications for the Prince, his closest advisors, and had the story continued, most likely for the balance of power in Europe.

Just a word about the secret society mentioned above.  In  this book it is the Bucentauro, which Schiller describes as appearing to be for the "high-minded" and those of "rational freedom of spirit," but which in reality is a haven for a number of highly-placed libertines, including high-ranking members of the Catholic church.  This just might bring to mind that very well-known group "The Illuminati," which has found its way into several works of conspiracy fiction, and here as Bucentauro, represents the power of the Catholics behind social and political upheaval in Europe at the time.   On the other hand, Schiller makes it very clear just exactly how Protestant the Prince's German kingdom was, so it makes for great conflict.  And as far as politics goes, the Catholics weren't the only big names in the secret society biz -- nerdy me has just been reading about Frederick William II of Prussia, who fell in with two powerful Rosicrucians who became his advisors and pretty much ruled Frederick (and thus Prussia)  between them. So I guess my point is that if anyone thinks that it's no big deal that Schiller spends a lot of time on religious conspiracies, I say think again.

The Man Who Sees Ghosts is a delightful read, and should not be missed by anyone who is into Gothic literature,  secret societies,  and political intrigue.  Up to where it comes to a rather abrupt end, I was having such a wonderful time with this little tale, and then I heard myself quite loudly saying "no, no, no!" because of the loose ends that hadn't quite been tied up.  Although the mix of religion and politics, as well as the combination of  religion and conspiracy are topics that surround our modern lives so much so that we just accept them as a given any more, this was quite a big deal back then.  There is also much in this short book about religion and mysticism during the Enlightenment, and if I'm reading this correctly, it seems that Schiller may have also borrowed a bit from Cazotte's The Devil in Love --what's real vs. what's not real are huge issues in The Man Who Sees Ghosts, and will definitely keep any reader glued.   



*from Lure of the Arcane, The Literature of Cult and Conspiracy, by Theodore Ziolkowski
** from The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, (ed.) Jerrold E. Hogle

A Suite in Four Windows, by David Rix

Snuggly Books (Snuggly Slim no. 1)

9781943813032

2015

paperback

With apologies to Anna for once again taking forever to post about this book.  

George Crumb is an avant-garde composer whose work Black Angels serves as the backdrop for this story. Rix's tale revolves around four college friends - Terry, Carrie, Mix, and Kate - who are assigned the task of doing an analysis of Crumb's work for a music course they're in together.  The four also share a London house and on "the hottest night of the year so far," one that promises storms,  they decide that they 'should probably get on with it."  That they do, with some pretty bizarre results. 

Since this little chapbook is only 44 pages long, I'm not going into plot at all other than what I've just said, because it is a story that needs to be felt and experienced individually. But I was looking for some background on "Black Angels," and came across this at the webpage for the Kronos Quartet, who did a recording of Crumb's work:

"About Black Angels, Crumb writes: 'Black Angels was conceived as a kind of parable on our troubled contemporary world. The work portrays a voyage of the soul. The three stages of this voyage are Departure (fall from grace), Absence (spiritual annihilation) and Return (redemption)."

The first time through this little gem I thought "okay, music is supposed to speak to the soul, and that seems to be what's happening here."  The second time through, I noticed an added dimension -- that of  movement -- from a hellish underground tavern that one of the characters often refers to as "Satan's Vagina," where the story begins, back to the "haunted house" where they live. There, in small chapters that refer to five different "images" from Crumb's work, the story begins in the basement and moves upward, culminating in the attic. I happen to be a closet Jungian, but make of it what you will -- however anyone chooses to read it, it is positively eerie, as is Crumb's music, which I listened to while reading this story.

It is a shame that David Rix is not more well known.  His work gives me a perfect jolt every time I read it, and it is so effective in throwing me off-kilter that it takes a while to get my brain back to my normal.  Here he manages to do so in only 44 short pages, which is a great feat in itself.  Some modern novelists can write hundreds of pages and still not do he what is capable of doing in short form -- he outdoes himself here.  I will read everything this man's ever written because it's that good.  Once again, I've stumbled onto something right up my alley -- a work that stretches the brain and forces a reader out of his or her reading comfort zone into something out of the box and wholly mysterious. There is nothing more I can ask for -- and he certainly delivers.

