Hello, everyone. I'm Robbie Jordan, and this is the Erroll Fanasis podcast where it paints everything. Welcome. Today, I'm joined by Paige LaVoie to talk about Melmouth by Sarah Perry, a gothic horror novel released in 2017.
We talk about gothic horror and feminism, the strange structure of the novel, and the unrelenting grimness the novel dwells in. I really enjoyed the novel while Paige did not. And that created an interesting conversation that I think you'll really enjoy. It was a great time talking to Paige, as always.
On to the discussion. Hello, everyone. I'm here once again with Paige LaVoie to talk about some books. Paige, how are you?
I'm doing well. Great. That's good to hear. This time we're talking about Melmouth or Melmouth, Melmouth, Mamaca, the Melmouth, a novel by Sarah Perry, a gothic horror, I would say.
That's where I would categorize it, gothic horror to a certain extent, even though I would maybe literary gothic horror because, God forbid, you try and mix this in with the regular horror. Don't touch. Don't let them touch. One's smart and one's dumb.
I just love that it's like that like stretch of silence of like, I'm just ready to start. I'll start with this. Paige, what do you think about this book? What do you think about Melmouth?
Oh, my gosh, I didn't like it. I was not a fan of this one. Oh, no. Did you love it?
I'm just curious. I don't know if I love it. I do like it. I think I'm confident enough in that opinion.
I'm confident to say I liked it. I think that if I reread it, I might like it more, maybe. That's interesting. I feel like that there's something to that.
Like the second time around, you'd probably pick up a bunch more things. Right. Because it has layers. Yeah, there's it is built.
I think to be there's certainly depth to this. There's certainly a lot of complexity in how it is constructed. And I think if I read it again and knew the story and knew the beats, I could I would see that a little bit more clearly. I did like it, though.
I enjoyed it. I struggled at times with it. I think that's fair for sure. Like, I struggled with it at times and then I kind of settled into a rhythm with it.
And then it was smooth sailing. Like until about a third of the way through the book. I struggled a little a little bit. And sometimes and whenever I struggle with a book, I always try and figure out, OK, is it the book or is it me?
I had the same experience with this because I was expecting something really different. I don't know why. I think I was expecting it to be more of like a ghost story from the way that it's written, like the blurb on Amazon and even the opening page. I thought it was going to be the world that we were first set into a little bit more historic, maybe Victorian.
And I also was picturing that sort of like, I don't know, like like Victorian gothic romance. Like there was going to be people disappearing because the ghost took them. And I've really I don't know, I was expecting more of like a classic ghost story and that this book was not. No, not really at all.
And so it took me probably halfway through the book to accept, OK, this is not the book I thought it was going to be. That's fine. Let me, like, press on and, like, change my expectations. And I think that really helped.
And when I say I didn't like it, it's not this book was bad because I think that the writing was really beautiful. I think definitely like lyrical and well-strung sentences that were really like pretty. Sometimes really long. Sometimes it would be like, OK, I get it.
She's plain. Do we have to say it in like 20 different ways? I mean, I do think that it is a it is a this book is a throwback to like the writing style is very similar to a lot of Victorian, you know, gothic horror and gothic romance. And it is, you know, long, languid sentences with in big paragraphs and, you know, very kind of.
I don't want to use the word lush because I really don't like it when people use the word lush to describe necessarily, but sometimes it is lush. But I think lush is also impractical in this because this book is also meant to be. It's melancholy and sad and lush gives the impression of like, oh, it feels good and warm and stuff. No, it's cold.
It is. This book is very cold, like every word reflects ice and chill and discomfort and uncomfortable silence and sparseness. And like the words, the diction and her writing style is very descriptive and beautiful, but everything she's describing is awful. Awful.
And like grotesque. Like this book, 100%, there were like several times where I was like, am I gonna throw up? Like, do I need to stop listening to this for a while? And I did.
I would like, I was listening to the audiobook, which also I feel like with a book like this is a little like. So if you're if you're reading a physical book and you're like, oh, that description is real gross. You can like read through it faster. Like you have a little bit more control.
And I feel like when you're listening to an audiobook, you're just kind of stuck there for as long as the narrator wants to take. Yeah, you're a little bit more. You're a little bit more a hostage in that situation. I just like, like, turn the little dial that makes the book go faster up until like it was still like words I could understand, but it like skipped through a little quicker.
And I'd be like, OK, cool. This is still really gross, but we're getting through it a little faster. So, OK. Yeah.
Is it really? It's just that it was very challenging with the story content, the subject matter. Yeah, I think. Well, I think also I wasn't expecting so much like like death, like descriptions of death, sad, historic situations like multiple multiple situations of genocide.
Yes. Yeah. I was like, how do I? Yeah, my gosh.
I was just like, oh, oh, this is we're going into like like Nazi stuff. And yeah, I certainly wasn't. I also did not. I read I read the blurb on Amazon and I'd seen this on a lot of best of lists from 2017.
