![]() ![]() ![]() There’s various intrigues – alcoholism, divorce, teenage drug-taking and photography – before the group (and trusted servant Who Knows How Shit Is) depart to Beldame, a remote triumvirate of semi-fucked houses on the Gulf of Mexico, where the Savages (and others) have holidayed for decades. Members – including a sister who became a nun, which never bodes well in a horror story – gather to witness the funeral rites of a frankly terrible woman, the matriarch of a family in which mothers eat their young, perhaps not figuratively. The funeral is a focal point for a dispersed family. Opening with an ill-attended funeral in which a knife plays a lead role is one way to grab the attention, and once he has it, McDowell doesn’t let go. ![]() It’s a story about a Grand Old Family, in the best Southern style: and from the first chapter on, the Savages command attention. It’s got the smell of old families and new money of death and divorce. This story has a scent: hot summers in the American South. I’ve gotta say, if this is indicative of the general level of McDowell’s skills, it’s far from the last of his works I’ll inhale. I’d seen some of his other work, unknowingly – he was the scriptwriter for Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice – and I’d seen that he was very well regarded by Stephen King, so I figured I might as well give it a shot. I’d never read any Michael McDowell before cracking The Elementals. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |