The Open Curtain [Paperback]

Brian Evenson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2008

When Rudd, a troubled teenager, embarks on a school project, he runs across a series of articles from the 1902 New York Times chronicling a vicious murder committed by the grandson of Brigham Young. Delving deeply into the Mormon ritual of blood sacrifice used in the murders, Rudd, along with his newly discovered half-brother, Lael, becomes swept up in the psychological and atavistic effects of this violent, antique ritual.

As the past and the present become an increasingly tangled knot, Rudd is found at the scene of a multiple murder at a remote campsite with minor injuries and few memories. Lyndi, the daughter of the victims, tries to help Rudd recover his memory and, together, they find a strength unique to survivors of terrible tragedies. But Rudd, desperate to protect Lyndi and unable to let the past be still, tries to manipulate their Mormon wedding ceremony to trick the priests (and God) by giving himself and Lyndi new secret names—names that match the killer and the victim in the one hundred-year-old murder. The nightmare has just begun . . .

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Evenson (Altmann's Tongue) explores some controversial Mormon history in this thoughtful thriller rooted in an actual century-old murder case. When Rudd, a disaffected, fatherless Mormon teenager living in an unspecified part of Utah, discovers he has a half-brother, Lael, in suburban Provo, the two meet and embark on a strange friendship. While researching a school project, Rudd learns from a series of stories in the New York Times about a murder committed by William Hooper Young, a grandson of Brigham Young, the Mormon pioneer. In 1902, William Young was tried for, and convicted of, the murder of Anna Pulitzer. The crime cast a dark shadow on the Church of the Latter-Day Saints by exposing such arcane, perhaps doctrinal concepts as "blood atonement," a disturbing idea about the saving of a Mormon soul by shedding someone else's blood. This macabre backstory, coupled with Rudd's increasingly fractured mental state, results in a contemporary gothic tale about the apocalyptic connection between religion and violence. (Oct.)
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From Booklist

Evenson lost his teaching post at Brigham Young University because his writing was too implicitly critical of the Mormon Church. Continuing to mine the violent history of the religion, he makes a murder committed in 1902 by a grandson of Mormon prophet Brigham Young one of the central plot strands of his latest novel. Raised in a troubled but strict religious home, teenage misfit Rudd gradually pulls away from his oppressive mother, inventing a new family and new world for himself. When he is found at the scene of a double murder with little memory of the preceding events, he forms a unique bond with 19-year-old Lyndi, the daughter of the victims. The two, barely recovered from the gruesome events, start to lose track of time and to call each other by the names of the perpetrators of the 1902 murder. The Mormon angle is not what is most interesting about this uncompromising novel; instead, it's the convincing portrayal of a disturbed young man pushed to the breaking point by social isolation and religious extremism. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 223 pages
• Publisher: Coffee House Press; First Edition edition (October 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566891884
• ISBN-13: 978-1566891882
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #804,796 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling Thriller, January 18, 2007

By 

Driver9 (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Open Curtain (Paperback)

Evenson takes us deep into the increasingly demented mind of young Rudd and into the inner workings of the Mormon Church. The passage regarding the marriage of Rudd and Lyndi was especially ghoulish, and, apparently too accurate for many Mormons. Carefully crafted and tautly written, we descend into madness with your Rudd as he unravels and lives out the nightmare of a historical murder that took place in the early 1900s. Very creepy at times, the novel is well worth reading and held the tension through the end.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting, possibly cleansing, certainly a breakthrough., August 13, 2007

By 

John Domini (Des Moines, IA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Open Curtain (Paperback)

Evenson's latest novel was given me as a review assignment for a print venue, and I find I must also praise the book here. THE OPEN CURTAIN gave me goosebumps I've never shaken; it brought me terribly close to a razor of a choice -- on the one hand the halting dance of possible human connection, even love, and on the other disgust with our sinful bodies, mere spoiled meat.

The novel's protagonist, Rudd, is half an orphan, the son of a father who killed himself. An ordinary teenage loneliness is thus exacerbated, occasionally to the point of violence, and Rudd's also too bright and imaginative for the constrictions of the Latter Day Saints, his religion, as practiced in the mid-1960s in Provo, Utah. The book's opening chapters throw the boy together with the only companionship he can count on, another teen, Lael or Lyle. This young man may be the son, by another woman, of Rudd's own father. Both maybe-brothers grow obsessed with a controversial Mormon practice, repudiated in their own day, called "blood atonement." According to this notion, old sins are best washed away by spilling new blood.

After that -- as Lael or Lyle becomes more heLL-ish, less an actual person than a diabolic presence -- Rudd's tormented acting-out turns scarier, perhaps murderous. Yet before we're halfway through THE OPEN CURTAIN, the story develops a sunnier track, one parallel to that vicious business. Rudd finds himself drawn together with Lyndi, the college-age survivor of a family that has just been slaughtered.

So this horror show develops into a searing either-or. On one side there's madness, and on the other marriage. Much of the book's second half makes this struggle quite moving, even as its basic elements emerge more clearly: demon Lael versus angel Lyndi.

Evenson has always dealt in shock and brains (see the splendid DARK PROPERTY, in particular), but in this book he works with emotional currency as well. I have a few small reservations about how well he's brought off the exploration of feeling, but I can't fault the attempt, which includes language more direct than before, and a range of reference fittingly middle American. The book's a breakthrough for this author, and well-nigh unique in its embodiment of the fractured heart, at once self-destructive and self-replenishing.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling portrait of madness, June 7, 2007

By 

Katharine Coldiron (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Open Curtain (Paperback)

This book made me feel that madness was lurking just on the edge of my life, ready to lunge forward and bite me, or someone I know, with its sharp teeth. It genuinely frightened me. Rudd's private world, where everything is off-kilter or imaginary, is written so effectively that your own world looks a little weird, a little aslant, and you have to shake your head every few pages to clear it. The writing is wonderful, clear and yet complex, and the conception of the novel is incredible.

An absorbing, terrifying, totally addictive experience...but not for the squeamish, or the chick-lit crowd.