Feminism

WITCHES by Brenda Lozano (Translated by Heather Cleary)

/ Daniel Haeusser / Leave a comment

Witches
By Brenda Lozano
(Translated by Heather Cleary)
Catapult Books — 16th August 2022
ISBN: 9781646220687 — Hardcover — 240 pp.

Witches (Brujas) forms through the contrapuntal voices of two women: their distinct experiences separated by time and societal position, yet united in conversation around themes of shared experience, and the haunting ghost of a memory – the murdered Paloma.

A curandera from the rural mountain village of San Felipe, Feliciana has struggled to be accepted as a traditional healer within a community accustomed to males alone serving in the ceremonies of the role. But, Feliciana herself has been trained by her cousin, the retired curandera preceding her: Paloma, formerly a curandero named Gaspar. Gaspar/Paloma was Muxe, a third gender recognized by the indigenous Zapotec people of Oaxaca, Mexico. And now Paloma is dead, a victim of prejudice against Muxe.

A journalist from the urban modernity of Mexico City, Zoe has faced her own opposition as a female in her profession, and she also has a close familial relation afflicted with intolerance: her queer sister Leandra, a non-conforming young woman with vocal far-left politics. When Zoe hears of the murder of Paloma, she journeys to San Felipe to interview Feliciana for a story.

There, she learns of what Paloma passed on to Feliciana: of the velada ceremonies with their hallucinogenic mushroom Children; the reception of the Language and the knowledge of the Book. But even more deeply, she gains insight into her own life and its parallels to a history of colonialism and oppressions, universalities that transcend education, class, or environment.

In her notes, translator Heather Cleary perfectly summarizes a thematic core of Brenda Lozano’s novel: “Witches is an exploration of the many ways that women and gender non-comforming individuals are marginalised in our hetero-normative patriarchy.” With its divergent narrators, it’s also a study of indigenous versus Western perspectives, and of the importance and variegation of language in all its diverse forms. In contrast to Zoe, Feliciana speaks only in the local traditional language of her ancestors, rejecting the Spanish ‘tongue’ of government, colonialization. Unable to read or write, Feliciana continues an oral tradition of storytelling and understanding, and the Language of her mystical healing.

Lozano accentuates the cultural and educational differences between Feliciana and Zoe through distinct styles in the chapters that alternate between their points-of-view. Whereas chapters from Zoe’s point-of-view are more conventional in grammar and related structure, Feliciana’s chapters follow a stream-of-conscience style that wends and flows lyrically in long, flowering phrases strung together with elliptical asides and conversational wit.

The precious nature of language to identity and meaning also resonates through the act of translating Lozano’s novel from Spanish. Alongside the novel, Cleary provides a thorough and fascinating discussion of her choices in translating the novel, and putting it in the cultural and historical contexts that might be unknown to readers. She also describes reasoning behind word choices in keeping, or altering, original terms from the Spanish or indigenous traditions. The fact that translation of this novel by Clearly doubles the inherent artistic themes of Lozano’s work makes the work an even more complex and layered piece of literature.

While plot may be secondary to the self-revelations of the novel’s protagonists and the sociopolitical commentaries that lie beneath the text, the discovery of two families’ pasts and secrets through the perspective of Zoe and Feliciana does give some linearity to the otherwise elliptical novel, particularly in Zoe’s relation with (understanding of) her sister Leandra.

A sub-theme of the novel within the indigenous versus Western traditions sphere that I particularly enjoyed would be the contrasting, yet unified, faith traditions of Feliciana and Zoe: the Zapotec and Roman Catholic mysticism, respectively. Colonialism has of course created countless hybrid religious systems that marry the indigenous and Christian, but what’s most interesting to compare within Witches is the ways in which separate mystical beliefs guide the lives, and hopes of the two women amid uncertainty and oppression alike.

From the novel’s description, and the categories that some Goodreads readers placed the novel within, I expected Witches to qualify as ‘speculative fiction in translation’, with magical realism. Though the novel is magical, mystical, even macabre in spots in otherworldliness, it’s decidedly not fantastic. Nonetheless, this shouldn’t be a detriment to any genre fans to checking it out.