Fengriffen & Other Gothic Tales, by David Case, (ed.) Stephen Jones

9781943910076

Valancourt Books, 2015

247 pp

paperback

The front cover photo reminds me so much of the incredibly cool pulp cover art of long ago: buxom woman with clothes in tatters mid-scream, backed onto a graveyard monument, looking like she's about to meet a terrible end.    That face says it all -- something is very wrong here; something just horrific is about to happen.  This cover is like the appetizer that comes before the main dish --  the dessert came after I finished the book, when I did a mental ahhhhhhh at the satisfaction and pleasure that came from these stories.  

Valancourt's edition of Fengriffen & Other Gothic Tales consists of four stories.  The two longest stories, "Fengriffen" and "The Dead End"  that bookend the shorter ones "Anachrona" and "The Foreign Bride,"  are the best in the collection, although all of them are spectacular, each in their own way.  He really picks up the Gothic tone here, so much so that in the title story at least, there is that lovely sense of  ambiguity that characterizes Gothic literature  -- is what's happening here truly supernatural, or is there something going on in the main character's mind? Or is it both? 

Another thing I noticed in this book is that with the exception of "The Foreign Bride," science of some sort plays a role; when Case mixes science with the supernatural, the strange, or even the sexual, anything can and does happen.  In "Fengriffen," for example (without giving anything at all away, since people should really experience these stories themselves), the narrator is a sort of proto-psychoanalyst, a "practitioner of an infant science"  probing the "secrets of the mind" long before there was a Freud.  "Anachrona," which reminded me immediately of Hoffman,  includes scholars who "knew of Huygens and Newton, of pendulums and gravity," and "The Dead End," well, suffice it say that science has a major role to play in that one.    "The Foreign Bride," on the other hand, is a dark, slow burner of a tale that delves deeply into the evils that exist in human nature; the story feeds off of superstition.   

If I seem vague, it's because this is a book where if I spill what's going on in the contents, much of the shock produced by these stories might be somewhat lessened for a potential reader, and I wouldn't want to be held responsible. In describing this book, I'll repeat what Stephen Jones wrote in his introduction:

"David's meticulous attention to detail has always set his writing apart from much of the literature labeled as 'horror,' which can only be applauded in a genre that all too often sacrifices both substance and style for cheap effect." 

That is certainly true in this collection. Case writes very, very well and his work managed to get deeply under my skin, especially in "Fengriffen," "The Foreign Bride" and "The Dead End," all of which produced multiple spine tingles and neck hackles without once getting gross or resorting to splatter. It can be done and as Case shows here,  it can be done well.

Don't miss the Afterword of this book, where Kim Newman discusses the film made from "Fengriffen," And Now the Screaming Starts (1973). I watched this movie over the weekend, and while the basic story with a few not-so-minor changes is basically there, the good people at Amicus decided it needed some more punch and added in some special effects (including to my surprise, a crawling hand left over from another Amicus film).  And they didn't call it And Now the Screaming Starts for no reason -- we were actually laughing wondering if there had been scream auditions ever held for the part of Catherine (played by Stephanie Beacham).  It's not the best movie ever, but it's a good way to pass a lazy Saturday afternoon.  But do read the book first -- it's so much better. 

Welsh Rarebit Tales, by Harle Oren Cummins -- now this is DEFINITELY obscure.

9781065435558
Ramble House/Surinam Turtle Press, 2011
originally published 1902
150 pp

paperback

I do tend to read strange books, and my preference is for those that are off  the beaten path or obscure -- and this book is definitely both.

Quite frankly, I'd never even heard of this little collection before, and I discovered it quite by accident.  In one of my online groups we were discussing a short story by F. Marion Crawford, "The Upper Berth," and at some point the main character wonders if he was experiencing some pretty creepy stuff because he had eaten Welsh Rarebit for dinner the previous night.  That wasn't the case, but it seems that there's a special sort of quality connected to Welsh Rarebit -- it is supposed to induce some crazy dreams or even hallucinations after eating it.  So for some weird reason I got caught up in the strangeness of Welsh Rarebit and doing a little digging, came up with Welsh Rarebit Tales, by an incredibly obscure author named Harle Oren Cummins.   Cummins was born in Vermont in 1877 and attended MIT, graduating in 1902 with a degree in mining and mechanical engineering.  That same year he published Welsh Rarebit Tales; little else is known about him except that he died and was buried in California in  1937. As far as I can tell, this was his one and only book.