And it had been on my to read list for a while. And Sarah, she had also written another book that had gotten a lot of very good press. Essex Serpent. And I thought I should I put it on my to read list and it seemed something that I wanted to read for a long time.
But I'd never really I usually I try if I know I'm going to read something eventually, like I know if I'm gonna see a movie, I'm not gonna watch the trailers. I don't I don't need to. I'm like, I'm gonna see it. I don't need to watch a trailer to know I'm gonna see it.
I'm gonna go. I'll just I'll just jump in. And the kind of let surprise of whatever it is wash over me and enjoy that kind of surprise. And this is just like this.
I was like, oh, I knew I read the blurb, but the blurb is, you know, 100 words and it doesn't in this. I don't think I don't think any 100 words could easily evoke what the book is like in its entirety. And yeah, I agree with that. So and I I myself in trying to encapsulate an entire novel in 100 words and make it attractive for people so that they will buy it.
It's marketing is what that blurb is. And I understand how difficult that is, but I was not prepared for this book. I was not prepared for, oh, this is what, like I realized it after we after she started reading that first, the, the, the diary, Joseph, Joseph's diary, The Dead Man's Diary of his recollections of seeing Melmoth for the first time and his experience in in during the war two and the Nazis. What's the word I'm looking for?
When they, when they occupied when the Nazis occupied his, his I think it's Prague and his experience with them taking, you know, Jewish people and in the Holocaust and all that horrible, horribleness. And then I'm like, okay. And then you get to the second time that she is digging into like found letters, basically, or found books or whatever. I go, okay, this is what this book, this is what this is.
And it's kind of this as she is digging into these sources, she is losing bit by bit her own grasp on reality or Melmoth is just more present. And like, it depends on how much you want to think Melmoth is real or not. Because I'm not, I think the book is, at least in the reality of this book, Melmoth is a real thing. But I think for a large part of the book, we are not supposed to know if Melmoth is real or not.
Yeah. The way it ended, I was a little bit torn where I was like, maybe Helen just kind of snapped. It all just became too much. The guilt and like continued suffering that she had been like making herself go through.
Like, and then the old woman dying. I'm just like, maybe it's just reading all of this awful stuff combined with her own sins. And she just finally just snapped. Like, and that felt believable.
That felt like, but then it also felt like, I don't know, it felt like Melmoth, the way they wrote Because I'm reading, like, okay, because I'm a witness too. I'm witnessing this as I'm reading in a way. But I never, I didn't think it would, it felt, that felt like the most, like the book, it does indulge in a lot of, and that's like a very also another Victorian kind of horror, Gothic horror kind of thing where it's, you know, you have this, it's kind of, it's very easily could feel like a Vincent Price movie from the 60s where he's just like, ah-ha-ha, he's just talking, and he's just talking directly at the camera and it could feel very cheesy and campy. And I think, and it even goes as far at the end to indulge in that and to have like, and Melmouth is there, and then suddenly you, like we still see Melmouth have these conversations with multiple people with their own, their, their, these, the letters and the journals and stuff.
And then Helen herself has this confrontation with Melmouth at the end where she denies her. And then we, as the reader, have it at the very end. And I think, I think that's why I go at the end and I think this book, I like it and I think it's successful is because it landed. It felt, I felt kind of a dread at the end of like, oh, that's, oh, hi.
Hey, Melmouth. How's it going? And that if I think if I thought, oh, this is cheesy, I think that would communicate enough to me that I don't think this book was effective, but I didn't feel like, oh man, this is cheesy. I felt, uh, I felt kind of skeeved out and that's ultimately, I think at the end of the day, like, okay, that's an effective ending is because I felt that way.
And also because Helen still gets her, her moment, you know, of growth where she denies Melmouth and says, no, I am, I am, I am, I am able to be redeemed. Redemption is not lost on me. Arnel himself has forgiven me. I can get past my sin, you know, her, her letting Arnel get arrested for her murder, for her, for her crime.
And that, I think because it having that narrator allows that to happen, allows it, like a lot of typical horror, horror stories, you know, you have, it would have the main character lapse into insanity at the end. Yeah. And, and that's, I wasn't, there was a moment where I just wasn't sure where it was going with Helen. And I, I honestly thought she was gonna do it.
I thought the book was gonna end with her taking Melmouth's hand and that was going to be the end of the chapter. Um, but yeah, since I was listening to an audio book, I was like, there is still like 30 minutes left. I can't wait. Um, so I, I was glad, too, that she finally said no.
Like it's finally decided that she was worth redemption because, gosh, it was like we, as I almost said listeners because again, audiobook, but as people consuming the story, how many descriptions were there about Helen, like purposefully seeking out discomfort and just not indulging in like uh cakes and music and fun and whatever else, uh, just to, to like further punish herself. And I thought, I thought it was so sad when uh what was her, her lover's name again? It was uh shoot. you like, yeah.
Yeah. So, um, when he finally shows up and it was like, oh well, it was thinking about you out here free, like made it worth it. Like for me to be in jail. And I'm just like, but she hasn't been out here free.