Relatively short, Witches is paradoxically blatant about its feminist themes yet understated in its presentation of them within the lives of Feliciana and Zoe, interweaving both of their perspectives as women with greater complexities of gender diversity and colonial politics. It’s a novel of timeless ideas that gives off vibes of brimming with both modern sensibilities and ancient wisdom. The words pour over readers effortlessly, yet call for second readings beneath the surface of that flow. Read it, and reflect.

BLOOD MOUNTAIN: Stories by Brenda S. Tolian

/ Daniel Haeusser / Leave a comment

Blood Mountain: Stories
By Brenda S. Tolian
Raw Dog Screaming Press — June 2022
ISBN: 9781947879416 — Paperback — 212 pp.

With this collection of interlinked short fiction, Brenda S. Tolian should immediately go onto the noteworthy list of top authors for horror fans out there. The depth, intensity, and compelling voice of her writing would make these stories stand out in the leading horror/dark fantasy market magazines or a Datlow best-of anthology/themed collection. The only explanation I have for my not having come across Tolian’s name yet is that she is new enough to have not yet submitted to larger outlets. Tremendous gratitude should go to Raw Dog Screaming Press for making this available. Their taste and eye for talent is impressive, so it doesn’t surprise me that they’d be responsible for unleashing this unflinching, macabre brilliance of Tolian on readers like me – and hopefully you.

The cover of Blood Mountain (featuring the usual stunning art by Daniele Serra) describes the book as ‘stories’. Indeed, this is a collection of short fiction. However, interlacing threads of character and setting make the book equally definable as an episodic novel. Tolian further connects the twelve chapters with another story, divided into thirteen short ‘vignettes’ to bookend and bridge each tale. Such a structure very effectively provides readers of Blood Mountain fulfillment both in its fragments and as an overall reading experience.

Tolian’s stories are fully grounded in their setting: the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that extend through Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico. Tolian personifies this setting into a character itself, a primordial Goddess whose essence reflects in the landscape, whose will transcends normal realities, and whose hunger for revenge manifests through grisly manipulation of mortal transgression.

The citizens who live in the region defined by these mountains know that something is darkly off here, but remain helplessly drawn to its ethereal call of the inexplicable, the strange, the spiritual. New Age cults spring up around the potential for power the mountains seem to promise; others flock to it in search of the economic power of gold that vein beneath its surface. But, the bloodthirsty land will extract its price and enact penance, creating monsters and taking lives.

No one appreciates and fears the nature of the area more than Undersheriff Blackwood, a man reflects brokenly in his later years on the horrors he has witnessed, the old legends passed on from his grandfather, and the despair over his complete lack of power over the terrors that have consumed his life and home.

A moment during a lonesome, contemplative night in Blackwood’s squad car comprises the vignettes interspersed through Blood Mountain. They’re written uniquely in the second person to contrast with the third- and first-person voices that populate the twelve main stories of the book. Those who’ve read many of my reviews may know that text in the second person really drives me nuts. While I didn’t enjoy its use in Blood Mountain, I did manage to get through it. The fact that each Blackwood fragment is only a page or two helped in that immensely. Moreover, I see why Tolian chose to write these this way, set uniquely from the other perspectives. I still would’ve preferred them in the first person.

What most impressed me about Blood Mountain has to be Tolian’s ability to precisely conjure the most appropriate voice for each story. For example, the eponymously titled opening story is one of murder, and cannibalism in the 19th century, spurred by the possession of a greedy prospector by the Goddess of the mountains. It’s a modern day rendition of cosmic horror whose plot would fit perfectly in the contemporary weird fiction genre. Tolian uses relatively complex and ornate language to paint a poetic and uncanny portrait for the landscape and its supernatural bedrock heart. The stylistic flourishes and evocative bursts of gory horror map squarely to the formidable, primal force that shapes the land and its people.

