The Making of Carolyn
İnci German on Scott Hawkins’ The Library at Mount Char
It is not easy to review Library
without giving away too much – as is the case with every book that has a major
twist. I even hesitated entitling this entry as I wanted to because I am too
scared to spoil anyone’s reading experience. I can safely say though, - and folks at the book club (whether they adored or passionately
hated the book) unanimously agreed upon this - this is a major page-turner, a horror-fantasy which is
hard to compare to anything you’ve read before. Hawkins certainly knows how to keep
you reading and he definitely polarized the OBC.
Spoiler alert!
What starts as the story of a group of very weird young
adults, later builds up to a quite perplexing twist resulting in a young woman rising to godhood.
These young people are a kind of grotesque family,
apprentices to a sort of God (Father) who educates them with, let’s say
unusual, often downright brutal methods. See, each of them is trained to study
and master a certain “catalogue”: death, languages, animals and so on. One of
the apprentices is Carolyn. Carolyn, who quietly but steadily hates Father and
his pet David the bully, and secretly plots to avenge the death of her beloved deer-friends.
In order to do so, she involves the clueless wannabe-Buddhist Steven and the
peculiar veteran Erwin in her plans and breaches the ultimate law of the
Library: Do not read outside your own catalogue! And until she succeeds, there are many, absolutely crazy things happening, so much that for about half of the book you
have no idea of what’s going on. To tell the truth, I am still asking myself
that same old question; WTF did I read?
At first I needed a few runs to get into the story – it was
too strange, required too much getting adjusted to. But before I got to finish
the first chapter, Library had me completely
absorbed. And how could it not? How could I, a lifelong fan of the gore and the
odd, not be moved by images like a black toothed cataloguist of the afterlife
caressing and playing with a severed head like a little girl playing with her
doll; a lion killing the dipshit who captured and caged him and his cub in the
most painful way possible; zombies mowing the lawn of their front yard and a
tyrannical god punishing his subjects’ disobedience by roasting them in a bronze
cast, bull-shaped barbecue grill…
At times Hawkins had me thinking I am watching a slightly
milder Rob Zombie movie and at times I felt like I am reading a revenge horror à
la Stephen King! OK, I admit – a lighter, more freakish version of King maybe, but
still! What is most fascinating though, is that Hawkins breaks trivial
structures many times over. For instance he presents us a highly unorthodox storyline
where the falling action occupies about one fourth of the book. He fakes a “dénouement”,
a resolution, somewhere towards the middle of the book and then overdoes the
falling action to the point that the hypothetical detractor of this book, let’s
call him Henry, could (maybe even justly) complain that from the climax to the
real ending nothing really happens. Well yes, Carolyn overthrows God and takes
over Earth and sits subsequently in her library basically doing nothing… Oh
yeah, she keeps on resurrecting Steve, who keeps on killing himself in order to
save the world (I know how this may sound if you haven’t read the book). But
come on! That’s hilarious, isn’t it? Henry then might say it is just lazy,
infantile writing. Well, it might be that. But it might also be a fresh take on
storytelling, the ultimate anti-cliché! No structure, Henry could then say, the writer has
just thrown together all things he thinks are “cool” and “hip” nowadays. Oh
Henry, chill out!
The structure and the plot aren’t the only things Hawkins
puts his twist on. The whole concept of divinity is twisted and turned in
Hawkins’ hands: God choosing his successor by error and trial, God
coincidentally landing on Earth, Goddess who simply does not care about humans. I
especially love the idea of a god inherently indifferent to humanity. No evil
mastermind to reign and ruin; Carolyn just doesn’t care, that’s all.
Finally there’s the revenge element. I think I might have
mentioned before how fond I am of revenge stories and The Library at Mount Char just might be one of the finest. Carolyn’s
meticulously worked out scheme is just as awry as it is jaw-dropping. I personally
like the story of a young girl beating all odds, avenging her friends at the
expense of ruining Earth, a rape-revenge story with a satisfying outcome. With a little bitter aftertaste that that too, is all part of another plan. See, I told you there will be twists. It’s
quite refined that you don’t know what you’re dealing with for quite some time and
that’s all the more reason to re-read this very quirky book.
Henry would disagree, of course.
It's funny, but when reading this, I never noticed the thing about the last quarter of the book being falling action. But I distinctly remember thinking: "Cool! There's more to this book than just the resolution of its central mystery as a revenge plot!" I think the moment when the main story seemed to be over was actually the moment when I was most hooked by this great novel - also, that's when the most radical shit in the book happens to the planet as a whole, like the rise of a black sun ... So how can you not be invested in what happens next?
ReplyDeleteI'm still quite impressend by this book. And on a sidenote: At the moment, I'm reading the third edition of Greg Stolze's and Stephen Tynes post-modern horror role-playing game Unknown Armies, and thematically, it feels so strongly related to Mount Char that I wonder if Scott Hawkins might have been familiar with previous editions. Both are about people who wield more power that is good for themselves or anyone else, both are about quite fallible people ascending to goodhood, both are brimming with the weirdest kind of magic ... in short, I adore both of them. I'll have to write an article on Unknown Armies as soon as I have finished reading it, and there, I'll namecheck Mount Char to make this come full circle.