Friday, July 11, 2014

Review: INCUBUS by ANN ARENSBERG




Review: INCUBUS by Ann Arensberg

A few decades ago, my first introduction to the concept of Incubi was Frank de Felitta s rather graphic horror novel, "The Entity," published in 1978. I found it very disturbing, but since then the concept has not often recurred to me. I still remember, though, the impression of implacability, the impossibility of escape from.the encroaching horrors.

Ann Arensberg' s INCUBUS is a very different sort of novel. For one aspect, this is "literary horror," not blood and grue "splatterpunk." It's not designed to titillate, scandalized, and terrify.. well, maybe terrify, because here is that same encroaching implacability again, that juggernaut of terror and danger approaches, except you don't hear it, you don't see it. Throughout the book I felt as if I stood beside a farmhouse window at twilight of an overcast day, knowing something dangerous was near, but unable to peer through the filmy pebblesd glass. I also held the same kind of recurring fearful tensions as while reading Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles," and I.can easily imagine this Maine story transplanted to bleak English moors. It has that same articulated, genteel, style of narrative.

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