And the Ass Saw the Angel [Paperback]

Nick Cave (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 26, 2003

Cave’s only novel to date takes on the southern gothic in this bizarre baroque tale. Born mute to a drunken mother and a demented father, tortured Euchrid Eucrow finds more compassion in the family mule than in his fellow men. But he alone will grasp the cruel fate of Cosey Mo, the beautiful young prostitute in the pink caravan on Hooper’s Hill. And it is Euchrid, spiraling ever deeper into his mad angelic vision, who will ultimately redeem both the town and its people. “Surprising, remarkable.” — The Atlanta Journal

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Australian rock musician, lyricist and actor Cave's first novel is an innovative, if wildly idiosyncratic, tall tale satirizing religious fanaticism. Euchrid Eucrow, despised ungainly son of a trapper father and "slobstress" mother, grows up mute but divinely inspired during the 1940s and '50s in fundamentalist Ukulore, a rural swamp peopled with cartoon-like sinners, tricksters, retardates and imbibers of moonshine. Euchrid--self-styled Monarch of Doghead--heeds a winsome guardian angel, along with talking beasts (the title evokes Balaam's ass), and is obsessed with human cruelty and carnality. The foundling Beth, becoming revered as a child-saint, believes Euchrid is divine; Euchrid slips into her room, and is brutally hunted down by Beth's avengers. The plot, rife with gory atrocities, is relayed through clotted, gutsy prose which ranges from poetic to rabid, and is interspersed throughout with graphs, lists, genealogies and scraps of Scripture. Although Cave's manic effort will not lure traditionalists, it may snare the more adventurous.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Nick Cave was born in Australia in 1957. He moved to London with his band The Birthday Party in 1980. Four years later he founded The Bad Seeds, with whom he has made many albums. And the Ass Saw the Angel was published in 1990 and quickly became a cult classic. Cave has also appeared in, and written the music for, several films. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: 2.13.61; 2nd edition (March 26, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880985721
• ISBN-13: 978-1880985724
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #982,596 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Not A Bad Literary Debut October 3, 2005

By Kurt Harding VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Having arrived late on the Nick Cave bandwagon, I spent several years listening closely to his albums and finally decided it was time to take a crack at the book to which there are many allusions in his music. For example, Crow Jane, a character from one of Cave's most violent songs, is re-introduced here as the vile woman who whelped the hapless narrator, Euchrid Eucrow. So first I read the reviews, and then I tackled the actual book itself.

Is "And The Ass Saw The Angel" hard to read? Yes. Are there made-up words? Yes. But then there are many novels, great and not so great, that are both hard to read and that contain many seeming nonsense words and phrases. On reading Cave, I think of Faulkner (made-up places and words), Flannery O'Connor (particularly the parallels with her novel Wise Blood), and of H. P. Lovecraft, whose novels and short stories are packed with the kind of degenerates who people Cave's Ukulore Valley. Many of the words that Cave uses, and may be accused by some of inventing, are not inventions at all but rather are either obscure or archaic words. Some of the actually invented words are agglutinations of two or three real words, so put together as to make more vivid the idea being expressed. Cave is obviously a master wordsmith and his command of English demands a similar level of erudition from his readers. One of those hefty dictionaries seen in university libraries just might be needed by some.

The story itself is populated by all the lowest, most degenerate and filthy specimens of humanity imaginable. Narrator Euchrid Eucrow, born mute, is himself the unwholesome and wretched spawn of diseased loins. It is telling that the Ukulore Valley's most sympathetic characters are the town whore and the daughter she bore in death.

The Ukulites themselves are above the others at the start, the God-chosen masters of the valley. Hard-working, God-fearing, and sober, only they have a real future there and a stake in the status quo. Everyone else is there to be used when needed, but officially ignored otherwise. I don't know about other readers, but though this novel is putatively set somewhere in the American South, I detect a whiff of Brigham Young and the Mormons about the Ukulites story. Cave knows his Bible, and this book is replete with Biblical quotations and allusions.

I don't want to ruin the story by telling it here, but suffice to say it is a brutal, bloody, filthy, vulgar and sometimes hilarious mockery of bigotry and religious zealotry. Euchrid, rejected and abused by all and sundry because of his origins and his condition, retreats into the confines of his ramshackle, jerry-built Kingdom of Doghead and plots revenge on all who have made his life sheer misery. How it all ends is a comic surprise.

And The Ass Saw The Angel is not a bad literary debut for a man best known as a songwriter. The story and the language betray Cave's longtime fascination with the American South. And this is where it really loses a star. Cave tries to make his characters sound "southern" by having the narrator (Euchrid Eucrow) say words like "ah", mah" and "unnerstand" in place of proper English enunciation, but then he often forgets that mid-sentence and lapses into Standard English or sometimes even lets loose with a bit of Aussie slang! Cave or his editors should have been more careful. But though the book is filled with graphic descriptions of human and animal cruelty of the basest sort, intrepid readers who are not literal-minded may find this to be a very engrossing novel noir indeed. Four bright stars and may Cave write soon again!

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I give this book every star in the universe! Perfection! December 1, 1999

By "lisharie"

Format:Hardcover

For many a day I pined for this sublime piece of work, dismayed to find out it was no longer being published in America. Amazon never did find it in any used bookstores and I thought it hopeless. Until I went to Amazon.co.uk -- and I bought it! It arrived at my door within three days, and within one week it was read, digested, and placed at the very top of my favorites list. It's even more divine and awesome (and I mean awesome as in AWE-INSPIRING) than I could've ever imagined. You're sucked into Euchrid's mad, tortured world, sometimes believing his delusions to be reality and sometimes wishing they were reality for his sake. The empathy that pours forth from the reader while Euchrid's tale is told is so powerful and overwhelming -- I can't even begin to describe how I felt while reading this book. And the ending -- the ending! All I can say is that it's a masterpiece. The bitterness towards religious fanaticism is so sweet -- at least it was for me. I'm very bitter towards religion and Christianity, and this book just seemed to justify it. So here's a suggestion if you want to read this book and can't find it anywhere: go to Amazon.co.uk and look it up. It may take a little longer to come in, but believe me it will be well worth it.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Graphic, extreme, yet hauntingly moving. August 17, 2005

By Katherine Oneill

Format:Paperback

As a long time fan of Mr. Cave's my expectations of his debut novel were high. Considering this I never would have thought it would draw such emotion from the reader. His hero is a demon who begets empathy unwillingly. This novel is strong enough to provoke nightmares and make the hardiest reader reflect on the human condition at it's worst and most pathetic.