She's like literally imprisoned herself this entire time. Like, uh, so his one happy thought was like her being able to like live her life and in like the 10 years span, she hadn't lived at all. And that was so this book, you know, like that was so, so, uh, yeah, but that was just such a like ah moment where I'm like, if you only knew Arnel. And I think that's the, the ultimate, this is the thing I take away from the book ultimately, and like that's, it's the, I, I think what it means to, what it means to bear witness.
And I think that you see that in what Melmouth is as a mythology. This is based on another, a book from 1821 called Melmouth the wanderer, where Melmouth is a male character. Um, I've, I've, I've never read it. I've never even heard of it, but apparently it's relatively.
Yeah, it kept coming up on uh Google searches and stuff, but I didn't, I didn't look into it at all. And I mean, Melmouth the wanderer is a, like, cause the idea itself is very similar to the, the myth of the wandering Jew, which is again, it's a, it's the same kind of archetype, the same kind of character, someone who's denied Christ and is left to wander the earth forever until Christ returns. And this is just a, she, she took, but then Melmouth the wanderer adapted that. And then this is adapting Melmouth the wanderer, making it a female character and mixing up, you know, changing a lot of the, the intermediary details with the same kind of archetype and modernizing the setting, which doesn't really enter into the equation that much, the, the time period.
It could be, it feels timeless. This book, it feels like it could exist at any time. Yeah, I agree with that. Which I think is purposeful.
I feel like that is a choice. It is like, I, I, you know, there's very little, you know, they don't, there's not much mention of cell phones or computers. It, you know, everyone is, everyone has sheaves of papers and, and books and it's all, it's all on, it's all handwriting and pens and there's no computers involved, even though it's 2018 theoretically. I had mixed feelings because the manuscript was dated.
It was uh 2016. And I was like, you know, I'm glad that they threw a date in there because I have, I finally have context that this is supposed to be like modern day. But at the same time, I feel like that detail almost could have been left off and we could have just kind of wondered what time period, like it could have been uh more modern. Cause now it's 2019.
So it's like, okay, this book happens three years ago in my head, uh, was what I thought whenever I read the date. And I, I don't know. So that it's always, it's always kind of a hard when a book that seems timeless then throws a date in there cause you feel like it, it's a little stuck. I don't know.
Does that make sense? No, I understand. I think that I, I generally, I try and play by the book's rules as long as it doesn't wrangle me, I think. And it doesn't, I don't think too much about it.
I'm like, I, I think that data is thrown in there just to make us understand that it is this many years removed from the Holocaust. It is this many years removed from uh the, the Armenian genocide. The, you know, the, of the things that we are reading, like the other source materials, you know, some of them from 1600 or whatever that one letter is dated or something. I think that's largely, it is like, cause all those have dates.
And I think that is the main reason it's probably dated for now it's 2018, the present is 2016, is to give us a context of, well, Albina is 90 years old. Right. How old was she? Like when was she, when did she grow up?
And like gives, I guess social context, like when, you know, uh Helen as a younger woman is, you know, is in this hospital and is giving this poor disfigured woman, um, basically an opioid overdose. We have a context for that and what it means. And like, I think there is, I think it is supposed, I think it also gives a context to the, the, to the atrocity that we are seeing about, I think that is, I think that is very purposeful because we are seeing so many horrible things happen. There's so many of terrible, terrible things happening both on a macro and micro scale.
And I think it is purposeful to let us see that there is, there is no, I don't know date, there's no expiration date on acts of violence and, and genocide and acts of terror and acts of men doing terrible, terrible things. It will happen in the 1600s where they will burn you at the stake because you want to read a Bible on your own. Uh, it will happen in 1942 in Prague when they are gonna ship away all the Jews and put them into into concentration camps. It will happen in, you know, 2000, roughly.
I don't really know how old Helen was in her flashback, but she's a younger woman uh out of college, I think when a woman is disfigured by her, her boyfriend slash husband or partner um with acid, which is. So upsetting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And all of it, like literally the whole book.
Yeah, it's, it's meant to be, it, I mean, like, I think that kind of that those acid attacks still happen to this day, and it's very, very bad and very upsetting. And it is just, and I think that is, It is just, it is, you think about like, okay, like the situations that she crafts, It's still like she's still she only acknowledges it so that then she can then feel guilt about it. Like, I feel bad about having friends that are that make me feel a modicum of comfort. Oh, Thea, I just she like just continued to break.
I just I liked her so much in the beginning and I still liked her, but I felt so bad for what she was dealing with. And then and then at some point in time, she became unlikable, which was interesting. And I don't know if that was just the audiobook narrator. The audiobook narrator suddenly started making Thea's voice really like intense and kind of mean.
I wonder if that's just part of her recovering, if it was like a conscious choice about recovering because I've I have known people who have had strokes and recovered and their personality changes afterwards. They're not the same. And then towards the end of it, though, I felt like she like regained a little bit of her independence and like having the lady who's the nurse there to like help her out. And I don't know.
