The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy

"I use she or they pronouns but I’m not nonbinary."

This is a short novella of just over a hundred pages. Based on the evocative art featuring an upside-down stag reminiscent of the American edition of King's The Outsider* and the Alan Moore quote ("Scary and energetic...") on the cover, I assumed this was a horror story; but it really belongs more to the paranormal fantasy genre.

Review

Told in the first-person, the story opens with our protagonist Danielle arriving in the town of Freedom, Iowa. It was the last place her lover Clay had lived before he came west and killed himself, and she's come here to try to understand the reason for his suicide. These people were his "pack." Freedom was a ghost town that has now been repopulated by squatters. It is a collective of punks and anarchists who live off the grid and share food they get from "dumpster diving, farming, and food bank handouts;" municipal water turned back on illegally; gas from propane tanks; electricity from solar panels. No one enforces any rules -- a sign says "Everything for Everyone" -- and yet no one gets out of line. The community cooperates harmoniously.

What takes this community from unusual to supernatural is the presence of Uliski. On her way into town, Danielle has seen an unnerving red deer with three antlers, one growing from one side of its head, the other two from the other side. The deer's muzzle is dripping blood from the rabbit it has been eating, the rabbit's chest splayed open. Later she discovers that there are many other animals -- goats, geese, lambs -- with gaping wounds where their chests had been, yet apparently alive. The zombie animals are the lieutenants of the blood-red deer called Uliski. One day, not long after her arrival, Danielle watches, along with other members of the town, as the walking-dead barnyard animals corral a man until the red deer approaches, rears on its hind legs, and kicks him to death. Uliski then tears the man's heart out.

Uliski is a guardian spirit, or perhaps a demon, that has by witchcraft been summoned from the river to protect the town. If you do nothing wrong, Uliski ignores you. If you do evil, Uliski rips you open. The deer was summoned by four people, one of whom was Clay, and one of whom was the man Danielle just saw killed. The remaining summoners are sure that they need to banish Uliski if they can, but another faction in the town believes that Uliski needs to stay. And there you have the basic conflict that sets up the rest of the story. Eventually the cops will try to move the squatters out of Freedom, which leads to a glorious battle between, shall we say, pigs and deer.

Danielle will find the answers to her questions. While the book has a satisfying ending, it does lead to a second volume called The Barrow Will Send What It May that picks up where this leaves off.

Margaret Killjoy is a transfeminine anarchist and black-metal musician who brings lived experience to her depictions of squatting and living off the grid. Since reading the book, I have discovered that she has a podcast called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff that, in her words, "explores the great rebels and weirdos of history." She's also published a book called Mythmakers & Lawbreakers that consists of her interviews with anarchist writers and features an intro by Kim Stanley Robinson. I don't know what her background with magic is, but I suspect she has some experience with wicca. All of these elements combined make for a unique and refreshing perspective. Her website is birdsbeforethestorm.net.

Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith

Her House is haunted by ghosts and monsters

Published in 2021 when she was 32 years old, Build Your House Around My Body is Violet Kupersmith's first novel. Her mother fled Vietnam in 1975 following the fall of Saigon. Violet, who is half white and grew up in Pennsylvania, spent a year teaching English in Vietnam on a Fulbright scholarship in 2011. All of those experiences feed into this astoundingly well-written debut novel. 

Review

Having just finished the book, I feel as if I would probably only fully appreciate it if I were to go back and read it again -- though it isn't at all hard to follow on first reading. The story stretches across several decades (from the days of French Indochina until 2011) and is told in a non-linear fashion, jumping back and forth across the years and recounting events in the lives of characters whose relationships to each other aren't clear at first. (The author says she was inspired by David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.)

The way Kupersmith structured the novel is impressive as narrative revelations always seem to come at just the right time no matter how out of temporal sequence they may be. My one small criticism of this novel is that, in her assiduous determination to weave together every character's relationship to the others, it gets a little tedious in the final third. The conclusion is quite satisfying, though.

The first character we meet is Winnie, who arrives at the airport in Saigon from the U.S. planning to stay with a great aunt and teach English at a small language school. Even though the novel features an ensemble cast of characters, Winnie will remain central because every chapter is situated, not just in its geographical location, but also in relation to the day she disappeared. So, as you are reading the book, you are constantly reminded that something (presumably bad) is going to happen to Winnie. She is, however, not a sympathetic character. She's lazy and doesn't even try to be a good teacher. She'll do whatever she must to get by with the least amount of effort. She's dishonest and slovenly -- kind of a rat.

Winnie's brother, Thien, pesters her to meet up with an old friend of his from medical school who is living in Vietnam now. "He'd be more than happy to show you the ropes." Winnie finally accedes to her brother's request and meets Dr. Sang. It turns out that Sang set up his practice in Saigon because it's a place where he can pursue his "other interests," besides being a doctor. Drug dealing is one of those interests. Human trafficking is another. During their brief time together, Sang takes Winnie to the snake house at the zoo where he shows her a two-headed cobra that he himself donated to the zoo. That cobra and many others will play a crucial role in later developments.

Winnie will eventually visit the Café Max, which is the headquarters of the Saigon Spirit Eradication Co. We're told that Vietnam is rife with ghosts, so chasing them away is a sought-after service. The company is headed by the Fortune Teller, who is helped by his (possibly clairvoyant) First Assistant and (bumbling) Second Assistant. The Fortune Teller is good at fortune telling and removing ghosts, but he is somewhat embarrassed by his affliction, which is that he is possessed by a monster. The Fortune Teller once encountered a young girl named Binh and two boys (Tan and Long) who were her accomplices in a graveyard extortion scheme, but he scared them off by unhinging his jaw and opening his mouth wide enough to swallow them all. Binh, Tan, and Long will all become involved with Winnie in different ways.

Kupersmith writes beautifully, and her fecund imagination weaves complex and convincing backstories for her characters. She also departs from mimesis and imbues the novel with supernatural elements. A copper-colored smoke monster roams throughout this novel, inevitably bringing to mind the smoke monster in the TV show Lost. We're told it has no memory because it is itself a memory. Once it takes possession of you, it gives you the ability to move from one body to another. 

Maybe that's a metaphor for the way that reading a well-written novel lets you move from one life to another. Kupersmith certainly accomplishes that here, and I can only imagine the heights to which she'll ascend in future works.