| Author: Brian Evenson | |
| Rating: 9 (Brian's Scale) | Reviewer: Brian |
| Genre: Mystery | |
| Pages: 218 | Orig Pub Date: October, 2006 |
| Binding: Paperback |
FBS Quick Take
If Jim Thompson were alive today he'd want to write a novel like this.
If Jim Thompson were alive today he'd want to write a novel like this.
When Rudd, a troubled Morman teenager, runs across a series of articles chronicling a vicious murder committed by the grandson of Brigham Young, he becomes swept up in the psychological and atavistic aftereffects of the religion's shrouded rituals of love and retribution. Together with Lael, his newly discovered half-brother, and Lyndi, the sole survivor of a slain family, Rudd is soon caught up in a web of secrecy and obsession that casts a veil upon the present as it plunges them all deeper into the violent past.
Sometimes you read a novel so original and forceful that it stuns you into silence when finished. You find that its hard to choose the right words to describe the experience because those words would fail. The Open Curtain is one of those books. I've read Evenson's short fiction over the years and as stunning as it is it does nothing to prepare you for this novel length assault.
He spent the better part of the afternoon looking at his hands, nails flecked with white streaks, knuckles large probably from his having cracked them ever since he was a child. His mother caught him staring, asked if everything was O.K.
"Fine," he said.
"At church tomorrow--"she started.
"--I'm not going to church tomorrow," he said.
He could not look at her while he said it. He heard her wheeze. "Excuse me?" she said, her voice severe. His heart was beating terrifically, though he told himself that there was no reason to worry, that he was long past caring about what he thought, though he knew he did care, fuck all.
"Excuse me?" she said.
"You heard me," he said.
"I swear, your father would roll over in his grave."
"Let him roll."
For the rest of the day that phrase was stuck in his head, Let him roll, sliding around with a kind of mute doom that hard to evade. His mother had stomped out. When, near evening, she came back, he made no attempt to reconcile with her. Let him roll, he thought from the doorway, watching her core and slice a head of lettuce at the sink, the dull knife bruising the edges of each leaf. She turned and looked him and he fled.
She did not call him to dinner, and he told himself he wouldn't come if she did call. Before she went to bed, he heard her walking around the house turning off the lights. He thought she might stop outside his door, but she didn't. I don't need anyone, he thought, and snuck into the kitchen to find his plate cellophaned in the fridge. He ate it, he tried to believe, not for himself but for her benefit, to keep her from worrying. It was an act of kindness to her, though he had enough spite left to eat the food cold.
He spent the night wandering the darkened house, dragging his hand along the walls, imagining that he was establishing a tactile knowledge of the house that would come in handy if he went blind. Then she would be sorry. He awoke on the floor of the half-attic, dust drifting in the sunlight coming through the window. He couldn't remember falling asleep there. He went into the bathroom and splashed his face with water, then called for his mother. She didn't answer.
The car was gone, his mother was already at church. She had left his black leatherbound scriptures on the kitchen table. Next to them was a crudely drawn map to the church., with just two squares indicated, one marked "House," the other marked "Church." An arrow pointed from the first to the second. "In case you forgot the way," was written on the bottom. On the table she had also spelled out the word HELL in white grains that he took for salt but which, tasting, he found to be sugar.
He took a paring knife from the counter, scraped the sugar into a pile, and began, carefully, to shape it into a series of concentric circles. As he worked, he imagined himself putting on his tie and button-down oxford and going to church, walking through the crowded pews and straight to the pulpit and from there publicly washing his hands of religion for good. His mother would be in the audience, shocked, her mouth open. He would renounce Mormonism and then, baring his chest, would invite the devil to take his soul. Not the he believed in the devil, or God either, he told himself.
When he was done shaping the sugar, he had a target. He thrust the knife's tip down hard in the center, so it stuck.
"Fine," he said.
"At church tomorrow--"she started.
"--I'm not going to church tomorrow," he said.
He could not look at her while he said it. He heard her wheeze. "Excuse me?" she said, her voice severe. His heart was beating terrifically, though he told himself that there was no reason to worry, that he was long past caring about what he thought, though he knew he did care, fuck all.
"Excuse me?" she said.
"You heard me," he said.
"I swear, your father would roll over in his grave."
"Let him roll."
For the rest of the day that phrase was stuck in his head, Let him roll, sliding around with a kind of mute doom that hard to evade. His mother had stomped out. When, near evening, she came back, he made no attempt to reconcile with her. Let him roll, he thought from the doorway, watching her core and slice a head of lettuce at the sink, the dull knife bruising the edges of each leaf. She turned and looked him and he fled.
She did not call him to dinner, and he told himself he wouldn't come if she did call. Before she went to bed, he heard her walking around the house turning off the lights. He thought she might stop outside his door, but she didn't. I don't need anyone, he thought, and snuck into the kitchen to find his plate cellophaned in the fridge. He ate it, he tried to believe, not for himself but for her benefit, to keep her from worrying. It was an act of kindness to her, though he had enough spite left to eat the food cold.
He spent the night wandering the darkened house, dragging his hand along the walls, imagining that he was establishing a tactile knowledge of the house that would come in handy if he went blind. Then she would be sorry. He awoke on the floor of the half-attic, dust drifting in the sunlight coming through the window. He couldn't remember falling asleep there. He went into the bathroom and splashed his face with water, then called for his mother. She didn't answer.
The car was gone, his mother was already at church. She had left his black leatherbound scriptures on the kitchen table. Next to them was a crudely drawn map to the church., with just two squares indicated, one marked "House," the other marked "Church." An arrow pointed from the first to the second. "In case you forgot the way," was written on the bottom. On the table she had also spelled out the word HELL in white grains that he took for salt but which, tasting, he found to be sugar.
He took a paring knife from the counter, scraped the sugar into a pile, and began, carefully, to shape it into a series of concentric circles. As he worked, he imagined himself putting on his tie and button-down oxford and going to church, walking through the crowded pews and straight to the pulpit and from there publicly washing his hands of religion for good. His mother would be in the audience, shocked, her mouth open. He would renounce Mormonism and then, baring his chest, would invite the devil to take his soul. Not the he believed in the devil, or God either, he told himself.
When he was done shaping the sugar, he had a target. He thrust the knife's tip down hard in the center, so it stuck.
The Open Curtain is broken up into three sections and this structure is important to the sucess and effect of the novel. In the first section Rudd meets up with his newly discovered half brother and discovers a newspaper article about the William Hooper Young murder and begins to identify with him. It's in this first section the Rudd starts losing time. What the origins of this are we don't know. But the language used to express and show these moments as well as the insertion of these two people into Rudd's life is used to its highest possible effect. In the middle of one of Rudd's biggest black outs the section ends. We are introduced to a new character in section two. A girl whose entire family has just been killed. As she tries to cope she becomes friends with Rudd and for all the wrong reasons (primarily that she doesn't want to be alone) she lets him move in and they get married.
The final section of The Open Curtain is a virtuostic tour-de-force. It may be the finest sustained piece of writing to come along in years. Never before has there been a descent into madness portrayed in writing like the one on display here. There is such a palpable tension that derives from the inter-twinning of the real and the unreal, and our own unsureness of which is which, that it becomes a slippery propulsive force. Evenson never gives the reader an easy way out or a simple solution.
If Jim Thompson were alive today he'd want to write a novel like this.
--Brian Lindenmuth
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