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A review by lucas_lex_dejong
Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga by Michael McDowell
2.5
This post won't contain many spoilers beyond themes and genre.
Michael McDowell's Blackwater Saga was published in 6 short volumes (each <200 pages); its narrative spanning the years 1919 to the late 1960s in Perdido, Alabama.
The saga is regularly described as both horror and southern gothic. There's no need to define horror to this audience, but Gothic as a genre tends to deal with the anxiety and anticipation around archaic power structures fading away, whether religious (Lewis' The Monk or Radcliffe's The Italian), Feudal (The Castle of Otranto or the Mystery of Udolpho), or, in the case of Southern Gothic, slave-economy, which is often explored with post-civil war families decaying in the wake of abolition and the waning cotton trade (the decrepit plantation houses of Faulkner, or the painful integration of Flannery O'Connor).
Blackwater is not Southern Gothic. In fact, for first 90% of the novel has the Caskey's going from strength to strength, success to success, regardless of post slavery economics, two world wars, a great depression, and civil rights movements. Nothing touches them, and without going into spoilers, the ending does not set up a grand Fall, nor an accountability for their social position.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say it has an offensively revisionist view of race, sexuality, and gender norms, given the time period it's set it. It seems nearly everbody is fine with being whoever they want to be and who they want to be with, and in the 50 year span of the saga, the black servant family is never raised as a question of ethics or evolves in any way. Every generation is just so gosh darn eager to serve the Caskey's, coz they good folks.
On a line-by-line basis the saga is competently written; I wouldnt have finished it otherwise. The characters are each unique, but the 3rd person omniscient narration is more detached than usual, and entire years are breezed over in the same historical prose as the actual action, and makes investment in the drama difficult to achieve. As for the horror elements...? I'm personally convinced that they were a late addition to the drafting of the saga and that the series would have been improved by more ambiguity; as it is, the horror elements pop up occasionally like a jack in the box, disappear, and barely affect the continued plot.
I can't say that I *hated* it; as mentioned before, I wouldn't have read a book this long, over 3 months, if that were so. But every element of it was so neutered and undercooked that by the ending, I was pretty underwhelmed by what McDowell had to say about 50 years of Alabama society, where his foreword denoted that his aim was to "describe the people as they *are*".
A disappointment, to be sure, given my love of both Horror and Southern Gothic.
Michael McDowell's Blackwater Saga was published in 6 short volumes (each <200 pages); its narrative spanning the years 1919 to the late 1960s in Perdido, Alabama.
The saga is regularly described as both horror and southern gothic. There's no need to define horror to this audience, but Gothic as a genre tends to deal with the anxiety and anticipation around archaic power structures fading away, whether religious (Lewis' The Monk or Radcliffe's The Italian), Feudal (The Castle of Otranto or the Mystery of Udolpho), or, in the case of Southern Gothic, slave-economy, which is often explored with post-civil war families decaying in the wake of abolition and the waning cotton trade (the decrepit plantation houses of Faulkner, or the painful integration of Flannery O'Connor).
Blackwater is not Southern Gothic. In fact, for first 90% of the novel has the Caskey's going from strength to strength, success to success, regardless of post slavery economics, two world wars, a great depression, and civil rights movements. Nothing touches them, and without going into spoilers, the ending does not set up a grand Fall, nor an accountability for their social position.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say it has an offensively revisionist view of race, sexuality, and gender norms, given the time period it's set it. It seems nearly everbody is fine with being whoever they want to be and who they want to be with, and in the 50 year span of the saga, the black servant family is never raised as a question of ethics or evolves in any way. Every generation is just so gosh darn eager to serve the Caskey's, coz they good folks.
On a line-by-line basis the saga is competently written; I wouldnt have finished it otherwise. The characters are each unique, but the 3rd person omniscient narration is more detached than usual, and entire years are breezed over in the same historical prose as the actual action, and makes investment in the drama difficult to achieve. As for the horror elements...? I'm personally convinced that they were a late addition to the drafting of the saga and that the series would have been improved by more ambiguity; as it is, the horror elements pop up occasionally like a jack in the box, disappear, and barely affect the continued plot.
I can't say that I *hated* it; as mentioned before, I wouldn't have read a book this long, over 3 months, if that were so. But every element of it was so neutered and undercooked that by the ending, I was pretty underwhelmed by what McDowell had to say about 50 years of Alabama society, where his foreword denoted that his aim was to "describe the people as they *are*".
A disappointment, to be sure, given my love of both Horror and Southern Gothic.