Michael McDowell - The Elementals

[andydecker]

Michael McDowell – The Elementals (Avon Books, 1981, 292 p.)

WHAT YOU CAN'T SEE WILL HORRIFY YOU.
WHAT YOU DO SEE WILL DESTROY YOU.

On a spit of land cut off by the Gulf, three Victorian summer houses stand against the encroaching sand. Two of the houses at Beldame are still used. The third house, filling with sand, is empty … except for the vicious horror which is shaping nightmares from the nothingness that hangs in the dank, fetid air.

The McCrays and Savages, two fine Mobile families allied by marriage, have been coming to Beldame for years. This summer, with a terrible funeral behind them and a messy divorce coming up, even Luker McCray and little India down from New York are looking forward to being alone at Beldame.

But they won't be alone. For something there, something they don't like to think about, is thinking about them … and about all the ways to make them die.


Can't believe this isn't in the Vault! Basically this is a Haunted House novel and a Southern Gothic, but it is wonderfully written. The characters are eccentric, the setting highly original and the atmosphere is so well realized.  While there is always well deserved praise for McDowell's Blackwater (I have updated the cover-scans) and his other two straight horror novels The Amulet and Cold Moon over Babylon, I think this is his best realized Ghost story.

[cauldronbrewer]

May 24, 2020 11:57:30 GMT andydecker said:

Michael McDowell – The Elementals (Avon Books, 1981, 292 p.)

WHAT YOU CAN'T SEE WILL HORRIFY YOU.
WHAT YOU DO SEE WILL DESTROY YOU.

On a spit of land cut off by the Gulf, three Victorian summer houses stand against the encroaching sand. Two of the houses at Beldame are still used. The third house, filling with sand, is empty … except for the vicious horror which is shaping nightmares from the nothingness that hangs in the dank, fetid air.

The McCrays and Savages, two fine Mobile families allied by marriage, have been coming to Beldame for years. This summer, with a terrible funeral behind them and a messy divorce coming up, even Luker McCray and little India down from New York are looking forward to being alone at Beldame.

But they won't be alone. For something there, something they don't like to think about, is thinking about them … and about all the ways to make them die.


Can't believe this isn't in the Vault! Basically this is a Haunted House novel and a Southern Gothic, but it is wonderfully written. The characters are eccentric, the setting highly original and the atmosphere is so well realized.  While there is always well deserved praise for McDowell's Blackwater (I have updated the cover-scans) and his other two straight horror novels The Amulet and Cold Moon over Babylon, I think this is his best realized Ghost story.

I completely agree. I liked Blackwater, The Amulet, and Cold Moon over Babylon, but this one is McDowell's masterpiece. The Elementals features an atmospheric Southern setting, intriguing characters, and some genuinely creepy moments. It's in my personal top five haunted house novels of all time, and the Avon edition is the one that's on my shelf.

Fortunately, Valancourt has reprinted The Elementals (with a great cover by M. S. Corley) along with many of McDowell's other books, and I think his work is enjoying a bit of a well deserved revival.

[samdawson]

Wholly agree about The Elementals, having stumbled across it in the 80s and made friends read it too. His other stuff, I'm afraid, did nothing for me, but this one felt fresh and original, and there are parts of it that have never left me.

[Dr Strange]

I've never read any of McDowell's novels, so I thought I'd give this one a go (in the Valancourt edition). I am about half-way through now, and it is a very odd book - apart from a weird prologue involving a bizarre family funeral tradition, nothing much has really happened yet other than the characters just sitting about chatting and gossiping about other family members. There is also something strange going on with the names of the characters - for a start there are people called "Mary-Scot", "Dauphin", "Darnley", and "Bothwell". Being Scottish, I recognized a connection between those names - Mary Queen of Scots was married three times, first to the Dauphin of France (who died 2 years later), then to Lord Darnley (who was murdered, perhaps by order of the queen herself), and finally to the Earl of Bothwell (possibly against her will). What the significance of any of this is I don't know - I couldn't resist a quick google but only turned up one review that even mentioned it (but with no explanation), so I guess it isn't important to the story, but it's very odd and must mean something. There are other characters named "India", "Odessa", and "Luker" - I can't read anything into those, but they also seem to be odd names, at least for the time and place that the story is set. Having said all of that, I am quite enjoying it.

[andydecker]

You know, the names never occured to me. I thought them bizarre, but I never made the connection. Of course, Mary of Scots. Now it seems obvious. Lol. I doubt that there is a connection to the plot, but can't remember the details. So maybe McDowell just wanted to have fun.

[Dr Strange]

Well, I have literally just finished this and the main feelings I am left with are a mixture of disappointment and frustration. After all the fannying about in the build-up, the ending just seems ridiculously rushed and cliched. I suppose it's always a bit of a problem with these "haunted house" type scenarios, but the behaviour of these characters is ludicrous - whenever they have a clear chance to get away from the situation they find themselves in, they do the exact opposite and choose instead to put themselves even more directly in harm's way. This is made even more unbelievable by the fact that they are supposed to be so incredibly wealthy, it's not like they have to stick around (in fact, given past experiences at Beldame, it's hard to believe they wouldn't have just got shot of the place at the earliest opportunity). Maybe I am missing something, and it's supposed to be some sort of social commentary on something-or-other (transmission of guilt across generations in the Deep South? Nature fighting back against rapacious human exploitation?), but it just didn't work for me and I will not be in any great hurry to read more of McDowell's work.

[Middoth]

I enjoyed every page of this book.

Right from the prologue, one draws attention to McDowell's extremely specific attitude towards death. Not for nothing did he write his Ph.D. thesis on this topic. He calls the deceased the Body, and those gathered to see her off - friends, relatives of the Body.

At the very beginning, I had fears that I would not remember the characters, despite their extremely outlandish names. But already from the second chapter, I perfectly understood who is who. My only complaint is that we only learn about Leigh's beauty from her own words.As I read, my sympathy for these people enjoying each other's company grew and grew. I forgave Luker for being a mama's boy, because that's why his thirteen-year-old daughter grew up so smart, knowing that you shouldn't rely on your dad.

I had no problem with the southern dialect as English is not my first language. In general, I found it more comprehensible than Cockney.

The power of a book in a wonderfully chosen setting. Dazzling white sand swallows the house, stretching its tentacles into all its corners and does not rest on its laurels. In the finale, one unforgettable scene is associated with it.

The title of the book was intriguing too. Will McDowell really write about the elementals, I asked myself. If they are elementals, then why are they behaving like ghosts? Perhaps this is my main gripe with the book: the described creatures are so unique that when in the finale they arrange a banal bodycount it is somewhat disappointing.

And so the first and best part is in the best traditions of Edgar Poe and Montague James, and the finale smells like a King's "Shining" with fireworks and salutes.