There are fifteen very short stories in this little book; the gimmicky part of the collection is discovered in the preface.  The author notes that he was a member of a "certain literary club" that held meetings every now and then, where each member would read his newest work since the previous get together. The others would comment, creating "much mutual benefit" to all.   At one such meeting, it seems that the members had "run short of first-class plots" so they decided to engage in an experiment, and sat down to a dinner of

"1 Large Portion Welsh Rarebit,

1 Broiled Live Lobster,

1 Piece Home Made Mince Pie,

1 Portion Cucumber Salad."

The following meeting of the club had to be postponed "on account of illness of fourteen of the members," but at the next, "the accompanying tales were related."  He notes also that 

"By unanimous sentence of the other fourteen members, and as a punishment for having been the originator of the scheme, mine was chosen as the unlucky name under which the Tales should appear."

Now, I don't know about anyone else, but I thought that was just the coolest buildup to a book of short stories that I've ever read.   What a great way to bind all of these tales together, since in large part, they're very different. They are a mix of science fiction, horror, dark crime and all reveal something about the nature of the characters. Some are sad, some are downright pathetic and some I could take or leave, but for the most part, in combination they make for fun reading.

A brief peek at the contents is in order:

1. "The Man Who Made a Man" -- a story obviously based on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, with a twist.
2. "In the Lower Passage " -- a little more of the "white ape" mythology  (not on my favorites list) 
3. "The Fool and His Joke"  -- in which a joke seriously backfires with tragic consequences
4. "The Man and the Beast" -- sad story about a man in the Royal Roman Hippodrome and Three-Ring Circus who doubles as "Bobo, The Wild Man of Borneo."  The old so-called "freak shows" are of great interest to me insofar as understanding the people underneath the attraction. 
5. "At the End of the Road" -- another sad one, this time about a man who has strange traveling companions.
6. "The Space Annihilator" -- this is a science fiction story about a man who has put together the 1902 equivalent of a cell phone. That's not so strange, but what happens to him is downright tragic. 
7. "A Question of Honor" -- in which a man makes a deal that out of honor he feels compelled to keep despite ...
8. "The Wine of Pantanelli" -- the power of suggestion has deadly results in this tale of revenge
9. "The Strangest Freak" -- revisiting the Royal Roman Hippodrome and Three-Ring Circus, this time with Bosko the human snake eater.  This one reminded me so much of Gresham's Nightmare Alley, but what really killed me here was all about what some people will do to make a buck. Jeez Louise, this one was just downright horrific. 
10. "The False Prophet" -- the main character here is an habitual "absintheur" once famous for his predictions.  
11. "A Study in Psychology" -- hypnosis and death -- an "electrifying" tale
12. "The Painted Lady and the Boy" -- another sad tragedy in this story about a young man's past coming back to revisit him in the present.
13. "The Palace of Sin" -- looks at a cruise which is taken by "five hundred men and three hundred women...whose only object in life for one month will be to commit acts which on shore would be punished by fines and imprisonment."  Yow.
14. "The Man Who Was Not Afraid" -- a bet results in a graveyard visit with both positive and negative results
15. "The Story the Doctor Told" -- a young Bohemian gets his act together and his doctor watches it all fall apart in the most horrific way. 

The caution is, of course, that in 1902 our modern sensibilities about race were not in place, so there are a few times when racism raises its head throughout this book. Luckily, there aren't many but I felt I should add the caveat emptor. 

These may not be the greatest stories ever told, but they do reveal a LOT about human nature, which is why I read in the first place, so in that sense, it's a successful little collection. Plus, it's really obscure, which is an added bonus. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to read something very different, relatively unknown, and to anyone who is at all interested in early 20th-century strange fiction.  

