MOTHER is my first read of Philip Fracassi's work and won't be the last. From the first phrase until the final word, Fracassi takes the reader on a journey crafted with a Gothic tone and a grim atmosphere of a world of failure, lethal desperation, and toxic relationships.
It is a doomed situation in MOTHER and this is expressed through the opening phrase of the protagonist Howard "I Know Julie loved me once" which makes the reader expect that the outcome of Howard and Julie story is going to be bad and nasty.
Howard and Julie met in college where they fell in love and then decided to get married. The story is told through the eyes of Howard, he gave us small glimpses into their broken past, their family background and their differences. From the beginning, Howard starts to show anxiety signs and hesitation about Julie when he saw her odd jubilant reaction after he proposed to her. A sign that their life is not going to be a bed of roses. Instead, their marriage turned to be a vicious liaison full of destructive contradictions. He shines in his career, she sinks in failure and deception and both are self-centered in their own ways; negative feelings of guilt, grudge, hatred and vengeance come to haunt their shattered household.
With a beautiful prose and fine style, the author conveys all the above in MOTHER. In between the chapters an eerie atmosphere reigns and something dark and rotten floating in the air. The author builds a morbid anticipation in the reader who wonders about what is going to happen next and where those two unfortunate characters will end and how!
In terms of characterization, Fracassi weaves particular characters with traits the reader finds hard to like. A selfish oblivious husband and a sulky bitter wife who together fumble another attempt to salvage the ruins of a relationship but instead they further destroy it. Fatherhood, responsibility, escape, despair are the dominant sentiments in MOTHER. Starting with Julie’s desperation to be a painter and her failure to achieve that; the author shows the very dark abyss the frustration pulls Julie toward and desperate situation calls for desperate measures like summoning something dark from the scary world of the arcane. Her transformation throughout the novella and her morbid attitude are a bit suffocating. The reader wants to feel for her misery but just can’t. Face to this despair comes the exasperation of Howard to make Julie accept her situation and save their marriage. But like Julie, he fails once and he fails again. His intriguing sentiments swing between anger, hatred, selfishness and blame, his inadequate reactions and weird feelings toward his fatherhood reflect a fear of responsibility, a desire to escape but guilt is too much to handle in order for him to pursue such desires.
The paranormal aspect of the novella is drawn with delicacy. It is represented in the eerie surrounding of a dark forest and what lurks inside. It is in the odd behaviour that Julie keeps showing and the tensed waiting for a horrifying climax.
MOTHER is a cold grim tale of crashed dreams and bad choices, a story where the author skilfully unlocks the very dark rooms of the human nature face to desperation and hopelessness.
I take the chance to thank the author for sending me MOTHER which I really enjoyed reading and reviewing.
