Book Review NIGHT MOTHER Marlena Williams

(Update 10.31)

Thank you to the author Marlena Williams and publishers The Ohio State University Press for an advance paperback copy of NIGHT MOTHER. All views are mine.


Opening quote: ...Evil is not something amorphous or corporeal. Evil is active. It is a doing, and then a doing again and again and again. p124

Three (or more) things I loved:

1. One might say that the true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of all that our civilization represses or opresses p36. I love this insight. I do think this is true, and one of the most important things about horror books and themes.

2. She provides a great discussion about use of meta as a technique in the story, the book, and the movie. Great examples of this at p43 and p49.

3. The statements this book makes about the "satanic panic" of the 80s and 90s, and about moral panics in general, are so important: Focusing on stories about satanic murder...allows us to deflect, to focus all our rage on a rare and often imagined crime rather than on real, structural causes of youth suffering.... p80

4. Like The Exorcist itself, these essays take on some very important and controversial topicics. From "Something Sharp": Acknowledging sexuality in children was only slightly more threatening than acknowledging sexuality in women or accepting the sexualities of gay men an women as meaningful and valid. p95

5. Interesting disclosure about the use of subliminal images in the movie, and what compelled Friedkin's choice to use them in chapter 4. Also, I loved learning about how the movie creators used sound to provoke an emotional reaction from the audience, like recording dialogue at low volume to make the audience strain to hear what is being said.

Three (or less) things I didn't love:

This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.

1. A few mixed metaphors. ...like a dying animal clawing it's way out of a smoke-stripped throat... p4

2. Because this is a collection of essays, once in a while, the little things get repetitive: expressions, phrases, ideas, and secondary topics.

3. Interesting definition of "innocence:" ...Western culture mistakes innocence for the absence of sexual desire, thereby converting true innocence into a "false, desexualized innocence" and demanding that we repress... sexual desire until it is deemed appropriate or natural by society. p93

4. I'm not a fan of authors advocating for violence against children, humorous or not. ...[Maybe] Regan should have been slapped all along. p120

Closing quote: ...I believe [Blatty] when he says he wrote The Exorcist to comfort audiences, to show them the endless power and grace of God. p83

A line or two about the Essays:

1. Mercedes McCambridge Eats a Raw Egg - The varied talents and I'll fare of the voice actress who performs the voice of Regan when she was possessed in the original film.
2. My Mother and the Exorcist - The Exorcist is a film haunted by dead mothers. p26 I came to see cancer as a kind of possession...an evil that invades and corrodes the body. p28
3. Excavation - [Blatty's] intention for The Exorcist was not to frighten or disturb or scare into devotional submission. He wanted his film to comfort. pg47
4. The Loud Silence - A discussion about how the audio and visual tricks the movie creators used shaped the film and affected audiences. The most threatening messages are often right there on the surface. They don't even bother to hide. p59
5. Six Visions of the Devil and His Demons - 
[Satan] emerged from the ineffable as a bestial mess, fragments from the animal world tacked haphazardly onto the human frame. p63 On the screen in 1973, he briefly invaded the body of a young girl, and once again people were afraid.... p66
6. Magical Mirrors - ...Regan becomes the heinous end result of women's liberation, a helpless, growling embodiment of what feminism, the sexual revolution, and civil rights will do to the nation's nicest, happiest, and whitest youth. p72
7. Something Sharp - What will playing the devil incarnate do to a young child? p87
8. James Baldwin Sees The Exorcist in 1973 - Baldwin shredded The Exorcist en analyzing it from a racial lens. The Exorcist is not in the least concerned with damnation,... but with... the continued sanctification of a certain history. p118
9. (coming soon)

Rating: 👹👹👹👹👹/ 5 demon possessions 
Recommend? Yes!
Finished: Oct 31 23
Format: Paperback arc
Read this book if you like:
🤮 The Exorcist 
👭🏽 girl's coming of age 
😵 curses
👻 horror genre
📽 film analysis 

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