diving into decadence -- Monsieur de Phocas, by Jean Lorrain

1873982151
Dedalus/Hippocrene, 1994
originally published 1901
translated by Francis Amery
270 pp

paperback

Monsieur de Phocas took me about ten days to read, a) because it is my  introduction to fin-de-siècle decadent literature and I wanted to get a feel for literature of the period (I'd read Huysmans' Lá-Bas, but that was some time ago) and b) because it is chock full of references to literature, to paintings, to sculpture, etc., that I'd never encountered before, so I felt compelled to look them all up. To be very honest, Monsieur de Phocas probably isn't where I should have started with literature of this period, because while doing a bit of digging about this novel, I discovered that in the opinions of some people, Lorrain's novel is somewhat "derivative" of the work of Huysmans' A Rebours, which will be my next choice of fin-de-siècle literature.  I suppose it doesn't really matter in the long run, since I loved this book -- if I don't know what I'm missing yet, well, that's okay. It certainly whet my appetite for more, and I've been buying books left and right to try to increase my knowledge of this type of literature.

The beginning of this story is related by an unnamed narrator, a writer who had written a tribute to an "engraver and his artistry," and who is visited one day by the Duc de Fréneuse.  After introducing himself  he reveals to the narrator that he is tortured and haunted by a "Demon" within him, haunting and torturing him ever since his adolescence and that

"Even though I may seem to you to be deluded, monsieur, I have suffered for many years the effects of a certain blue and green something." 

He also reveals that it is a certain "gaze" that he seeks --

"the gaze of Dahgut, the daughter of the king of Ys. It is also the gaze of Salomé. Above all, it is the limpid green clarity of the gaze of Astarté: that Astarté who is the demon of Lust and also the Demon of the Sea." 

The duc informs him that  he is about to leave for a "long absence," a last journey in which he is "exiling" himself from France; at the same  time he also tells him that "The Duc de Fréneuse is dead; that there is no longer anyone but Monsieur de Phocas."  Finally we become aware of exactly what has brought Phocas there: he wants to leave with him his manuscript to which he has consigned

"the first impressions of my illness: the unconscious temptations of a man of today, sunk in occultism and neurosis."

Phocas desires to go to Asia, where he hopes he might be able to find a cure for his obsessions -- he has a need "to cry out to someone" the "pangs" of his anguish:

"I need to know that here in Europe there is someone who pities me, and would rejoice in my recovery if ever Heaven should grant it to me."

The unnamed narrator agrees, and the rest of this book is comprised of  Phocas' manuscript, free of narrator interjections, related in chronological order. The narrative goes on to tell of his repulsion of Paris society, for example, after a performance at the Olympia, he recounts the "marionettes" in the audience, including "the banal figures of the males" and "the artificial elephantiasis of wives, sculpted in jet." Taking up the theme of artificiality, he notes that he has a fascination with masks and masquerades, to the point of wondering if he'll be haunted by masks since he seems to see them everywhere, from his own peers in society down into the lower ranks of the population.   However, he discovers that he is not alone -- that there is another man, an English painter named Claudius Ethal, who also sees the masks and is haunted by them; he also "sees through the mask of every human face," and it is here that this book starts really taking off.    Ethal promises a "cure" but things begin to change when a second person, Sir Thomas Welcome, comes into the picture.  And where things go from there, well...

Salomé and the Head of John 

The real problem I'm having with trying to collect my thoughts about this novel is that there's so much here to think about; so much here I want to talk about, so much I really would love to share.  I didn't go and check, but there's enough in this one volume to feed several PhD dissertations so trying to come up with a focus here is really tough. Masks, narcissism, misogyny, eyes and the "gaze," instincts/nature, death and beauty, Paris itself, an underlying but to me obvious subtext of homosexuality  -- there's just a LOT going on here, so I'll leave it to readers to discover how these all help to shape this novel and how they play out thematically from beginning to end.  I would caution anyone who wants to read this book not to gloss over the art, the mythology or the literary references here -- there are reasons they are there and in my opinion, their importance culminates in a visit made by Phocas to the Musée Gustave Moreau, suggested, strangely enough, separately by both Ethal and by Welcome.

There is just so very much to say about this dark, dark novel that like Ethal's bizarre hold on Phocas, will certainly cast a spell on its reader.  It is one of those books that refuses to let go, one that gets down deep into the psyche, making me wonder at several points where this story was taking me and sort of being afraid to move on because it was getting very deep into Phocas' head, which trust me, is a very scary place to be.   Once again I fail to do this book justice -- it is another one that absolutely must be experienced on one's own. And I loved it. Very much recommended, but certainly not for everyone -- it is not an easy read on many levels.