I have a small book club with two of my friends from guitar class. We don’t meet to discuss the books. We just read them at similar times and discuss them in class or over text. It’s just a trio-buddy read, really. The books up to this point have all been great—This Is How You Lose The Time War, Piranesi, and Traitor’s Blade were all lots of fun. And then we came to The Book of the Damned, a collection of three novellas by Tanith Lee. One member DNFed it, I openly disliked it, and the selector texted us, making sure the pick did not reflect poorly on her. That’s how you know you have a dud on your hands, folks! However, The Book of the Damned has some things going for it, and it’s at least worth a peek between the covers to see what those positives are.
The Book of the Damned connects three novellas. Each stands on its own, but they share themes and are set in an eerie simulacrum of Paris called Paradys. Stained with Crimson opens the collection with Andre St. Jean, a poet who becomes obsessed with a beautiful socialite. Andre’s descent into lustful fervor sends him careening into a cycle of gender-swapping transformation. Malice in Saffron comes next. It follows Jehenne, a provincial girl who is abused by her family and escapes to Paradys disguised as a boy. She joins a religious order and heals the sick by day, then moonlights as a boy who avenges dastardly acts. Empires of Azure rounds out the collection with a spooky tale of Louis de Jenier, an actor who becomes obsessed with the lingering spirit of a gender-fluid performer that haunts Paradys.
The coolest part about The Book of the Damned is its handling of gender. It was published in 1988, a far cry from the gender-bending movements of today. Tanith Lee was ahead of her time in this way, offering characters who swap gender in queer gothic narratives or who claim their power by being gender fluid. As I read the book, I was floored by Lee’s prescient explorations of gender identity and expression, especially for a 36-year-old work.
Admiring Lee’s ambition doesn’t mean automatically enjoying the execution.. Each novella felt like work—not the productive or creative kind, but the “what-is-going-on kind. It was a slog, and I wasn’t the least bit surprised that our third book club member dropped it entirely. Stained With Crimson began with lush prose and an interesting character, then devolved into a completely unintelligible story littered with vague descriptions and incoherent ideas. I never even felt like I could “get it.” This wasn’t a story that would later click for me, and I know this is true because I wrote this review a handful of weeks after finishing it.
Malice In Saffron fared better in that it was coherent and understandable. Jehenne begins as a sympathetic character seeking refuge from an abusive family. Her alter-ego, though, dives into the same types of acts she seeks to free herself from. There are gruesome scenes of abuse, rape, and beatings. While I understand the power of confronting trauma in fiction, these scenes left me sour. I couldn’t parse what Lee wanted to feel in those moments. The muddled amalgamation of Jehenne’s catharsis and revenge left me jarred.
Empires of Azure earns the nominal title of my favorite novella of the three. It isn’t just the least bad. It’s marginally good! The character of Louis de Jenier, haunted (possibly possessed) at the hands of a gender-swapping performer Timonie (whom I picture as a drag queen) anchors the novella in themes of tragic glamor and eternal longing. The story plays with performance, memory, and gender in a way that helped Paradys click for me. It’s a city of blurred boundaries between past and present, man and woman, life and death.
My friend and fellow book clubber can chalk up Book to the Damned to a miss. But at least it was a weirdly interesting miss. I don’t recommend it unless you are looking for a very specific type of Gothic and gender-fluid story. Even then, proceed with caution.
Rating: The Book of the Damned – 5.0/10
