2024/169: Hadriana in All My Dreams — René Depestre (translated by Kaiama L Glover)

One thing he said was very true: even in my coffin I was far closer to a carnival drum than to the tolling of church bells. [loc. 1580]

Set mostly in 1938, in the Haitian seaside town of Jacmel, this is the story of Hadriana Siloé, a white French girl who dies at the altar on her wedding day -- but has actually been zombified. The story's told, mostly, by her friend Patrick Altamont: they shared the same godmother, Madame Villaret-Joyeuse, who's reputed to have seven loins (there's a note in the afterword about the translator's difficulty in 'figuring out how to translate Depestre’s twenty or so terms for human genitalia') and whose final lover was a 'diabolical deflowerer' who'd been transformed into a butterfly. Patrick remains infatuated with Hadriana, whose death came after she said 'yes' to her wedding vows, and who's therefore the widow of Hector Danoze; whose death is celebrated not with a solemn mass but with a bacchanalian carnival; whose body mysteriously vanishes from her grave.

I liked the different modes of the narrative, from Patrick's breathless account of Hadriana's death to Hadriana's own account of ... well, of what happened next. (And what happened before the wedding: despite her family's wealth and whiteness, she was far from the helpless virginal heroine of other zombie stories, and clearly relished her sexual adventures and her 'sinfulness'.) The novel is erotic, fantastical, phantasmagorial and often very funny. I also found some scenes harrowing, in particular when Hadriana, escaping her captors, sought help in the town. The townsfolk loved their 'Creole fairy' and had just spent an evening celebrating her life and mourning her death -- but nobody would respond to her frantic banging on doors.

The Introduction by Edwidge Danticat contextualises the story as a deconstruction of the zombie trope, a negation of the typical Hollywood offering of brainless monsters. While the political context is only lightly sketched, the romanticism that echoes through this novel written in exile is lush and poignant. Danticat's introduction also mentioned 'lodyans', a term with which I wasn't familiar: it's a Haitian literary tradition, 'a tongue-in-cheek narrative genre meant to provoke laughter'.

Fulfils the ‘Inspired By Caribbean Mythology, Legend, or Folklore’ rubric of the Something Bookish Reading Challenge.

2024/168: The Gathering Night — Margaret Elphinstone

If young men didn’t die there’d be too many... Young men must die, just as young Animals must die when we hunt them. If there weren’t so much death we’d all perish, and not be able to come back. I’d always known that young men must die. But not my son! [loc. 258]

Set in Mesolithic Scotland, around the time of the Storegga slide, this is the story of Nekané and her family, who are of the Auk People: her daughters Haizea and Alaia, Alaia's partner Amets, Nekané's dead son Bakar, and Kemen of the Lynx People who joins them after his home and clan are swept away by a monstrous wave. Kemen also forms an attachment to Osané, a woman from another camp who's been badly beaten and does not speak. It soon becomes clear that something is wrong, perhaps in the world of the spirits: the hunters come home with less meat, and the winters are harsh. Nekané, who becomes a Go-Between -- a shamanic figure -- after her son's disappearance, slowly comes to recognise the root of the wrongness.

There's a solid belief in reincarnation, and a baby is not named until its soul is recognised: when someone dies, their name is not spoken again until they've returned. There's a strong spiritual element, but it's firmly rooted in the mundane business of survival, the constant busyness of finding food, rearing children and gathering fuel. Though Nekané and the other Go-Betweens talk of spirits and guides, there is nothing supernatural in this slow, thoughtful novel: just the accounts of the various characters, each with their own voice and concerns and bias, and the gradual revelation of crimes committed and the punishments that must be imposed.

In an Afterword, Elphinstone discusses her use of Basque names (which did feel slightly odd, but 'Basque is thought to be the only extant language of pre-Indo-European – which is to say, pre-agricultural – origin on the western seaboard of Europe.') There's more about the writing of The Gathering Night here.

I've owned a paperback of this novel for many years, and never managed to get past the first few chapters, which I find slow and melancholy. (I note that I also found Voyageurs difficult at first, though I don't recall having this problem with pre-blog Hy Brasil, or with Light or The Sea Road.) I finally read the Kindle version, and think it counts as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

2024/167: Confounding Oaths — Alexis Hall

Gentlemen with fairer fortunes, fairer skin, and more interest in the fairer sex might have been able to get away with cocking a snook at a world that at once despised and admired them. [loc. 1387]

Standalone sequel to Mortal Follies, which I enjoyed very much: again, the narrator is Puck, unaccountably exiled from the court of Oberon and forced to live in modern London and pay rent. 'This is the second of those stories I have chosen to share. If you have not read the first, why not? Do you personally dislike me? Are you determined to see me suffer, interminably and without even the comforts of a scribbler’s income to lighten my exile?' 

We are reunited with Miss Bickle, who's writing a story entitled 'The Heir and the Wastrel', which is about Mr Wickham and Mr Darcy: 'carefully constructed, enthusiastically delivered, and contained a number of details that the anonymous lady author of Sense and Sensibility had necessarily elided for fear of the censors'; with Miss Maelys Mitchelmore, protagonist of Mortal Follies, and her lover Lady Georgiana; and with John Caesar, son of a Senegalese freedman and an earl's daughter. Confounding Oaths is the story of John and his relationship with Captain Orestes James, 'Wellington's favourite', a Black soldier whose squad of Irregulars includes a vitki (a Norse-flavoured seer) and Sal, who's 'a woman in a dress, a man in uniform and a devil in battle'. When the elder and plainer of John's sisters, Mary, asks a helpful fairy for 'Beauty Incomparable', Captain James and the Irregulars come to the aid of the Caesars.

This, like Mortal Follies, is great fun, witty and frothy, and full of pointed observations from our cynical narrator. The Norse influence is strong, and we pay a visit to the temple of Isis-Fortuna. Titania plays a major role, and there's an attempted sacrifice to Artemis at the climax of the novel. Confounding Oaths is much more about the fae than about the old gods, and it's set more solidly in the demimonde of London. It's a bigger world in some ways, with references to the war with Napoleon and the unsavoury occult habits of Europeans. Captain James is pleased to be 'on the side of monarchy, serfdom, and the sceptred isle, rather than the side of liberty, equality, and subjugating Europe'. 

Also features a trip to the opera (Fidelio), a visit to the Tower, and a cult named after Iphigenia. Never mind the cultists, the racists, or the misogynists: this is an excellent remedy for bad weather and low mood.