4.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Book to Add to Your Summer Reading List...., July 27, 2008
This review is from: Blood Mask: A Novel of Suspense (Paperback)
First off, I should probably let you know I am biased toward Joyce Carol Oates books. And since Lauren Kelly is simply a nom de plume for Joyce Carol Oates, I am probably pre-disposed to enjoy the book. Which I did. Immensely.
Oates has this wonderful ability to weave the character's stories around each other. As you learn more about one character, it opens up questions about other characters in the book. In Blood Mask, the Aunt Drewe character who is taking care of her niece Marta is a very bizarre person. Each time Drewe does something, Marta must deal with the consequences. What you question each time is how Marta is affected by her relationship with her aunt and her aunt's weird behavior.
This book is suspenseful in parts, gory, sad and above all a fascinating look at the art world and bio-art in particular.
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Risky Art, June 1, 2006
After her family experiences numerous financial and legal problems, Annemarie, a young, precocious teenage girl, is brought to live with her eccentric and wealthy Aunt Drewe. She is renamed Marta upon arriving because "Annemarie is a servant girl's name" and begins to help her aunt at the Chateauguay Springs artist's colony that she runs. Like in Patrick Dennis' tale Auntie Mame, the wide-eyed child is introduced to a radical world of art filled with strange characters. But, unlike Dennis' comic world, the tale of Blood Mask is far more sinister. At the beginning we learn that Aunt Drewe has gone missing and her disorientated niece Annemarie is the only witness. The artist's colony is an isolated spot in a fairly conservative area and there is a group of militant Christians who have been protesting against recent exhibits of controversial "bio-art". However, there are also numerous other characters close to Drewe that are suspected of kidnapping her. Through the course of Annemarie's tale about living with Aunt Drewe, we try to piece together what happened in this tense, clever thriller.
As the events are retold to us by Annemarie, things become more complicated than the reader initially expects. She has been trying to separate herself from the provincial life she was born into and will herself into a new identity. She speculates that perhaps she is really the daughter of her Aunt Drewe and a reclusive artist named Virgil West. She begins to grow into her new name: "Growing into strength and cunning." The validity of her testimony becomes questionable. However, she's not untrustworthy in the traditional sense of someone purposefully distorting the truth or burying those memories which are inconvenient for her scheme. Her memory is much more sensory, similar to the way Hilary Mantel writes of it in her memoir Giving Up the Ghost, as if it were reconstructed in an approximate way out of emotions and failed logic.
Throughout the narrative, Annemarie is yearning to become someone that her aunt will recognize as worthy. She learns from her aunt ideas similar to those of Nietzsche, where being a weak follower with a small soul is discouraged and the strength and superiority of the individual are valued highly. Though she loves her aunt and is fiercely faithful to her, she also begins to resent her. She finds little warmth in this woman who may spontaneously hug her, but not allow herself to be hugged back. As with Aunt Drewe's numerous artist protégés that she initially took such an excited interest in, the niece is relegated to the periphery of her vision. Annemarie begins to feel abandoned though she maintains a secret conviction that she will gain her aunt's favor again. She dreads being dismissed as someone without a superior soul. The new person she has so fervently willed herself to become crumbles. This is when things become violent.
The "blood mask" of the title, a frozen sculpture constructed out of human blood, becomes a potent symbol of Aunt Drewe's vain desire to affix some permanence to the physical self, rather than the spiritual self, through the medium of art. In this way, the physical loss of Aunt Drewe becomes almost inconsequential. The destruction of the blood mask might signal her physical death, but also her spiritual liberation. The talented author of this book impressively combines a fast-paced, complex drama with intellectual debates about the nature of reality and the meaning of art.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
If I could give this book zero stars, I would., September 6, 2009
This book is one of the worst I've ever read. A "novel of suspense" with absolutely no suspense in it. I really don't know what the other reviewers are talking about. For over two hundred pages the book's main character, Marta/Annemarie, obsesses over her Aunt Drewe. The author gives us chapter after chapter of insecure, adolescent musings, like "She loves me, she'll protect me -- even though I'm so clumsy." Riveting stuff. The ending isn't especially interesting either. The only thing good about this book is that it isn't too long.
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