I felt like the nurse, did you the nurse who reveals herself at the end of the novel as Melmoth herself. Oh, I knew it. Yeah, me too. I think they, I think you're supposed to, I imagine, because how many, how many stories do you read that like, oh, there's a suddenly a character is here and they're perfect.
And you're like, no, no, not in this book. Don't try telling me on someone who's a good person here. You're a this is a lie. You're a that's a that's a secret.
I have a question. And what I'm having a hard time remembering what happened to her after she revealed herself as Melmoth. Did she just go away? Like, did she return back to being the nurse?
Did we find that out? I don't think that was ever. I don't think it's revealed. I think it like, I think that they're at the coffee shop and everything else kind of disappears.
Everything else freezes. Like it does that thing where like in multiple times in the book, the kind of the settings freeze because Melmoth is there and Melmoth is basically isolating herself with one other person. And I think that it's just like, hey, it's and I think that's like, that is the reveal. Like, oh wait, the nurse is here.
I can't remember the nurse's, you know, fake name. That's I forget what it was. But Rosa, I think, right? Am I remembering that?
No, Rosa is the name of the acid lady. I can't remember. But I don't think we get an answer for what happens to her if she just disappears. I imagine that's what happens.
She just vanishes. Oh, but I mean, what? What about Thea, nurse lady? I don't think Melmoth is too concerned about Thea at the end of the day.
I'm sorry, Paige. I know, but you know, well, maybe I think they can, they can hire another nurse. They can hire someone else. It seems like Thea has apparently a lot of money and I don't know what.
They seem to have a, she seems to be doing just fine. Carol is living some weird sparse life in London as a, as a, as a like professional protester or something as a, as a, I assume Carol will come back at some point and beg forgiveness from and be like, and Thea will go, fine, come back. You're pathetic. Come on.
Um, but I, I don't, I think that's, I think largely, I think she just vanishes because I don't, they never, because the way that she settles into the job in the first place. Yeah. It feels weird. It's suddenly, oh yeah, it's your job.
And she suddenly is just like living with Thea and we don't really know anything about her. And she shows up right, right at the very moment that Helen needs her, uh, when she hurts her leg. Yeah. So it's all very convenient, which I think is the point.
I liked her. And then I was like, wait a minute. This isn't, no, I like her. That's something's wrong.
Yeah, I know. All these characters are unlikable. Why? I think, I don't, I liked, maybe unlikable is, is strong.
I mean, they're all these characters have a certain melancholy about them except for this nurse. Right. She seems too peppy. Like there was, she felt like Mary Poppins a little bit, like just popping in just suddenly like, boom, she's here and she's the only shit everything.
And uh, and this, and I, that is an immediate like sign, like, Oh no, this, she is. And I, they also, they talk about her clothes a lot about, I mean, they talk about everyone's clothes a lot, but I think hers, they really heavily, uh, the, uh, uh, she, she, she talks about the colors of, you know, the, the fact that Melmoth is always in this black, you know, veil that is kind of around her and surrounds her. And I think like, it felt very much like the same kind of descriptions about, uh, the nurse character. Like it felt very like ominous whenever it felt like it's heavily focusing on her, the colors of her clothes so often.
It felt like, Hey, nudge, nudge. That seems suspicious, doesn't it? Yeah. Well, I feel like they did that with the, um, the old lady a lot too.
Like it was like a figure wearing dark fabric in the doorway. And there's an old lady being like, I made you a cake. And you're like, oh. There's some cakes in the fridge.
My thumb prints in them. Enjoy. Enjoy. I'm like, yes, thank you.
I'll happily eat your tiny cakes. Yeah. Give me, give me your tiny cakes. Um, I, I don't know.
The characters are, I mean, a lot of the time we're reading these narrations of people who've done horrible, horrible things. Yes. And so it's not easy to like them in particular. Like multiple people enabling genocide.
You're not going to like them. Like you can maybe empathize with them at certain points and understand they're like descent into terrible behavior. And I think that's, that's the, the, uh, that's how I felt about a lot of the, you know, about Joseph Hoffman and, and, um, Hassan and Nameless. And, and those, and those, the, and even Helen to a certain extent, because, you know, Helen's sin is, I think, much less, you know, she didn't enable babies to be sent into concentration camps.
So you don't feel that bad about, oh, Helen's terrible. It's more about like, she's just unrepentant, like just repressed, like repressed and unrelentingly sad and, and pathetic. And you're just like, oh, this it's a, it's a weird head space to be in. The whole, you know, I, I think that was the, um, difficulty that I had with the book is the entire time it was like an uncomfortable, hard head space to like put yourself in.
Uh, which, I mean, I think is intentional. I don't think that this book was meant to be like a breezy read. This is not a Christmas joy ride. This is another one, another 180 degrees.