Later stories set in the more modern to present day have reduced flowery affect and an increase in gritty realism, again with tone to match the protagonist’s perspective and experiences. Stories with the educated or higher class of society feature more vocabulary to contrast with the short sentences and slang in stories featuring a criminal lower class, such as a seller of illegal rattlesnakes. Everywhere, Tolian imbues the characters of her tales with text to match: the shadowy Red Women with esoteric vibes, perverted killers with crime fiction twists, monsters with bursts of language conveying the inexplicable and insane.

On its whole, Blood Mountain reminded me of Welcome to Nightvale, a premise based on a location warping time, space, and all of its inhabitants in baffling and frightening ways. However, whereas Welcome to Nightvale runs on the more light-hearted side of weird, Blood Mountain goes right for the jugular. There is no ironic humor or paranormal fun here, this is uncompromising horror, with no one spared.

Though dubbed Southwestern Gothic Horror, I found this closer to Folk Horror than anything Gothic. Tolian’s overarching theme to her horror seems to be that pain and darkness are unavoidable, yet must be lived through. Several of the stories also show a focus on feminist themes of power and the body, but Tolian clearly doesn’t need to limit herself within the collection, or even a single story, to just one subject or inspiration. Beyond entertaining, frightening, or stunning in their horror and dark beauty, the stories also easily could evoke reflection and ranges of interpretations.

Blood Mountain exceeded my expectations, even with second person perspective and less of the Gothic atmosphere in the vein I’m a sucker for. It wasn’t exactly what I expected, but it so effectively and unabashedly does what it actually is, despite first expectations. Like the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, it transforms those who enter its valleys and approach its slopes, according to its desires.

I fully expect to see Brenda S. Tolian’s name shoot through the horror community with success – if not for this book then for her future work and evolution as a writer. I’ll be very eager to read whatever comes next. Similarly, Raw Dog Screaming Press, you continue to rock it.

LURE by Tim McGregor

/ Daniel Haeusser / Leave a comment

Lure
By Tim McGregor
Tenebrous Press — 18th July 2022
ISBN: 9781737982302 — Paperback — 170 pp.

Tim McGregor has quite a knack for historical/folk horror that mercilessly goes for the gut. Last year I had the chance to read and review his brilliant novel Hearts Strange and Dreadful. And so I jumped at the chance to check out this novella. Both stories feature strong, evocative writing and slow-building dread to depict a community and family unraveling, and both share feminist themes of female oppression by society and the horrific, dark consequences of this as the women discover retributive empowerment. It continues to be a fitting moral for the day.

Lure is set in Torgrimsvaera, a shabby fishing village on the shores of a fictional land, isolated from the surrounding land by the unforgiven sea and an impenetrable ring of mountains. Atop a hill looking out over the sea sits the village chapel. Within, strung from the ceiling dangles the skeletal remains of a sea monster, a deity-like creature slain in village legends of yore. Fifteen year old Kaspar Lensman, the son of the village preacher gazes at in wonder, questioning what may be truth or fiction, but unable to dwell on such matters due to immediate need. The village is going through a period of want, hauls from the sea decreasing and fishermen and their families going hungry. This puts the Lensman family in worse straits, for they’re dependent on the goodwill of the village. Uriah earns no salary, and members of the village are simply expected to tithe a portion of their haul to feed the Reverend and his kin.

After the disappearance of his wife, Reverend Uriah has grown harsher, and more distant. The added pressures of reduced yields from the sea and increasing frequencies of storms makes things even more difficult to bear. Responsibility falls upon Kaspar to go to the dock and try to beg for scraps that he might bring home for his sister Bryndis to cook, something that might temporarily fill their bellies, particularly that of their simple and optimistic younger brother Pip who the elder siblings love so. Pip’s energy and enthusiasm proves draining for Kaspar and Bryndis alike amid the harsh realities of entering adulthood in oppressive Torgrimsvaera.

More frail and timid than the other men around him, Kaspar remains mostly overlooked and scorned. He dreams of marrying his childhood friend and first love Agnet – the only person who seems to really understand or appreciate him – but Agnet has been forced into marriage with Gunther the Brave, a hulking giant whose power on the briny seas is matched only by his salty personality and callous cruelty to Kaspar and to Agnet.

