Customer Reviews

Candles Burning

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

My favorite short story is Michael McDowell's "Halley's Passing," about a serial killer who is so much more than he appears to be. Perhaps better known for his screenplays, McDowell was a masterful author of horror novels in the gothic tradition, including his Blackwater series, which stands collectively as a classic of the genre. He passed away in 1999, leaving behind an unfinished manuscript for CANDLES BURNING, which was to have been his penultimate novel.

Tabitha King, wife of Stephen King, is the author of a number of novels as well. The publication of this book occurs as the result of King's relationship with the McDowell family. She was given McDowell's manuscript and asked to complete the work. King is quite up front about what the novel is --- and what it's not. It is not, she tells us, the story that McDowell set out to write. This will disappoint some. What we have here though is a tale infused with southern gothic tradition and strategic strands of horror interwoven into the foundation of its tapestry.

It is said that every Southern family of means has a streak of madness that runs deep and long through it; CANDLES BURNING takes that truism and runs. Here, the family of means is the Carroll family, whose lineage intersects with the "no-account" Dakins family when Roberta Ann Carroll marries Joe Cane Dakin. There is a method to her madness; Joe Cane is one of the richest men in 1950s Alabama, the owner of a string of highly successful Ford auto dealerships. It is Dakin's success that indirectly leads to his downfall. Accompanied by his wife and their two children, Calley and Ford, Dakin attends an auto dealers' convention in New Orleans and is murdered in gruesome fashion. The family quickly finds itself bereft and destitute, none more so than Calley, who was her father's favorite even as her mother seems constantly to resent her.

After leaving Ford with her own mother, Roberta takes Calley to reside in an enigmatic resort home on Pensacola Beach, one with ties to Calley's past and heritage. King's prose and pacing are first rate; one is transported to a time and place that no longer exist --- the south of the mid-20th century --- while insanity dances in the shadows just out of sight. While CANDLES BURNING deals on the surface with Calley's coming of age, there is more than adolescent turbulence roiling in her heart. The truth about all --- Dakin's death, Calley's birthright --- is revealed in the end, with some help from an unexpected source. But it is King's triptych, as opposed to the final destination, that makes this book worth reading.

Ultimately CANDLES BURNING is somewhat reminiscent of Peter Straub's earlier work. The focus is not on horror, or even necessarily the supernatural, though some of the latter is present. The characterization is sharp, and more importantly, when you finish the book you truly will miss Calley --- so much so that you may well read this finely crafted work again and again.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

A posthumous collaboration is particularly fitting for this atmospheric, sumptuously written tale of a girl who can speak with the dead.

After the death of horror writer Michael McDowell, Maine author (and wife of Stephen King) Tabitha King took up the task of finishing his last manuscript. The result will keep you up late and sweep you into a southern gothic world of family backstabbing, duplicity, and enigmatic spirits.

The narrator, Calliope "Calley" Carroll Dakin looks back from the present to open her story at age 7 in 1958 when her beloved father was murdered - tortured and smothered - by two witless women with no apparent motive. Calley opens with the line, "My father died unpleasantly," then explains that this is how her mother used to put it. It gives a pretty concise image of Calley's mother:

`My husband died,' she used to say, letting her voice catch before concluding, `unpleasantly.'

"Stepping on a wasp barefoot - that's unpleasant. A mouthful of sour milk - that's unpleasant. What happened to Daddy was no mere unpleasance."

Joe Cane Dakin was a self-made Alabama man with a passel of white trash relatives. His gorgeous wife, Roberta Ann Carroll Dakin, is a self-absorbed southern belle greedy for his money. She can barely abide her odd, big-eared daughter and delights in depriving her of anything she enjoys, particularly music.

But after Joe's murder, Roberta Ann's pampered life changes. Far from being rich, Joe leaves behind nothing but debts. Neither Calley nor her mother quite believe this but helpless Roberta Ann, suspected of hiring the women who killed her husband and hounded by her mother, Mamadee, flees Alabama with the help of an apparently kindly stranger.

In an Edsel that refuses to run out of gas Calley and her mother head to an isolated Pensacola Beach inn, which, peculiarly, seems to be a replica of Roberta Ann's grandmother's house, which burned down mysteriously long before Calley was born. The proprietor, Merry Verlow, offers refuge - with conditions.