Yeah. Like the, uh, this book is like meant to be like grim and uncomfortable and sad. Um, so I think, I think that was like, I don't know why I was expecting like, um, suspense horror. I, I really, I kept quoting every time, um, I take off my headphones and I'd look over at my husband, Matt, uh, and say, I really want to see a ghost because we watched over the garden wall like a million times.
And he's just like, yeah, I, I know. So I just, um, I don't know. I think earlier before we started recording, we were talking about like haunted house novels. And for some reason, like that was kind of the vibe I had in my head where she was going to be like running around the city trying to find her missing friend.
And this manuscript would be haunting her. And Oh my God, is that a ghost? I mean, there, there is the, the looming specter of Melmoth. And that is, that is the quote unquote ghost, if you want to call it that, but it's more like a force.
It's not really a, it's not like there's a, a, I mean, she was a lady at one point and now she's cursed to walk the earth forever and witness everything. Um, but it's not, and I, you know, I think the words Gothic horror do imply heavily, like there's ghosts around. Like it feels like that is, it's supernatural, certainly. That's my own fault for not like realizing that Gothic horror is like broader than just like, it's like, ah!
Yeah, it's, it's, it's very, I mean, Shirley Jackson wrote Gothic horror where you can even call it Southern. I don't, I'm not going to try and further delineate in genre. I feel that's kind of deductive at a certain point, but reductive, not deductive. Reductive at a certain point.
Um, but Shirley Jackson wrote Gothic horror and there's often, her books have no ghosts at all or no supernatural stuff at all. It's just really spooky people who forget things because it is more convenient to do that. Um, that the real horror is human nature. This, I, I also think that this book does manage to not just be like, yeah, the real evil is people.
Like that's, if you want to terrible acts that have killed people. And I think that's, like, I don't like them, you know, I don't like namelessness on, and I don't like many of the, you know, characters that we read, but I, I think the book does, it never tries to paint them as Hitler, really. Agreed, where it's painting them with depth. It's, it's not making them like one-dimensional villains to the story.
Right. It's writing them as real people, which I think to tell the stories that she was, the author was trying to tell, she had to do it that way. Like, it's, you know, I, I think, yeah, the analogy that you made with that movie, which I haven't seen. I think, I think that's another thing where, just genre-wise, like really sad historical stuff is just, like, difficult to get through.
I mean, I think this book is, that's something I want to talk about, is the fact that this book is, because it's written in this style, and then I, I was, I, I, I read a lot of reviews and most are glowing. Most really like it. But multiple reviews said this is a page turner, and I disagree. And that doesn't mean the book's bad, because it's not like, oh, suspenseful.
It makes me want to, you know, enabling page flipping. It, it's, I think it wants you to linger. It wants you to read it slowly. Like, that's, it's, you know, whenever I'm reading anything, I'm thinking about how it was written and why it was written a certain way.
And this book feels like it is very much written. Big, big, long paragraphs, big, long sentences, big words a lot of the time. And I feel like it is intentionally slowing you down. And I think that's also, it makes it harder to read.
Like, it makes it, one, the tone is really dark and dreary and grim. And then two, it is dragging you into it. It is like, here, read this. You have to read it slow.
If you want to understand what's going on, you have to read it slow. We don't want, I don't want you going quickly through this book. I want you to read it slowly. I'm going to make it, like, I had to, I was reading on my iPad at first, and then I switched to my phone because iPad, I just, it was just, the pages were filled with text and I couldn't focus.
I couldn't concentrate. On your phone, was it formatted poorly? Because I downloaded the preview because originally I was going to read it on Kindle and I had some really bad, like, spacing issues where I was, that's one of the reasons I ended up with the audiobook because it was all, like, the words were kind of jumbly. No, I didn't want it actually.
Huh. Maybe it's because it was the free preview. Anyway, I feel like you were making a serious point and I'm like, let's talk about book formatting, shall we? I mean, I mean, that's what it's, it's a conscious choice by, like, the, it's a thing I don't know if, it's a thing I think about with comic books a lot.
You know, when you are reading a comic book, it is the, the page is real estate. And if you want people to look at art, like, it's a, it's a very strange dichotomy. It's like, uh, where you, to make people look at the art, you have to put a lot of words on the page because it slows them down. It slows people, the reader down when they're looking at a comic book page.
If you're an artist, you're like, man, I drew this beautiful scenes. These, the figures are perfect. And then there's no, if there's no dialogue on the page, there's no narration, people just look at it and go, okay, that happens, that happens, that happens. And they move on for most people.
Certain people are like, oh, I can stare at this piece of art for hours. And they'll, and they'll happily do it. But a lot of most readers, they go, oh, I, I digested what's the story is on this page. I'm going to go to the next page.
And it, to really make people understand the, and appreciate the art, a lot of the time you want, you slow them down with words. You put down a lot of narration. You put down dialogue in every single panel so that people will go, they'll read the dialogue. And then as they're doing that, they'll be absorbing the art a little bit more slowly and appreciate it more.