Equally powerless to the whims of the men in the village is Bryndis, who longs to marry a young, kind-hearted man close to her age. But instead, Uriah has arranged her betrothal to an older widow now in need of a replacement wife. While Kaspar strives to win his beloved Agnet from the clutches of the brutish Gunther, strong willed Bryndis ponders defiance and prays for release. But both know, deep down, that they are ultimately powerless.

One day a woman is seen out in the sea, diving beneath the waves and resurfacing distantly. Cries of mermaid go out, and the fishermen rush out to capture the creature of legend. They fail, but the wounded mermaid ends up in a secluded spot where Kaspar and Agnet used to meet, where Kaspar still goes for quiet reverie. Kaspar’s attempts to play his secret of the mermaid’s location for his advancement lead to the village caging the creature. As people argue over the significance of the mermaid’s appearance and what to do with her, Kaspar’s guilt leads him to clandestinely release her back to freedom.

The mermaid returns to the sea, but does not stray far. Some in the village decide to go after her. And then the bloodshed really begins, as the mermaid – or the luremaid, more aptly – turns the sea into her hunting grounds for the men who give chase, and sings a siren call to the women of the village: a transformative song of madness and revolt. With nowhere to run and their only source of food inaccessible, the men face cold slaughter and society teeters toward collapse.

Lure oozes with harsh atmosphere: the natural brutalities of the cold sea and chilly salted winds, the social tyranny of tradition, and ancient horrors from the realms of near-forgotten legend. McGregor permeates the novella with such dark atmosphere to slowly unfurl the plot, the descent of the village and the characters into damnation. The superb text is coupled with fantastic interior illustrations by Kelly Willliams, such as the one below.

McGregor matches the dark atmosphere with a protagonist who is blinded to the doom around him by his own ignorance and self preoccupation. Kaspar is a fascinating main character and point-of-view for the novella. He has qualities and perspectives that put him much closer to the position of females in the village. Yet, he also clearly still has privileges associated with being male that he can’t recognize, most particularly an expectation to get what he wants, or what he is ‘owed’, and a selfishness to abandon any real solidarity or support for the women in his life if it’s interfering with his goals. Yet, his gullibility and lack of self awareness make him also sympathetic, readers wondering if he has a chance for growth and reform.

Even more sympathetic a character is Pip, epitomizing the innocence of childhood, suffering without any guilt. Along with the oppressed Bryndis, then, this makes all three of the Lensman children objects of reader empathy and hope, even if they are mostly imperfect with flaws.

But this is horror, and McGregor steers the ship of this tale to its ruthless conclusion. In this, the lure of the title is perhaps not referring to just the luremaid of the plot, but to McGregor himself, as he enchants the reader through the pages and their developing terror.

LIFE SCIENCES by Joy Sorman (Translated by Lara Vergnaud)

/ Daniel Haeusser / Leave a comment

Life Sciences
By Joy Sorman
(Translated by Lara Vergnaud)
Restless Books — October 2021
ISBN: 9781632062956 — Paperback — 272 pp.

On the surface level, Life Sciences is about an individual’s response to inexplicable chronic disease within a modern society that can provide no relief or healing. Seventeen-year-old Ninon Moise wakes one day to discover the skin of her arms burning in pain at the slightest touch. Her doctors are at a loss for how this has come about, they wonder if perhaps she is just even making it up. Or perhaps there is no physical cause to it, but an issue of psychology, a trick of the mind and self perceptions of pain?

The onset and unique specificity of symptoms doesn’t surprise her, she’s expected their arrival, only uncertain in the precise form they’d manifest. Her mother Esther was similarly struck with achromatopsia at a young age, an inability to see colors any longer, with no discernable cause or deficiency behind its revelation. Back through the family line, to the earliest recordings in the Middle Ages, women in their family have been stricken with seemingly random disease. A curse. Or a perverse female birthright claimed.

