dark fantasy | Lorelei By Starlight

I was completely blown away by Joe Hill’s book, NOS4A2. I have read some of his previous work – Horns and Heart-Shaped Box – but with his most recent book, Hill has definitely crafted a treasure. It’s all here in this book. It is tight and it is just a lovely little package of dark fantasy and horror wrapped up and waiting for you. You must go read this now.

The gist of the story is that Victoria (Vic) McQueen learns as a young girl that she can travel to wherever she needs to go via a bridge – the Shorter Way Bridge – that just kind of appears for her. The bridge is magical and conjured into reality by Vic when she concentrates on an object or place, and initially she can only conjure the bridge when she is on her Raleigh. She begins by using the bridge to help her find things that she is looking for – a lost bracelet, a misplaced picture, etc. One day, though, Vic goes out looking for trouble and finds it in Charlie Manx, who steals children and travels his own version of magic roads to a place he calls Christmasland. Vic escapes Manx when she is a child, but later, as an adult, she must find and confront him again in order to rescue her own child.

I liked that this book follows Vic from childhood to adulthood. I also like the character Hill has created – she is a real woman, and not a stereotype. I know several women like her and everything about her personality, skills, and history rings true. She has tattoos and knows how to use both a wrench and a pen. What I think I especially like about the book is how skillful Hill is at writing this woman. This is clearly written by a man who finds strong, eccentric women attractive and is not threatened by them. I found myself thinking about this a lot as I read. I am well aware that Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King, and while Hill has most definitely made his own name as a writer, I did find myself thinking about some of Stephen King’s work – especially Lisey’s Story, a book in which I felt King did a superior job of writing a real woman. Both of these men get it.

But, Hill definitely has his own style. I can feel my generation in his words. It’s something underlying the descriptions,

Vic squeezed the brake, let the Raleigh gently roll to a stop. It was even more dilapidated than she remembered, the whole structure canting to the right so it looked as if a strong wind could topple it into the Merrimack. The lopsided entrance was framed in tangles of ivy. She smelled bats. At the far end, she saw a faint smudge of light … The bridge waited for her to ride out across it. When she did, she knew that she would drop into nothing. She would forever be remembered as the stoned chick who rode her bike right off a cliff and broke her neck. The prospect didn’t frighten her. It would be the next-best thing to being kidnapped by some awful old man (the Wraith) and never heard from again.

the choice of characters,

Lou worked out of a garage he had opened with some cash given to him by his parents, and they lived in the trailer in back, two miles outside of Gunbarrel, a thousand miles from anything. Vic didn’t have a car and probably spent a hundred and sixty hours a week at home. The house smelled of piss-soaked diapers and engine parts, and the sink was always full. In retrospect Vic was only surprised she didn’t go crazy sooner. She was surprised that more young mothers didn’t lose it. When your tits had become canteens and the soundtrack of your life was hysterical tears and mad laughter, how could anyone expect you to remain sane?

the towns and locations. There is a rougher feeling that is smoothed out by the Christmas theme of the book and the magic that infuses the story, from the Shorter Way Bridge to Manx’s malicious car. While it feels much like something King would write, it’s not. It’s all Hill. And it’s all wonderful. I want to carry this book around with me and read it again. I love that there isn’t a neatly wrapped ending, and that the comments he provides in “A Note on the Type” are even less neat than the “official” ending. I think I’m a little in love with Joe Hill at this point, so it’s possible that I can’t really talk about this book coherently. Man. Joe Hill. I can’t wait for the next one!

I came across the preview for Byzantium several months ago on Amazon. Recently, I finally managed to get the DVD and found that I liked the film very much. It is directed by Neil Jordan, who also directed another of my favorites The Company of Wolves, and more recently wrote and directed Ondine. The story focuses on Eleanor, a young girl, and her mother Clara. Both women are “sucreants,” which turn out to be similar to vampires, since they survive on human blood. There are, however, some differences: they are able to walk in daylight, they don’t have fangs (rather, they have interesting super sharp thumbnails that they can grow out at will), and they were not “made” by another of their kind. This last creates the main part of the plot, which centers upon a cave located on a secret island. Sucreants are created by a human entering the cave on this island where they face their dark selves and are reborn to live forever, never aging. There are rules about who may use the island. The main rule is that sucreants may not create others at will – there is a council that makes these decisions. Clara broke this rule when she took her daughter, Eleanor, to the island, and so the women have been pursued by the council for centuries.

The movie is beautiful, with crumbling buildings and lots of rich colors, especially reds. We see things mainly from Eleanor’s point of view, and she is a gothic-type heroine, tormented by her fate and the inability to tell her story to anyone. In order to deal with this, she repeatedly writes her story down and then crumples the pages, casting them to the wind. Saoirse Ronan plays Eleanor as a tender, solitary soul. one who feeds only on those who are old and done with life. Clara, played by Gemma Arterton, is in contrast a born survivor. Forced into prostitution as a young girl, the change to sucreant was for her life-saving, and she continually uses her feminine wiles to provide for Eleanor and herself. Clawing and scraping to exist are what she knows best, and the moments where she shows tenderness for anyone other than Eleanor are suspect and tinged with self-interest. This is a woman who is all about survival.

The men that both of these women meet in the present are a contrast to those from the council that pursue them. Both are caring but weakened. Noel (Daniel Mays) is recovering from the recent death of his mother and wants to protect Clara and Eleanor. He provides them a place to stay in his mother’s old rooming house, Byzantium, which Clara promptly begins turning into a brothel. Frank, played by Caleb Landry Jones, is a young man who comes upon Eleanor as she plays piano one evening. His fine features and lovely broken voice enhance the vulnerability of his character, who is also a hemophiliac.

The story is told both in the present and in flashbacks that explain the history of Clara and Eleanor, and history and the present meet up at the end in a final conflict that will change both women’s lives forever. I found the movie to be beautiful. The pace is slow and dreamy, but if you are a foreign movie fan you will not find this to be a detriment. While the needs and lifestyles of the sucreants drive the plot, the character development is still well done. I highly recommend this film if you are looking for a new twist on the vampire trope!