And the same is true with, you know, writing prose. If you want people to read it fast, read it quickly, you have short, snappy dialogue. You have one or two or three sentences in your paragraph and then, boom, you're moving on. You, you, you know, pap, pap, pap, pap, pap, that rhythm.
And this book has a very, very slow rhythm. And it is difficult to get through sometimes. And that's like, I had to, I went like, I'll read on my phone because it's much less to consume at any one point. You know, one page is much less on my phone than it is on my iPad.
And then I managed to get through it a lot faster. That was my, I was reading very slow. Like I'm generally a very fast reader and I was struggling with an iPad. So that tells me something.
Um, and I, I, I, I, I generally don't write like that, you know, I generally write very snappy. I write very short sentences. I, you know, if I have longer sentences, it is usually the exception that proves the rule. You know, I don't, I generally don't have very big paragraphs.
I start getting bored when I write longer paragraphs. I'm like, oh my God, I can't keep doing this. No one cares about this, this much. Why am I still, why am I still describing this?
It doesn't need it. I proved my point already. And yet sometimes I try and do it just to do it. Um, but I, I, whenever I encounter writing that is definitely opposite, opposing mine, way different than mine.
I always try and take note of it and try and think about the good, why it's good, even though I don't necessarily do it a lot and why it works in certain situations. I, I think that that's like a really good way to look at this because I, I don't know that I've ever honestly sat down and read a book in its entirety in its entirety that was written in this way. Like, some of the descriptions were really interesting. That first part where we're seeing into Helen's apartment, where it's like, if you look past her, you'll see a room.
I just, little things like that, kind of like, I just, my writer brain was really into it, where I was just like, oh yeah, like what a cool zoomed out way to look into her apartment. And, I don't know, I thought that was really interesting. And then there was another thing too, where whenever it first opened up and we looked at Helen for the first time, I didn't think she was going to be the main character. I thought it was going to go into describing multiple people on the street where it was like, look across the corner at the woman who's stepping out of the building.
I was like, okay, why? And we followed her for the rest of the book. So stuff like that was really cool. Like, there were, there were definitely, even though definitely wasn't one of my favorite books, I, I struggled to, like, I, I have a hard time even saying that I enjoyed it.
I mean, you don't have to, you don't have to, you can, I, there are a lot of, there, I don't know. I, I think I am a person. I willingly expose myself to much harsher art than you generally do, Paige. I think that that's fair to say.
I think that, uh, I, I, I don't mind. I think, uh, the merciless, you read that together, right? The, yeah. And that's probably as dark and gory as I've gone in a really, like, if that was campy and even though it was like gory, like campy horror.
And it also had a kind of a pop sensibility. Yes, for sure. It, it, it was, it was written to be consumed a little bit faster with a little less um meditation, a little bit less contemplation. Yes, for sure.
Yes. Um, oh, but I will say I really liked uh the author's style. Like there were some times when it was a bit too much, where I felt like we were, you know, focused on the billowing curtains with the dim light and the grime that hadn't been dusted. Like, for, for a little bit too long.
But there were some things that were really interesting and I kind of made note of. And I went, that's a really cool way to describe that. And I liked that a lot. And uh I've noticed sitting down and trying to write, particularly yesterday, because I listened to it like, like in every free moment that I had, my language and my manuscript got like way floweryer.
And I'm like, oh no, this is gonna be a time when I'm, when I'm revising. I'm going to know exactly when I was reading this novel because everything has gotten like longer and more lyrical. Like, which isn't, it's, yeah. It's not, it's, it is, I think it's a thing we've talked about with almost every podcast They empathize with her at the same time, and she's like, but they're all women.
None of them are women. They're all men. And she's like, I wanted to make one that was a woman. And that's what, you know, Melmoth was a male character in the original, and now it's a woman.
And how Helen is a terrifically flawed and unpleasant person, but she's a woman who's a terrifically flawed and unpleasant person. It's not a man that is a terrifically flawed and unpleasant person, which is there's plenty of them. And that is, I think, at the broader scope of like, hey, it's a feminist novel in the fact that it has a female, an unlikeable female protagonist, which, you know, that is a very common male, you know, character stereotype. It's like, hey, this dude, you want to, you follow him around because he's willful and compelling.
He's unlikable, but, you know, he's an antihero or whatever. And then the villain herself, Melmoth, is a woman, is that, is those archetypes, but given a different kind of bent because it is drawing on our cultural treatment of women and especially the fact that Melmoth is now like one of the women that, you know, the implications both kind of culturally and religiously with the fact that she is the woman who denied seeing Christ rise from the grave and whatever, all the kind of implications that that brings up. It is like, and that's why I ask if it's like, you know, you haven't read that interview and you don't read all that other stuff. But it's not just that, you know, as I was reading this, I was thinking about how, as we go back and she reads all these journals and these stories and recollections, all these people, they're all men, all of them.
Some of them are describing women. I mean, I guess the Cairo journals of Anna Marnie is not a woman, is from a woman's perspective, but she is recounting the story she is told by a beggar. Right. That's true.