Miz Verlow, as Calley calls her, takes a strong interest in the girl and protects her from her spiteful, cutting mother. But there's nothing warm and fuzzy about Miz Verlow. Apropos of nothing she bids Calley goodnight on their first evening, saying, "Where do little girls get it into their heads that they are supposed to be happy? There are other things that are so much more important for little girls."

While the reader - and Calley - know Miz Verlow has her own private motives, Calley grows to love her, even suspects she might love her more than she does her own Mama, whose feet she massages every night. Miz Verlow opens a world of knowledge to her - through books, the well-assorted guests, and her own herb gathering. Calley soaks up knowledge like it was mother's milk. And Miz Verlow turns a blind eye to Calley's eavesdropping, which is how she gets most of her information about the grown-up human world.

Strange occurrences, from peculiar found objects to enigmatic ghosts, are commonplace, slotting into place like bits of a puzzle that grows exponentially, adding new riddles. Calley's world is on shifting sands, like the dunes where she finds a solitary refuge. Adults are unpredictable and some of those who take an interest in her actively dislike children, while the voices of the dead are fragmentary at best.

The fact that Calley narrates from a grown and knowledgeable place does not make the child Calley's voice any less immediate. The intensity of the child's trauma and fears and joys comes through with a vividness memory can't soften, while distance allows the adult Calley to supply information unavailable to the child.

Steeped in Southern manners and manipulation, rich in language and the slippery elusiveness of character, this is a literary ghost story with rare power.

--Portsmouth Herald

Once again, I pine for the half-star rating, but alas . . . This is a novel that will undoubtedly read differently to those who are fans of the authors than to those who are reading one (or both) for the first time. Since I am in the former category, that is the perspective of my review.

I'm a Michael McDowell fan. It began when I was 8 and saw my entire family reading *Blackwater*, but the privilege was refused to me due to my youth. At 30, I had a vague memory of a character named Elinor rising up out of black water. So, I called my aunt, and she forraged through her gigantic library to dig up the books. McDowell's writing has a grace that is missing in most horror writers, with a gentle sensibility. You like his villains, and you're never quite sure about his heroes.

*Candles Burning*, especially its beginning, has echoes of other McDowell works. There is the senseless crime committed by two remorseless, rather dull women who cannot explain WHY they are compelled to do such a thing (shades of Katie Slopes & kin in *Katie*), there is the unkind mother-in-law who makes the cliche seem mild by comparison (*Amulet*), the cold and distant mother who has little compassion for her children, beyond the way they define and serve her (*Mary Love Caskey*) and of course, the tightly knitted Southern family that smiles at the dinner table while plotting mass destruction underneath (*Blackwater*, again). Nostalgic, eerie and more than a little disturbing, the beginning reminded me why I like McDowell's work so much.

As Calley begins to age, you can slowly feel Tabitha King's voice begin to take the lead. It's truly an easy transition, and her affection for McDowell is apparent in the way that the story is allowed to ease fluidly in a new direction. The revelation of Calley's "ability" is paced as well. Far from being *SLOW*, the pace reveals an art almost lost in the modern novel (save a precious few, Wolfe & Tartt among them) who understand that not every novel needs to develop at warp speed.

The ending leaves a lot to the reader. It is apparent that Calley grows up and grows older, but much about her life is deliberately obscured (an ending that fits well with the style of both authors). Both Calley and her brother Ford are happy, and that brings a satisfaction of its own.

In some ways, I greatly wish that McDowell had lived to finish this work on his own. Calley would probably have been a little less likeable - his books never seem to carry a hero or heroine that isn't flawed and unlikeable in some way. And yet, it is also a tribute that wouldn't ring quite as true otherwise - such as the appearance of the child "Michael" in the final pages of the book.

In the end, *Candles Burning* has the brilliance of a candle in a dark room, and the sentiment of a candle lit in memoriam of a talent lost, but not forgotten.

I just got done reading this book and I was really disappointed. It had so much potential. The writing was excellent but the storyline just went nowhere. In the beginning, the plot really got you involved and was intense and a page turner. Then you read all this fluff in the middle that doesn't seem to really relate. Well, okay it ends up relating in some vague way to the ending where they give you all the who's done it stuff. But, it was having to pick through the middle to get to the end where, "bam" that was it -as if the author just wanted to get it over with. I think if storyline could have been knitted together better and the unnecessary info pulled out it really could have been excellent.

