I’ve talked a lot about my lack of experience with horror, most recently in my review of Mexican Gothic, and I’m thrilled to finally be adding a pure horror novel to my sidebar of genres. The Elementals was still nothing like I expected a horror novel to be. Despite the presence of such legitimate, traditional horror elements as ghosts and animated corpses, I wasn’t frightened by Michal McDowell’s writing, I was just fascinated.
What’s most surprising about The Elementals was how nice everyone is. While the characters certainly have their quirks, most of the McCray and Savage family members who stay at Beldame are genuinely pleasant people who care about one another. It’s unexpectedly wholesome. Of course, despite the interesting family dynamics, characters being nice to each other isn’t enough to make a story interesting, which is where the third house comes in.
The third house, slowly being consumed by sand, doesn’t map to the archetype of a haunted house, but Michael McDowell certainly made it psychologically interesting. The adult characters’ unease about it, stemming from what they try to dismiss as the result of a childishly overactive imagination, contrasts to Odessa and India, whose shifting relationship was cleverly handled. Despite the hints of darkness, the intense love the characters felt for their location kept the atmosphere of The Elementals quite light — but perhaps that was part of the setting’s malevolence, that it made people want to stay.
“Clock and calendar’s gone remind her she’s dead. I broke that cup — I hated to do it, but it was a extra — broken cup’s gone tell her she’s dead. Those shells gone speak to her of water. The dead got to cross water.”
The Elementals, Michael McDowell
“And the pills? What about the ‘scription bottles?”
“They gone remind her who she was. Dead come back, they don’t always remember who they was. Your mama reads her name there, Mr Dauphin, and she’s gone say, “Why, I’m dead, I’m gone go right back inside and not bother nobody!”
Odessa’s rituals, both in Beldame and Mobile, felt like a window into another culture, adding to the intrigue. Michael McDowell weaved a lot of mystery around what Odessa was doing, raising questions as to where she’d learned it and whether it even worked. For visual, visceral readers there’s certainly more than just atmosphere to relish — the horror in The Elementals comes at you from all five senses.
“Oh, send flowers, mama didn’t care anything about charity, but she always said that when she died, she hoped there would be a churchful of flowers. She wanted the smell to reach right up to heaven!”
The Elementals, Michael McDowell
I don’t know if I enjoyed The Elementals the way horror fans enjoy their horror, but I certainly had a good time reading it.
Chalk Letters Books 