So I don't know how to, you know, it's not clean. I'm not, I don't think it's like a clean, yeah, it's clearly she is saying this about how canonically we only read men. Oh, that's that's kind of an interesting perspective there, where it's like all of the historical accounts are all like mainly focused on men. Yes.
Yeah. And it made me think, I mean, and like, and obviously, like, you for a lot of it, you're reading about all these atrocities and all this violence done, and it is largely violence and atrocities committed by men, not by women. And, you know, there is. And you think about how the fact that Melmoth is this kind of, you know, she's painted as this horrible wraith that is following everyone and witnessing everything and seeing their worst sins and punishing people for it theoretically.
And yet she's a woman punishing up until we meet Helen herself. She is punishing men. You know, she is, she is, she's witnessing violence done to women and minorities and, you know, haunting men, not necessarily haunting women. And like the few cases where she is around a woman, like with Rosa or Alice, which is the, the, the, the, the, I don't even know if she's an adult at that point.
I forget. It seems like. I think she was an adult when she was, the story she tells is of herself as a young person. Yeah.
But the David finds her as she's old at the credit. Um, but she, her experience of being in that prison cell about to be burned at the stake, Melmoth, it seems at times Melmoth is like comforting them. She is witnessing, hey, your sorrow and your pain. And, hey, I'm, take my hand.
And it paints it. And as I was thinking, like, along that line, I'm like, is that, is that purposeful? Is it supposed to be painting her as like a comfort to these victims of male violence? Because certainly what Rosa and Alice are, Alice and Rosa are both afflicted.
Like Rosa is a victim of abuse, of domestic abuse from a former partner. And Alice is a victim of patriarchy, basically, of religious patriarchy, where she wants to read the Bible by herself and they go, no, we're gonna kill you. And you're like, okay, all right. And I, you know, Melmoth in that lens, is she a monster?
Is she evil? I mean, I didn't, I didn't even think she was scary until later on in the book when she started to have kind of like some really intense monologues. But whenever she was interacting with the women characters in the book, she did seem a little bit like motherly, sympathetic, like comforting. And I think so much of this book was done with like thought and intention on like how it moved together.
It would almost surprise me if that wasn't like done on purpose. Yeah, I don't, it's, you know, that is a much larger like field of study than we can possibly like try and tackle in a single podcast. Like that's a podcast in and of itself, because, you know, women's studies and feminist readings and stuff like that, that is an entire genre of basically literary academic literary analysis. It is like through a certain lens and you just, that is all it is.
And I feel like it's, it, it came like, it is, it is like I took a single class at it in college and like it, all it did was kind of open me up into looking at, you know, you look at it through a slightly different lens. You, you change, you think of your perspective of the book a little differently, you know, just twist a little bit and try and think about how gender and, and uh cultural expectations of gender and all that stuff affect the characters. And if that was intended or not, I don't know. I think even if you don't try and make that point, I still think that, you know, I don't necessarily mean feminist.
It's like yelling at you, Hey, women are people. I think it is saying certain things just by having Melmoth as a villain, as having Helen as a flawed, terrible person as our protagonist. Well, I mean, honestly, now that, now that you brought it up too, just thinking about Helen's circle around her. I mean, it, it, towards the end of the book, it's all women.
Like we have the nurse who ends up being Melmoth, uh, the old woman, Thea. And I feel like the author, like books, other, like I can easily see that swapping into like Helen being a male character and all of those characters being like the old men instead. Uh, so I think, I think she did probably successfully swap those, those archetypes. And instead of having like a group of flawed yet strong and determined in their own ways group of men, we had like a pretty interesting group of women towards the end of the book.
So yeah, I think, uh, I think I can see it. Like, I think that makes sense. It, and I, I think that that perspective kind of made me enjoy the book a little bit more because of that. I, I consciously was like, huh, that's interesting.
No. And they have Carol, the lone main male character disappear basically like two thirds of the way through the book. He runs away because he's afraid and he denies Melmoth even existing while Helen stays, you know, Helen stays and comforts Thea and gets braver, honestly, you know, she is, she doesn't want, she never wants to go anywhere. She never wants to, all she focuses on her translations of refrigerator manuals.
And suddenly, you know, at the end of the book, she's denying Melmoth. Melmoth comes and confronts her. The other thing, one last note I do have to mention, I've never read the word jackdaw. Oh my God.
More times in my entire life. Jackdaw, jackdaw. Hey, hey, the word jackdaw is a bird name pretty good. It's pretty distinctive.
But at a certain point, you're like, what if you just said birds? What if I mean, I, yeah, it is. I mean, it is, I think, you know, conscious. It's a sort of obsessing on the.
And to be fair, like certain places do have very certain bird populations. Like here in Austin, we have grackles, which are another type of, you know, gathering scavenger bird. And jackdaw is the same thing. And I think that might just be a Prague thing.
