Descent by Sandy DeLuca; Uninvited Books; 2011; 286 pgs; $16.95 US

There’s only been a few times in my life when I had to put a book down because it affected me so much that I had to take a moment and catch my breath.  Gary Braunbeck’s novel Prodigal Blues, Greg Gifune’s novel Garden of Night, and J.F. Gonzalez’s novel Survivor all had stunned me at some point with scenes so brutal that I was so overcome with emotion that I had to stop reading.  There is one scene in Descent that shocked me so much that I’ve added Sandy DeLuca’s novel to this list.

The thing is, there are a lot of authors who write scenes of extreme fiction, but in order for it to work we have to be lost in the story, to care deeply about the characters, and in some sense, be unaware of the depth of the oncoming brutality.  And Sandy Deluca has done just that in Descent with this powerful and compelling story of misguided love and the occult.

Julia is a young woman, not quite of drinking age yet, who is part of an extremely conservative Italian family.  Her parents are disappointed in her ambition to be a painter and they are constantly belittling her.  The only comfort and encouragement she receives is from her Aunt who practices magic, and her brother Paul, who has been shipped off to fight in Vietnam.

When her brother returned from the war, he came back a broken and mentally unstable man.  However, he and Julia remain close, and he has taken to bringing her along to the clubs he visits at night.  At one of these clubs Julia is introduced to Sammy, a beefy bouncer with a dangerous air about him.  After meeting Sammy her hormones kick into high gear and she finds herself fantasizing about him with she is with her boyfriend.

It doesn’t take long for Sammy to seduce Julia and they are soon a couple.  Julia falls deeply in love with Sammy and by doing so tends to overlook some of the odd and even deadly events that seem to surround him.  Sammy convinces Julia to move with him to Miami, where he can find better work and she can paint.   This trip sets off a cataclysm of violence that brings Julia to the brink of madness.

On the way to Miami Julia discovers that Sammy has found a book, a book that might have been written by the devil himself.  Sammy tells Julia that the book brings him great benefits, and if he wants to continue to benefit from the book, he has to make some sacrifices.  And Sammy is more than prepared to do so; any time, any place, and to anybody.   And it’s these sacrifices that lead Julia into one hellish waking nightmare.

With Julia, DeLuca has written a character that reads so intimate that it almost feels as if we are witnesses to DuLuca’s personal diary.   She gets into the minutia of a scene, bringing a female perspective to it that you don’t often see in horror novels.   She’ll toss innocuous details into a scene; seemingly throw away lines, like a character having dirty fingernails that subtly add to our knowledge of this character. But more importantly, she enables us to understand how a woman thinks, how her emotions affect her thought processes.  For instance, I’ve never understood how a woman could stay in an abusive relationship.  In Descent, DeLuca takes us through that logic, exposing us to issues of self-esteem, parental rejection, drug abuse, and just plain trying to stay alive.  It is an eye opening and heartbreaking lesson to learn.

The horror in Descent is a potent mix of innocent loss and the violence that accompanies it.  There are scenes in this novel that are brutal, but the emotional response of the main character to this brutality is just as terrifying.

Descent is not a horror novel you pick up to pass the time.  It is not a novel you breeze through in one or two sittings.   Instead, Descent is a novel you need to make time for.  A novel to read when you want to be frightened to the point you turn numb.   Descent is a novel that will churn your gut and deaden your nerves, and when you turn that last page, you’ll find that it also has stolen a piece of your soul.

 

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Jul 4, 2011

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