Book Review---- "Requiem" and "How to Make Friends With a Demon" by Graham Joyce
I recently finished reading two books by the English author, Graham Joyce. My initial read was the novel, "How to Make Friends With a Demon", which I'd picked up at the library based on an interesting cover. ( Don't laugh!! Of course, you've never done that yourself...) Since was loosely categorized as 'fantasy/sci-fi', I figured it would be sort of a Gothic-type tale that would take a certain suspension of Crabby Crow logic to enjoy. You know... dark urban scenes, a little 'black magic', scary and malevolent non-human participants, a certain postmodern angst and despair passed around for all to savor.
As it turned out, this was not really the case. By the time I was far enough into the story to discern my mistaken assumption, I was taken by the strength of Mr. Joyce's writing and his clever propulsion of plot details.
"Demon" takes place primarily in London and it's environs, and is the tale of a man who embarks upon a sort of redemption for what he perceives as his life's errors and stupid mistakes, undertaking this even if it takes a little deception and fraud to put things right. He's an alcohol addled member of a secretive trio of disparate characters that called themselves "The Candlelight Club". Their main charter(besides getting soused every fortnight) seems to be the manufacture and sale of fraudulent copies of sought-after rare manuscripts to greedy and unwitting collectors. Then the ill gotten gains are funneled into an 'under the official radar' halfway house for the down and out run by a woman friend of the main character.
The 'demon' part of the book has to do with the character's ability to see people's 'demons'; which he insists plague the living and account for much of the mess these folks seem unable to shake. Yes, the author does bring in a shade of the supernatural, but it's not really a story about that whole gestalt. As the tale unfolds we're drawn into the interconnections between the various members of the "Candlelight Club" and their own personal demons, and the general struggle to do good and find some redemption and relief from our own personal hauntings. There are many eccentric and interesting people that we meet along the way, including a truly haunted vet of the Iraq war that takes on a doppelganger's role as the plot become enriched with dread.
As with all good tales, by the end, there is at least some sort of resolution for the main crowd of survivors. My usual cynicism was nudged out of the way at least for a little while after I had finished the book and sussed out the moral of the story.
This was my first exposure to Graham Joyce, ( I'm always delighted to find a good author I've never heard of before!!) and based on that, I went back to the library to see if I could track down some of his other writing. "Demon" was his most recent, so I pulled a couple of older ones from the stacks and bought them home in hopes of more winter's night distraction.
The next one that I chose to read was the aforementioned "Requiem". Again, a bit seduced by the cover, which was a portion of a luminous "Madonna" painting from the Renaissance period. This one was published in 1995, so probably written in the early part of that particular decade.
Well, this one was also filled with 'demons', but for the most part they were referred to as 'djinns', partly due to the fact that the majority of the book is placed in the Middle East, specifically Jerusalem. Similar plot line, a man trying to escape his past, and make some sort of amends or at least garner some forgiveness for his behavior. Although the main character is again an Englishman, many of the other people that are germane to the story are not. This being Jerusalem, we have both Jewish and Arab characters, not to mention a subplot dealing with both the "Dead Sea Scrolls" and the shadowy persona of "Mary Magdalene" and her involvement with Jesus.
Of the two books, this one is the more exotic, both in terms of the various locations, and in terms of the behavior and personalities of the supporting cast. I found the potent plot a bit hard to keep sorted because there was so much going on. The obsessive anguish of the main character pulls everyone else along into places and events that they're barely prepared to deal with. Plus, there was some unavoidable socio/historical commentary that was played out concerning the struggle between the Jewish and Palestinian populations of Jerusalem, and a certain religious undercurrent about the validity of generally accepted Christian history.
This novel brings a more genuine pathological mental-illness slant into the mix, not to mention a whole pervasive dialog about 'demonic possession' , so there is a darker and more desperate tone to the story than that of "Demons". I'm still undecided about whether I was satisfied with the resolution of this story. My personal feeling is that I would have been hard pressed myself to get the viscous stew of this book to come out alright if it was me, so I think Mr. Joyce did a pretty good job with the unwieldy mix he'd concocted.
Kudos to Graham Joyce for his willingness to tackle a subject that could have easily strayed into sensationalistic, gory vaudeville. Instead he kept it on a human scale that was compelling and interesting, and he managed to do it TWICE !!!! I'm looking forward to his other writing... but for now I think I'll see if I can find something else to poke my nose into..
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