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A review by strangeweather
The Man on the Ceiling by Steve Rasnic Tem
5.0
Co-written by husband and wife horror writers, this is among the most beautiful melding of fiction and autobiographical non-fiction that I've encountered. What's real and fact is ever-moving...but, as they say, "everything we're about to tell you is true." I recommend this intensely, however hard it is to read in its pain.
The authors adopt children from haunted pasts, and... I'm not going to say what happens, this horrific, incomprehensible thing. Their book is the writers' way of coping, of healing, of never being able to heal.
The below passage, from Melanie's perspective on her own writing, is one with which I identify deeply in my own work and reasoning...that is, I think I've said something similar but with a modicum of this elegance:
"Often I write about people I don't understand, ways of being in the world that baffle me. I want to know how people make sense of things, what they say to themselves, how they live. How they name themselves to themselves.
Because life is hard. Even when it's wonderful, even when it's beautiful -- which is a lot of the time -- it's hard. Sometimes I don't know how any of us makes it through the day. Or the night.
The world has in it: Children hurt or killed by their parents, who would say they do it out of love. Children whose beloved father, uncles, brothers, cousins, mothers love them, too, fall in love with them, say anything we do to each other's bodies is okay because we love each other, but don't tell anybody because then I'll go to jail and then I won't love you anymore. Perverted love.
The world also has in it: Children whose only chance to grow up is in prison, because they're afraid to trust love on the outside. Children who die, no matter how much you love them. Impotent love.
And the world also has in it: Werewolves, whose unclaimed rage transforms them into something not human but also not inhuman (modern psychiatry sometimes finds the bestial 'alter' in the multiple personality). Vampires, whose unbridled need to experience leads them to suck other people dry and are still not satisfied. Zombies, the chronically insulted, people who will not feel anything because they will not feel pain. Ghosts.
I write in order to understand these things. I write dark fantasy because it helps me see how to live in a world with monsters.
But one day last week, transferring at a crowded and cold downtown bus stop, late as usual, I was searching irritably for my bus pass, which was not there, and then for no reason and certainly without conscious intent my gaze abruptly lifted and followed the upswept lines of the pearly glass building across the street, up, up, into the Colorado-blue sky, and it was beautiful.
It was transcendently beautiful. An epiphany. A momentary breakthrough into the dimension of the divine.
That's why I write, too. To stay available for breakthroughs into the dimension of the divine. Which happen in this world all the time. I think I always write about love."
The authors adopt children from haunted pasts, and... I'm not going to say what happens, this horrific, incomprehensible thing. Their book is the writers' way of coping, of healing, of never being able to heal.
The below passage, from Melanie's perspective on her own writing, is one with which I identify deeply in my own work and reasoning...that is, I think I've said something similar but with a modicum of this elegance:
"Often I write about people I don't understand, ways of being in the world that baffle me. I want to know how people make sense of things, what they say to themselves, how they live. How they name themselves to themselves.
Because life is hard. Even when it's wonderful, even when it's beautiful -- which is a lot of the time -- it's hard. Sometimes I don't know how any of us makes it through the day. Or the night.
The world has in it: Children hurt or killed by their parents, who would say they do it out of love. Children whose beloved father, uncles, brothers, cousins, mothers love them, too, fall in love with them, say anything we do to each other's bodies is okay because we love each other, but don't tell anybody because then I'll go to jail and then I won't love you anymore. Perverted love.
The world also has in it: Children whose only chance to grow up is in prison, because they're afraid to trust love on the outside. Children who die, no matter how much you love them. Impotent love.
And the world also has in it: Werewolves, whose unclaimed rage transforms them into something not human but also not inhuman (modern psychiatry sometimes finds the bestial 'alter' in the multiple personality). Vampires, whose unbridled need to experience leads them to suck other people dry and are still not satisfied. Zombies, the chronically insulted, people who will not feel anything because they will not feel pain. Ghosts.
I write in order to understand these things. I write dark fantasy because it helps me see how to live in a world with monsters.
But one day last week, transferring at a crowded and cold downtown bus stop, late as usual, I was searching irritably for my bus pass, which was not there, and then for no reason and certainly without conscious intent my gaze abruptly lifted and followed the upswept lines of the pearly glass building across the street, up, up, into the Colorado-blue sky, and it was beautiful.
It was transcendently beautiful. An epiphany. A momentary breakthrough into the dimension of the divine.
That's why I write, too. To stay available for breakthroughs into the dimension of the divine. Which happen in this world all the time. I think I always write about love."