It’s therefore time for her daughter to stand out, and it’s as though that distinctiveness can only be revealed through her genes, as though uniqueness can only be expressed by a cell line, as though the force of a person’s existence is reabsorbed whole by the transmission of genetic characteristics hoped to be rare and mysterious, as though that force can’t be incarnated, for example, by an act…

Ninon’s physical discomfort, and the complications the condition manifests for her daily activities – like high school – quickly turn her mind from seeing the disease naively as a rite of passage, membership and individuality attained within her family. She rebels against acceptance and accommodation, seeking answers from medicine, and treatment, starting with basic identification of what afflicts her, for “… a sickness without a name isn’t a disease, it’s just shapeless suffering.” The awful chasm of fearful uncertainty becomes alleviated when professionals diagnose her condition: dynamic tactile allodynia.

…what a marvelous, beautiful trio of words! wonderfully pompous and complicated, three words when just one would have sufficed, three words that roll off the tongue, and with the diagnosis pronounced, Ninon could almost dance for joy, she’s finally been deemed sick and therefore innocent, absolved of all suspicion, what a relief to know you have something rather than nothing.

The joy from that first step of answers rapidly vanishes as she realizes the doctors have no clue what to do about this monster they have given a name. They throw any treatment they can think of towards her body. And when that fails, her mind. With modern medicine failing at every turn, she turns to traditional, folk practices. But still the pain in her arms continue with the barest brush of touch. Is it perhaps lessening with time? Or is that just her becoming habituated to the pain?

Sorman’s novel thereby works at this basic level as a fascinating study of an individual human body falling prey to biology that we still do not precisely understand. For as far as we may have come from hundreds of years ago, our science sometimes still fails to provide answers or healing, giving less than even religions or faith may have given to Ninon’s female ancestors through the earlier ages.

Sorman’s language, beautifully translated in flowing prose by Lara Vergnaud, spectacularly conveys the feelings of pain and helplessness, of despair that can happen amid inexplicable disease or disorder. It’s something relatable for any feeling human who has felt desperation for finding answers to one’s health, even if one doesn’t have to live with a chronic condition.

At the metaphorical level, the novel becomes something even more, symbolizing the cultural and societal treatment of women through the ages in the form of these inherited diseases. The women through the ages in her family suffer, and they are asked to just simply bare it. There is no fixing it. There is no reason why. It simply is.

…Ninon thinks that she’d have liked to be a boy but doesn’t mention it, not wanting to upset her mother. And ultimately it’s on that day, when she learns that the men of the family were touched by disgrace too, that she realizes the scope of the curse, that of being born a girl: hormonal chance, genetic injustice.

The disease biology and feminist readings of the novel are not mutually exclusive either, as medicine still routinely ignores issues of female health, of female-specific biology over the male standard. This is evident from issues of reproductive rights, to remaining uncertainties of the hormonal complexities during female development (youth to beyond menopause) and their varied effects on the female body, something society has wanted to simplify and control, not really understand or let flourish. A scene later in the novel where Ninon goes to see a more holistic healer reiterates this traditional view of women being equivalent to a body, to skin:

I am a body above all else, solemnly repeats Dr. Kilfe, I am a body above all else, and nothing pleases ninon more than this affirmation, I am skin above all else, adds the psychiatrist, I am made of all the sensations that emerge on the surface of the body, the surface of the consciousness is homothetic to that of the body, they have the same surface area, the same reach, the mind isn’t buried in the folds and twists of the brain, it appears on the surface, sensitive to wind and sun, to caresses and blows.

Life Sciences is a powerful and artistic novel, pulsing with the life of language, not just human biology and feminism. The first half of the book, and its close are phenomenal, but my one critique would be that most of the second half starts to feel repetitive and needless. Nonetheless, it is a quick, satisfying read and doesn’t feel insurmountably bloated at all.

For those who enjoy the themes of this novel and want something similar – or in a shorter dose, I’d recommend Sarah Tolmie’s short stories in her collection Disease. Tolmie goes more toward the side of absurd comedy, but the general themes are very comparable to those in Life Sciences.

ANNA by Sammy H.K. Smith

/ Daniel Haeusser / Leave a comment

“… Anna is a tautly written dystopian thriller immerses readers in a brutal world of struggling for survival and personhood. It is not inspirational. It is a horrifying and brutal first-person account of traumatic abuse and finding a possibility of some freedom or power despite it…”

Read my entire debut review for Fantasy Book Critic of Anna HERE

Solaris (Rebellion Press) – May 2021 – Hardcover – 300 pp.

