Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2019 March 01 • Friday

“When Grandmother vanished, the glass of the large, handsome mirror in her bedroom was found scattered on the floor in small, glittering pieces, like the remains of a collapsed, bleached mosaic.”

That’s the first line of Elizabeth, the first novel by Ken Greenhall. First published in 1976, it’s a masterpiece of supernatural suspense, written with flawless and unwavering focus, power and intensity.

The title character is about thirteen years old when we meet her. She’s one of literature’s most enthralling psychopaths: “I remember being surprised at how easily everyone had accepted the categories of good or bad. Most things had seemed not important enough for such classifications”.

She’s also sexually active with her uncle: “When I was younger I saw James, my father’s brother, look from our dog to me without changing his expression. I soon taught him to look at me in a way he looked at nothing else”.

But the real subject of this book is power and its uses for manipulation, in this case unnatural powers that come from witchcraft. Elizabeth is descended from a sixteenth-century witch named Frances, who appears in mirrors to speak to Elizabeth, to guide her and to teach her or perhaps to destroy her.

And so begins a very small and quiet sort of war, or chess game, in an old house on the waterfront of lower Manhattan, in which the living are not necessarily less mysterious than the lingering spirits of the dead.

This book is only about 150 pages long but it’s so perfectly constructed and precisely written, with a smooth and unerring pace and rhythm, that you might not get through it that quickly. I found myself savoring it and consuming it in small quantities, as I would an especially excellent bourbon. And this particular distillation is cask strength.