The Open Curtain

Brian Evenson's The Open Curtain is an unusual and disquieting book. The story is told in three parts. In the first, awkward and impressionable high-schooler Rudd Theurer falls under the influence of his illegitimate half-brother Lael. Once under his brother's spell, Rudd begins to act erratically--or perhaps Lael's influence merely coincides with Rudd's descent. We watch as Rudd becomes increasingly divorced from reality, and increasingly fixated on a story he's researched for school, the 1902 murder of a certain Anna Pulitzer by William Hooper Young, Brigham Young's grandson. (The crime is historical, and Evenson includes news reports from the period in his narrative.) Hooper Young's murder was tied up with Mormonism, and Mormon practices are important to Rudd's story as well. In the second and third parts of the book Rudd's insanity is even more pronounced. He suffers increasingly from blackouts, engaging in actions he is subsequently unable to recall. Much of Evenson's story is told from Rudd's perspective. Because of the gaps in his understanding, we are likewise left in the dark about much of what's happening. To an extent, because of these lacunae, reading the book is a frustrating experience. We leave the story not completely sure of what was real and what imagined. Nor are we sure to what degree blame for whatever happened should attach to Rudd as opposed to Lael. Reading the book, then, is not exactly a pleasant experience. Yet the author does a good job of suggesting events through the hazy focus of Rudd's point of view. It feels like we're watching a madman's actions from the inside out. It's not fun, but it's an impressive feat. -- Debra Hamel

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.

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.

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.