This might be a bit more of a personal review than the others. Michael McDowell has been a favorite author of mine my entire adult reading life. His "The Amulet" was probably the second or third adult novel I read (Stephen King's "The Shining" was the first in 6th grade). I've read McDowell's books written under the pseudonyms Nathan Aldyne and Axel young. I'm saving his "Jack and Susan" trilogy for a rainy day. I've read "Blackwater" and "Cold Moon Over Babylon" twice which is something I do very rarely. I knew about the unfinished manuscript, even unto the title, since an Ex of mine went to Tufts where McDowell and his partner Laurence Senelick taught.

Bottom line: As a McDowell fan, I liked this, I didn't love it.

McDowell's books of Southern family dynasties were often grisley (sometimes funny) and full of instances of ingenious and at times intricate revenge. I missed that here. I think the first person narration got in the way of telling the story. The rest of his books (save the bizzare "Toplin") are third person omniscient, I just feel that might have worked better here.

I did experience many a frisson of recognition as I read--I kept thinking "There's Michael."

As the single adult novel I am allowing myself this year (I'm on an ALA awards committee & should be limiting myself to children's fiction) this was a good choice. I had the extra added pleasure of reading it at a conference in New Orleans (and it begins with a murder at a conference in New Orleans). This is well worth YOUR time, and I am ever so grateful to Tabitha King for undertaking this project.

Fun Fact: look for the titles of McDowell's books peppered through out the text.

Michael McDowell is best known for his Blackwater horror series: he left the unfinished manuscript for Candles Burning upon his death in 1999 - and Stephen King's wife Tabitha, a novelist in her own right, took up the challenge to finish it. The two powerful talents combine to create a chilling Southern gothic revolving around murder, corruption and a child and mother's exile after a horrible murder. A fine novel of intrigue and murder holds plenty of twists and turns - and a healthy dose of the unexpected.

Diane C. Donovan

California Bookwatch

This sometimes up-all-night page-turner, sometimes slow-go, Southern Gothic SuperNaturally flavoured Mommie Dearest, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, Oz-referenced Coming of Age saga is a mix of Michael McDowell (deceased) and Tabitha King (alive and infused with husband Stephen's mojo.)

Starting with an old aristocratically flawed family in 1968 Alabama, flowing languidly through a grisly murder in New Orleans, and touching on Jim Crow in Florida, the amalgamated adventure portends to pack more punch than it actually delivers.

Many of the veritable 3 ring circus cast - who come and go, like candles in the wind, frequently for no clear reasons - remain unexplained post denouement: which,unlike McDowell's Blackwater, doesn't seem likely to spawn serials. Whither Hope & Faith? /TundraVision, Amazon Reviewer

After a long absence from writing, Tabitha King is back finishing a manuscript by the late Michael McDowell. I've always enjoyed Tabitha King's work, and was happy to see her back with another novel. Despite it being a collaboration, her voice shines loud and clear and is mostly a joy to read. With a typical (or sterotypical) decadent southern family and its demise as the centerpiece much of the story is one cliche after another. That doesn't especially bother me if its done well which it is here: what bothered me was that towards the middle of the booka fact about the protaganist, 7 year old Calley, comes to light it pretty much comes from left field. Billed as a gothic ghost story, it's neithger scary nor especially suspenseful; instead to me its more of a character study. When the "supernatural" part does come into play its not as unnerving or dread inducing as it should be. I won't go into the story here as other reviews have done so, suffice it to say there's murder and mayhem; resentment and betrayal, greed and revenge all rolled into a 400+ page read.

I generally liked the book, and would recommend it but I have a couple of caveats. One being what I mentioned earlier re: a fact about Calley coming out of nowhere; the rather quick almost slapdash ending and the feeling that I was left with, which was What was the point? Was this a story that needed to be told? Probably not. Still given the reasons it WAS written, I'm glad it was and glad to have read it. I just hope Tabitha doesn't waits so long for another book.

I very much enjoyed this book allthough it was a tough start. It took me about four chapters to get really interested but once there I was hooked. A twist to the ending made for interesting reading and for a desire to know more about what happens to Calley beyond this story.

I fell in love years ago with Michael McDowell's Blackwater series, and was so sad to hear he had passed away, but what a lovely tribute that Tabitha stepped to finish it, you won't be disappointed, it is a haunting and wonderful read. Thanks.