The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins

[rachelmanija]

I first heard of this extremely odd book in a passing mention online that gave me the impression that it was a post-apocalyptic novel about a patriarchal cult and was along the lines of The Handmaid's Tale. This is both kind of hilariously wrong, and yet not totally wrong; it does involve a cult in a sense, and the cult is run by a man called Father, so it is technically a patriarchy. However, it's not post-apocalyptic except in the sense that there's some deep time history in which civilizations we never knew existed met their ends, and it's not like The Handmaid's Tale except in the sense that it involves deliberate brainwashing into a way of thinking, enforced by awful punishments, and in which rebellion is almost unthinkable because they're watched so closely (telepathically, in this case).

I next heard of it on the horror reddit, where it's a controversial favorite. I would not classify it as horror, but as dark fantasy; if I had to pick the work it reminds me of the most in tone and content, it would be Sandman. Did I mention that most of the main characters are effectively gods?

The general outline of the story, which will not really give you a sense of what the reading experience is like, is that Father is an ancient immortal with godlike powers that he learned in a magical library. He adopted twelve children and taught them god-level powers as well, mostly by abusing them in absolutely horrific ways, including killing them and then resurrecting them. While they're somewhat in touch with a larger magical world, they've been so isolated and brainwashed that most of them know absolutely nothing about anything but their personal course of study (raising and communicating with the dead, time travel, animals communication and transformation, etc), and do not interact at all with anyone but each other. A few of them have very limited contact with humans, who they call "Americans" because their magical cult is located in America.

When the book opens, Father is missing and his magical library is magically locked. Carolyn, the one who studied languages and has had the most contact with Americans, reluctantly agrees to help her siblings try to open the library. A couple humans get sucked into the situation. An absolutely batshit novel ensues.

You can see this is an extremely hard book to describe. It did sort of remind me of Sandman, but mostly it reminded me of nothing else I've ever read. It's extremely funny, sometimes, and extremely dark and brutal, sometimes, and extremely technically accomplished, mostly. There's a chapter called "The Luckiest Chicken in the World," which seemed completely random until I suddenly realized what it meant and literally burst out laughing. Some of it is very beautiful. Some of it is very moving. Some of it feels like actual myth, which is extremely hard to pull off. There's some fantastic characters, several of whom are animals. It has a lot to say about abuse and family dynamics and what can happen to people who've never known anything but abuse.

I loved the book, but I can see how others absolutely hated it. It's a first novel, it's been nine years since it came out, and the author has yet to write anything else.

I think there should either have been fewer siblings, or they should have all gotten more characterization. There's twelve and we only ever get to know five of them. Also, I could have done with less animal death. And the last section went on a bit too long. But overall, this was weird, unique, memorable book, and I'm so glad I finally figured out that it wasn't The Handmaid's Tale Redux.

Content notes: OMFG what isn't in this book? Horrific child abuse (detailed and central to the plot), rape (not graphic), torture (graphic), fates worse than death, violence, talking animal death (heartbreaking, multiple instances), suicide, death of about 30-50 feral dogs (which might all be zombies - this is not stated, but it's logically implied.)



I went back and forth on how plausible it was that this family of basically gods knew nothing about anything but their narrow field of study. Like, even if you don't know about Listerine, wouldn't you be able to magically create something to make a bad taste go away? I'm still 50-50 on "breaks plausibility for cheap jokes" and "actually a dead-on metaphor for the level of isolation one experiences in an abusive cult family; they don't even try to figure out anything outside of their vast yet limited spheres because they're too terrified and brainwashed."

I do think they should have been younger when Father took them. I could believe that they'd forget English and all normal human things if they'd been taken at age three or four, but I think age eight is too old for that.

Carolyn winning and then becoming completely detached from anything resembling human feelings - or rather, ending up in a situation where it became more noticeable that she was completely detached from anything resembling human feelings - was frustrating and heartbreaking, but sadly plausible.

Her conversation with Father at the end was both revelatory (I had guessed that he'd been secretly grooming her as his successor, but not that she'd been tortured to death in multiple previous lives) and heartbreaking in terms of how successfully he'd destroyed her humanity; he's telling her all this monstrous stuff and she's basically, "Huh interesting, got it." Unlike a lot of those sorts of conversations in fiction, it did not feel like the author was justifying Father's actions for the greater good, but rather like you're supposed to have my reaction, which was "Did you ever try NOT abusing them, you absolute monster?!" It's easier to make that clear when the actions we're talking about are torturing children to death, rather than garden-variety emotional abuse.

I was rooting so hard for her not to be the same as her dad. I liked that she did choose to be better and not just retread the path of abuse, but she's still a weird godlike being whose values are not human ones.

Steve being tethered to the Plane of Joy and becoming the sun absolutely broke me. I wanted something more human for him, but it felt very fitting and mythic.

I loved the way magic worked. It was so weird, it did feel very magical.

The lions also broke me. I loved them. The deer too.