The novel opens with the narrator crashing
his car which bursts into flames with horrific results, graphically described
at a level of clinical detail that indicates both extensive research and morbid
fascination. This continues in the description of the treatment and healing
process of burn victims which sounds only marginally less painful than the
original trauma but lasts a lot longer. Not for the overly squeamish.
In recovery the burn victim, curiously
un-named throughout, reflects on his previous playboy life; contemplates the
future as a hideous freak; and with cold-heart and cool head plans an elaborate
and fool-proof suicide.
But while in hospital he is visited by the
strange psychiatric patient Marianne Engel who insists they have history –
ancient history as according to her they first met in 14th Century
Germany. Then, as a nun, she nursed him back from a previous burning before
quitting her order to go on the run with him to avoid him having to return to
his mercenary troop. Having, in her apparently unsound mind, saved him once,
she is determined to look after him in his current incarnation (or incineration).
Their developing current and former relationships,
separated by 700 years, are related in parallel strands, the then by her and
the now by him. The narrative is punctuated with four fables told by Marianne,
each on the theme of love and sacrifice (which does not bode well); we also
have a hallucinatory descent into hell as our burn victim goes cold turkey on
his more-than-painkilling morphine habit.
It’s compulsive reading, even where
extraneous detail bordering on the obsessive is included. The twin narration
works well, with hers in particular breaking off at cliff-hanging moments that
create tension and drama. Gradually the tone of the book shifts from horrific,
through cathartic to tender, culminating in a moving, even poignant, ending.
Around the tipping point it maybe loses a bit of momentum, but a little
perseverance brings its due reward.
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