Rating: 3 stars
I love Edward Lee. Not in a gay way, in a Viking way, and it should come as no surprise to my faithful readers (all both of you) that he is one of my favorite authors. Despite this, I would not recommend Brides of the Impaler to the public at large.
Brides follows Cristina Nichols as she moves to the big city with her man, real estate tycoon Paul Nasher, to bring her closer to both their jobs and break in the renovated church annex he's recently purchased. Her initial impressions and poor, but Cris shortly finds herself inspired to work, sexually active after a long frigid spell and the happiest she's been in a long time. Only problems now are Cris' blackout spells, her unprecedented exhibitionism and the crazy homeless ladies that always seems to be looking at her and smiling like they know something about what's going on in her life these days.
Lee is most well known for his dirty sex and nasty violence and there's no shortage of either here. So why is Brides of the Impaler my least favorite Edward Lee book after The Backwoods? Because it feels heavy handed and forced. The locale is NYC instead of Florida and despite Jack Ketchum's assistance with locales and New York minutiae, I sometimes felt like I was getting street directions from a tourist; you gotta live in New York to accurately describe it. And not just the directions, the details; the hot dog vendors, the general attitudes and whole personality of the city cannot, I feel, be accurately depicted or cloned by an outsider. Sorry, Ed, stick to the bayous; Jack's got Manhattan wrapped up tight. Plus with no space aliens, raping monsters or rives (some of the old Edward Lee staples) appearing in the novel, I felt like this was more of a 'guest author writes in the vein of Edward Lee' novel than it was an Edward Lee novel (and a side note - none of the Lee staples appear in The Backwoods either. I see a pattern forming.)
On the other side of the coin, this novel is Lee's homage to old '70s exploitation horror films: characters names are bastardized versions of actors, directors and other familiar faces in everybody's sex-filled and blood-covered trash cinema. Descriptions of characters match the namesakes, so if you're well versed in old school cinema, you'll have a fun time trying to guess who he's talking about. And, not coincidentally, if this was the '70s, Brides would translate so easily into a screenplay its amazing; obviously, tho, Lee's intent the entire time.
Final note, though; the length of Brides: it was a full novel, but by halfway through I was growing bored with impaled transients and Cristina masturbating in the basement. I couldn't shake the feeling this would have been more justified as a novella rather than a novel, what with the repetitiveness of the story. I know that has a lot to do with the homage thing and the way those films are structured and paced, but I didn't feel it translated well as an approach thirty years later. It's still an enjoyable book, though; I didn't hate it, I just didn't love it like I love Lee's other works.
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Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Company, Incorporated
Pub. Date: September 2008
ISBN-13: 9780843958072