Maybe there's just lots of jackdaws and we have grackles here and Florida has its own. I mean, Florida has like every bird that's ever existed because it's like tropical and subtropical. So yeah, you know, also, I mean, if it were pigeons, would we still be feeling annoyed? Is it because it's an obscure bird?
I mean, annoyed might not even be the right word. I don't know. I would have had to look it up. I saw it in a review where someone was like, oh my gosh, like, can you just use the word bird?
Like I'm, I'm annoyed. And I hadn't even really noticed it before then. But I think if I hadn't seen like that's a bird, like context clues. Sure.
I would have gotten there eventually. But there would have been like a couple of moments where I was like, what is that? What does that mean? Jackdaws are blackbirds, you know, ravens or crows.
So I think that is the intention is like because of that, they are, you know And I'm like, I know the book for you. So I think unless it was like an extending circumstance, I probably wouldn't recommend it. And that's not to say it's not a good book. It's just it really just wasn't my taste.
And I think I would have a hard time passing it on to someone else knowing how much I didn't like it. Yeah, right. You couldn't muster, you want it to be a genuine recommendation. You don't want, you don't want to say, oh, it was well written, but it also bummed me the F out.
So I am not gonna, I'm not gonna tell you to go read it. I think I would, you know, it like a lot of recommendations that be couched in. This is what this is. You know, I, I like it.
And it's, you know, I'm a person with very particular tastes sometimes. And so I try and I try and do couch my recommendations in what do you like? What are you looking for? Like, I would say, hey, if you are a writer and you're looking for something that will show you that like this, this is not a this book is not written in a way like a lot of certainly genre fiction is written.
You know, there's, if you read literary fiction a lot, which I doubt you're listening to this podcast because you're probably listening to NPR right now, but if you read a lot of literary fiction, you might read stuff like this occasionally, but if you're reading genre fiction all the time, you're not going to get exposed to writing like this a lot of the time. You know, this is basically, it becomes like there were like laws passed down from the writing gods somewhere and they said, no, you can't, you can't do this. These, this is wrong. This is the bad way.
You can't do it. And I don't, I'm not going to mince words about what genres are anymore, but this is a horror novel to me at the end of the day. And there's not many horror novels that are written like this, you know, that are at least well read and well popular. And like you, and frankly, there's, I'm not going to, I'll get off on a rant about how people categorize books and stuff like that, but it's well written and I think it is different than a lot of other horror novels you'll read.
You know, if you like Gothic horror, then this is definitely for you. I think it is really, if you like Shirley Jackson, it's for you. If you like Mary Shelley, you like the old, the old Victorian romantic horror, then this is for you. It is also a depressing book.
It is full of melancholy and sorrow. And if you want a book that is not that, don't read this because that is not what this is. This is unrepentant sadness for the entire length until maybe just a little bit at the end. You know, it's just a glimpse of it.
Have you ever seen, okay, here's another, this is Robbie Ask Page if you've seen a movie. Have you seen, I have a problem. I might have even asked you this exact same movie. Dark City?
No. Okay. That's, I didn't expect a yes, but I might as well ask. Dark City is a great movie.
It's one of my favorites. I have a tattoo inspired by it. Anyone out there who's listening hasn't seen it, go see it and go see the director's cut. Make sure you watch the director's cut if you've never seen it before.
It's so much better than the original edition. I wish I'd seen the director's cut first, but Dark City is a similar feeling where it is a unrepentant, the name Dark City is appropriate because it is sorrow and sadness and kind of dreariness and creepiness and dread until the very end. And then you get a little bit of a glimpse of happiness. And this book feels like that to me, you know, and I like that, but you can, you probably already know out there if you haven't read this already, you're probably like, that doesn't sound like something I like.
And don't worry about it. Go read something else. There's never been more books to read. That's true.
Nevermore. Um, any final thoughts, Paige? Uh, no, I'm trying to think of something snappy. I don't think I have anything.
That's fine. Um, where can people go find your, your, the things you've written? Where can they buy your books? Oh man, you can get my books on Amazon.
And also, uh, the first novel, Confident, the Diary of an Invisible Girl is available on Book Depository and you get free worldwide shipping, which I just found out about, which is pretty cool. Uh, that sounded like an ad. That sounds like you're now sponsored by Book Depository. Uh, but yeah, uh, I'm trying to post more on my blog too, like little snippets of what I'm working on.
So it's just pageloboy.com and that's me. That's what I got. Go check out all that stuff there. Go read and buy Paige's books.
That's official order from me. Go do it right now. I'm waiting. We're both waiting.
The pressure is on. The pressure is on. Um, that'll do it for us today. Paige, thank you for joining me.
Thanks for having me. Yeah, books. Yay, books. Thanks again to Paige for joining me.
You can find me on Twitter at RobbieDorman and my website is RobbieDorman.com. The show's website is serialfifthmassist.com. You can follow our Facebook page at Facebook.com slash serialfifthassist. If you like the show, please give it a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast service you use.
Subscribe. Tell your friends. All the other things help out. Help the show find new listeners.
I appreciate it. Until next time, thanks for being a fan.