The Color of Night

November 15, 2010

The latest fiction from versatile and distinguished veteran Bell (Devil's Dream, 2009, etc.) provides a grim, pitiless look at the ways that violence perpetuates itself.

Mae is a middle-aged woman in desert self-exile. By day she deals blackjack in a casino; by night she roams the sere landscape above her trailer, peering out at the world through a rifle sight—a predator in semi-retirement. After 9/11, she sits rapt—and a little enraptured—before her television, watching endless replays of the crashing planes in a way that has an unmistakable erotic charge: "a plane biting into the side of a building, its teeth on the underside where the mouth of a shark is." Then, in a shot of survivors crawling from the wreckage, she spots her ex-lover Laurel—bloodied, kneeling, supplicant. Mae records the image, makes an endless loop of it and begins watching the clip obsessively. She dispatches a friend to locate Laurel, whom she hasn't seen in decades—and who, like Mae, has good reason to be unfindable. Meanwhile, Mae begins reflecting on the unbroken chain of violence that has made her the damaged, semi-feral person she is. First came five years of incestuous abuse by her brother, who taught her both to hunt and to cut herself, a habit she's carried on all these years; then her would-be escape to San Francisco, where she immediately fell first into prostitution and then into this novel's chilling version of the Manson family. The book's devotion to anatomizing and exploring violence in all its forms—it resembles at times a hybrid of mid-career Cormac McCarthy and the film collaborations of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez—can make it wobble between poignancy and near-parody—eventually it devolves into something like a body count conducted in lyric prose. Further, the echoes of Orpheus and Eurydice seem overdone. But Bell's skills as a novelist are amply in evidence, and the reader cannot quite look away.

A cold, dark novel—but a worthy one.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 1, 2011

In his latest novel, Anisfield-Wolf Award winner and National Book Award finalist Bell composes a tale of violence and obsession. The work chronicles Mae, a seemingly normal yet wounded blackjack dealer, through empty sexual escapades in an attempt to quell the feelings for her former lover Laurel, whom she compulsively watches in 9/11 videos. She replays the images of Laurel on her knees, hands raised to the sky while the rubble of the wreckage surrounds her; Mae is thrilled by the destruction, offering readers a glimpse into a tormented mind. The journal-reminiscent style of writing coupled with the direct, detached voice of the narrator is captivating. Each page builds to a climax with another experience, such as Mae's incestuous abuse at the hands of her brother and her unremitting wanderings in the desert with her rifle, which adds to the layers of an already tattered existence. VERDICT Wonderfully capturing the essence of a troubled woman, Bell's novel will appeal to fans of John Updike's The Terrorist and readers of psychological novels.--Ashanti White, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2010
Bells novels all have roots that reach to the underworld. He has always opened himself to the monstrous, the nihilistic, the darkly erotic. And now, in this poisonous snake of a tale, he rides a river of terror as it flows through one deeply damaged woman and yokes together acts of incomprehensible violence. Mae deals cards in a Nevada casino and spends whats left of her long nights prowling the desert, rifle in hand. She is mesmerized by the television coverage of 9/11 after catching a glimpse of a long-lost lover. Memories of Maes outlaw past begin to crash into the carapace of her solitude like the death-planes gliding into the towers. Her memories range from her brothers diabolical abuse to her easy recruitment into what we recognize as the Manson family, with the kill-cults hallucinogen-fueled orgies and grotesque killing sprees. Among their peripheral casualties are a famous musician known as O_____ and his love, Eerie, haunting variations of Orpheus and Eurydice. In this sharp blade of a novel, every word is weaponized as Bell stands at the portal to chthonic evil. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Through 15 books, Bell has developed a devoted literary following; aided by nationwide advertising and special reading-group promotion, his latest novel, about a former Manson family member, could crossover to James Ellroylike mainstream sales.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)