Rating 4/5
Something is messing with my subconscious, clearly. After crowmen (see my D’Lacey’s The Book of the Crowman review) and zombies (about which I will soon post something) now here I am with yet another creepy creature. A werewolf, this time. Well, I told myself, vampires I do like after all. Yes, but. Not all of them for sure – I am a bit too haughty for plain romance and I could not digest that sugary and sticky Twilight saga no matter how. My favourite vampires are still the vaguely lesbian and superbly erotic Mircalla/Millarca/Carmilla if we stick to classics and The Interview with the Vampire’s Lestat for something closer to our time. But werewolves, whilst as old and popular as vampires – The Satyrikon’s lycantropos, the Beast of Gévaudan and the Russian Vourdalak are only a few among many – have at least the grace of attracting a different kind of fiction (I have the feeling, and the fear, this can change pretty soon).
The plot is disarmingly simple: Duncan writes about the last days (or the last moons, more appropriately) of the only surviving werewolf – or so he made you believe. Aka Jake Marlowe, English, cultivated enough to write his own journal, which you will actually read (the whole book is a first-person narration). Constantly on the run and chased by a vindictive human, whose father he has duly devoured fifty years before. And that, just when he is finally tired and ready to have his head chopped out by his nemesis, finds a good reason to remain alive and fight, the only possible for somebody who has seen-it-all, done-it-all and that remembers all of it, including the lives of his victims: a female of his kind, somebody he could love. All you need is love. Pretty trivial and abused, right? Not really. Because Duncan has managed to make it sound just right, and the story is thrilling, captivating and never trite or corny. The book’s final, fast-paced, breathtaking chapters are focusing on Talulla, the she-werewolf, and it leaves you somehow hanging. You know you are going to read a sequel (and you’re happy about that. I won’t say more to avoid spoilers).
There are many factors that make this story worth reading, even if you are not a horror or fantasy aficionado (which I am not). First of all, Duncan’s own contribution to the rich genre of lycanthropic literature. You can find all the canonical features as expected, the silver bullets, the Curse transmitted in the form of a bite, the transformation occurring at full moon, the need for human flesh. What is interesting is the way the werewolves actually feel toward their victims, and what they get from them. Not, or not only, their bodies, but their minds and memories too, like souls that live with them forever on, in a sort of cohabitation, or, better, possession. Original and intriguing in the way it is described. Another fascinating point is the complicated relation between vampires and werewolves on planet earth, utterly despising and generally avoiding each other, until a twist in the story pulls them all together. It would remind the Nietzschean opposition Apollonian and Dionysian, not being for the actual way vampires are portrayed here. Duncan’s description of the vampire genus is exhilarating, with their Italian’s mafia 50 families style, their delicately white, beautiful features and vat-of-pigshit-and-rotten-meat (p.184) breath and their contempt for the sexual compulsion of the werewolves.
Characterisation is another of the book’s strengths – accurate and credible, with my favourite character of the story being actually a minor, even though a central one, the Hunter Ellis: amoral, cynical, oddly vulnerable. And just as good is the level of its literature and philosophical references, which would deserve an ad hoc, long review. There are a lot of them – some in the open, some less obvious but not for this reason less enjoyable.
There is finally point worth mentioning here, at a more philosophical level, and it is the individual versus society debate. A werewolf is not the typical serial killer, for sure. But a serial killer it is, nevertheless, once a month, for all the years of his/her long life. Jake can be the perfect example of an unfortunate outcast, that life and circumstances have put in an impossible position. More than often, being a deviant is not a choice, but a curse (in this case, the Curse). What are the options? In Jake’s case this translates into loneliness, sometime madness, and the endless search for somebody of the same kind for giving life a meaning. Aristotle’s famous statement – humans are social animals, and outside society can only exist Gods or beasts – seems not being valid even for the Beast by definition, after all. Duncan doesn’t have answers (even though he may have some personal experiences to relate about being an outcast. See: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/mar/15/glen-duncan-novelist-interview) – nor do I. I doubt anybody has. But if a book leads you to think of that, it is a good one for sure. This is what books are for: food for thought, even fiction. Especially fiction. Ludendo docet always works.
And what about style? In my view, style preferences are like sexual perversions – a private matter, and private should remain. At least, if you are not going to say anything positive. Which is exactly the case with Duncan. I simply loved the way he writes. (Just a minor point: women – or so I have been told – don’t jerk off, or at least, don’t think in that way even when they actually do it. They rather pleasure themselves. Never asked a she-werewolf though, and maybe the author has access to sources I ignore – thus I will give him the benefit of the doubt). He made me smile, he made me laugh and sometimes even willing to applaud – as in the second part’s opening sentence: “Reader, I ate him. About three hours after resolving I wouldn’t.” (p.131). But you can find many of them, in a story where the choice of registry, wording and dialogues always sound believable and entertaining.
Thus definitively a good, good book. If I have to offer some plot-related criticism, it would only be on the final section. While Talulla’s own adventures are fully justified, the whole story about the new werewolf bio-engineered race, and the power struggles in WOCOP, sound a bit fake. My feeling is that the whole thing has been somehow rushed, and what results in a character abrupt heel-face turn – a well-known trope in fiction – could have been avoided with a better preparation for it. Sudden has to be sudden, but still credible to readers, and this was not always the case. Nonetheless, I have got myself the second instalment of the trilogy. I got curious about what is going to happen, and this is the best compliment I can pay to Duncan.
Yes, something is stirring my inner, dark self – maybe it’s that pale, waning moon outside my window. Aren’t we all werewolves, and deviant – just a little?