Gabino Iglesias Reviews Mother Howl by Craig Clevenger
Mother Howl, Craig Clevenger (Datura 978-1-91552-303-7, $17.99, 300pp, pb) June 2023. Cover by Kyerin Tyler.
The Contortionist’s Handbook, published in 2002, and Dermaphoria, published in 2005, made Craig Clevenger a household name and both became huge cult hits. Then readers had to sit and wait for whatever Clevenger did next. That long wait came to an end this year with Mother Howl, and the wait was worth it. A strange crime novel that’s also a bizarre tale of a man fallen from heaven and a tale about surviving when the world throws your way the worst it has to offer, Mother Howl is a weird, sharp narrative that plays with readers and keeps them guessing about the truths behind everything.
Lyle Edison was a teenager when he looked at the TV and recognized the waitress and his local diner. She’d been murdered. The next day, his father was arrested. He’d killed the waitress. He’d also killed other people. In the aftermath of his father’s downfall, Lyle’s life crumbles. Rough years follow. He moves away and changes his name. Years later, still struggling with his past and living with a woman he loves who’s now pregnant with their first child, Lyle meets a man named Icarus who seems to know his secret, but the man is not a regular person. Icarus has no past. He claims he fell from heaven and is on a mission from the Mother Howl. Icarus spends time in jail and then at a psychiatric hospital. As he struggles to build an identity and a life outside institutions with the help of meds, Icarus must also keep in mind his mission on earth and keep his brain sharp for messages from the Mother Howl.
Mother Howl is a celebration of language and a wild story about two lives intersecting. It’s also about overcoming bad things and learning to navigate the world as it is, not as you wish it were. Clevenger has a way with words, and that shines here. Icarus’s voice is unique, and the dialogue in this novel is strange, sharp, witty, and memorable. Also, the author brilliantly builds uncertainty around Icarus and his story. What he says can’t be real…can it? There’s no way he is who he says he is…but he seems to be special and know things, so maybe he is. That internal debate accompanies readers all the way to the end, and it makes it hard to put the book down because every chapter that deals with Icarus could hold the revelation that proves one thing or the other.
Clevenger is a gifted storyteller and a great writer, and this novel shows that. He juggles two separate narratives for half the book before making them collide, and both characters are very well developed by then, which makes the collision all that much more interesting. Also, there is a combination of sadness and playfulness that I’ve rarely encountered in fiction. Lyle is in trouble, broke, his parole officer is awful, and he’s in pain after an accident. However, the story also contains great conversations (the times Icarus talks to the psychologist trying to help him are worth the price of admission) and the kind of one-liners that stick with you long after you turn the last page.
For years Clevenger’s bio stated he is ‘‘the author of The Contortionist’s Handbook and Dermaphoria.’’ Now they are joined by Mother Howl, which is as fearless and unique as its two predecessors. I hope it doesn’t take him long to give us another novel, but if it’s as good as these, I don’t mind waiting.
Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book reviewer living in Austin TX. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs and the editor of Both Sides. His work has been nominated to the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards and won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2019. His short stories have appeared in a plethora of anthologies and his non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and CrimeReads. His work has been published in five languages, optioned for film, and praised by authors as diverse as Roxane Gay, David Joy, Jerry Stahl, and Meg Gardiner. His reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, Criminal Element, Mystery Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other print and online venues. He’s been a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards twice and has judged the PANK Big Book Contest, the Splatterpunk Awards, and the Newfound Prose Prize. He teaches creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University’s online MFA program. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.
This review and more like it in the September 2023 issue of Locus.
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