THE GODMOTHERS by Camille Aubray

/ Daniel Haeusser / Leave a comment

The Godmothers
By Camille Aubray
HarperLuxe — June 2021
ISBN: 9780063090279 — Paperback — 592 pp.

Greenwich Village, New York City, the 1930s. As war breaks out in distant Europe, a wealthy family of Italian Americans with business ties to the mafia works hard to ensure their continued success for themselves, and even more for their children. Gianni and Tessa have one daughter, Petrina, and three sons, Johnny, Frankie, and Mario; partnering them each with the right spouse becomes the immediate parental priority to facilitate their continued familial prosperity. However, the fashionable and intelligent Petrina has a marriage on the rocks, and she still hasn’t fully recovered from a potential scandal in her past that threatened the family’s stability.

Considerate and responsible eldest son Johnny has married naive Amie, a young French widow from upstate New York, who he helps after she has used a gun to end her abusive marriage to a bar owner. Fiery middle son Frankie marries the equally spirited Lucy, an Irish nurse who has prior experience standing up to members of organized crime. But for quiet and cerebral Mario, the doted-upon baby boy of the family, Tessa decides that he needs a good Italian woman from the old country, a woman who has not grown up with the influences of American culture. Tessa and Gianni arrange to bring a young woman named Filomena over for marriage to Mario. Outbreak of WWII in Italy and tragedy leads another girl to seize the opportunity to secretly come in her friend’s place, adopting Filomena’s name and identity.

The bulk of the novel deals with the history of this family from the 1930s through the 1950s. Chapters set in the 1980s frame each side of this story, featuring Nicole, who is learning all these hidden secrets of her family’s past from one of the four Godmothers. Aubray follows the opening bookend with chapters that separately introduce the pasts of each of the four women, with particular focus on Filomena. By the point of Filomena’s marriage to Mario, the singular path of the woman as part of the familial is followed. Their generation takes over more business operations with the death of Gianni and Tessa.

The gradual departure or loss of the men to illness or war gradually allow the women to take leadership more fully, making use of the survival skills they have each learned from their pasts, and their keen intellect. With strengths to complement one another, and ferociously protective of each other’s secrets, these Godmothers work together to separate their lives from dependence on crime and keep their children safe.

The basic feminist story in The Godmothers is solid. It’s a story of divestment from situations they have been born or married into while maintaining loyalty to ‘blood’. Establishing social independence alongside separation from criminal business ties that leave them vulnerable and at the mercy to immoral powers that they’ve all had personal prior experience with in some way.

Aubray’s construction of the novel is less perfect. The bookends to the story set in the 1980s are unnecessary, and even detrimental. The opening sets up expectations of really dark secrets and mystery that will have big implications for Nicole. There are some dark secrets and mysteries revealed in those days of the 1930s – 1950s. But from the point of view of decades later, they are all pretty unsurprising, and hardly scandalous to warrant panic for Nicole. If framed solely as learning more about her family it may have worked better at least (even if not needed). Instead it sets the novel up to be far more of a thriller and mystery than it ever is.

The other major issue with The Godmothers is that it becomes progressively less compelling as the read continues. The first half or so was engaging, but the plot soon settles into a lull of predictability, and the character developments among the women and their relationship stagnates into repetition of themes. Coupled with an anticlimactic end to the 1950s era story of the Godmothers gaining criminal independence, the fizzling of any story on the 1980s side of the history makes the final chapters of the novel more skippable than engaging.

Though Aubray writes well – if a bit melodramatically – and crafts interesting characters with a meaningful history, the structure of the novel and a second half of smooth-sailing against any remotely rough waters ends up dampening the initial joys of reading The Godmothers. Given the numerous mentions of the novel on “Best of the year/summer” lists and many enthusiastic reader responses, there are certainly readers out there who will enjoy this and not mind structural elements I found to not work.

For those who are interested in looking into The Godmothers further, there is currently a new Goodreads Giveaway running until April 26, 2022 to win a copy of the novel.