Kam Reads and Recs

Title: The Truth of Carcosa

Author: Jacob Rollinson

Genre/s: horror

Content/Trigger Warning/s: the rise of a fascist state; every single Christofascist Far Right and technocapitalist ideal, value, and talking point made into state policy

Synopsis (from publisher's website): Evil books, shadowy corporations, and interdimensional monster collide in this dark, masterful tribute to Robert Chamber's cult classic, The King in Yellow.

In 1984, exiled author Salvatore Archimboldi accepts the help of a psychotherapist to write his new book. He hopes to transform his traumatic memories into literary genius. But the resulting book, The Truth of Carcosa, is pure evil. Horrified, Archimboldi suppresses the book and wills all traces of it, his correspondence, and any copies to be destroyed.

Long after Archimboldi's death, in a chaotic age of resurgent nationalism and violence, one of the only havens for his work is the ALI, the Archive for Literary Investment, where a biographer and his protégée search through Archimboldi’s correspondence for clues on the evil manuscript as they attempt to stop unscrupulous firms with their own plans for the manuscript.

Told from the perspective of a madman obsessed with The Truth of Carcosa and a ragtag group of friends, it becomes clear that this book is more than a book—and that it might be the answer to a bewildering set of questions:

Why is the Archive so desperate to preserve Archimboldi's work?

Why do so many corporations seem hellbent on seizing any scrap of this mysterious manuscript—and at whatever cost?

What are the strange, dancing monsters that appear wherever Archimboldi's work is discovered?

And who—or what—is the Yellow King?

Buy Here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-truth-of-carcosa-jacob-rollinson/80589dcea261ae06

Spoiler-Free Review: So this didn’t turn out quite the way I expected, but OH BOY was it still fun!

To be clear: this is NOT going to be everyone’s cup of tea. The stylistic choices will definitely put a lot of readers off; the middle third, in particular, will feel like a slog for a lot of readers. There’s a lot of references to Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666 and to H.P. Lovecraft’s general oeuvre, with occasional lashings of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges. What I’m trying to say is, this is NOT a read for the smooth-brained. The style is the absolute opposite of fast and easy - and is honestly all the better for it. It reminds me that some writers still expect better of their readership, and it was a genuine delight to read something that made me fight for comprehension. Truth be told, I’m not entirely sure I’ve completely grasped everything this book was trying to angle for, and I’m perfectly fine with that.

(That being said, I do see where some readers are coming from when they say this novel’s attempt to pay homage to Bolaño doesn’t quite stick the landing. After all, the author’s white, and British; therefore I don’t think they can quite grasp what makes Bolaño’s writing and themes so particular to him. Still, gotta give the author points for the good ol’ college try.)

Aside from the stylistic challenge this book presents, another challenge might be the characters. If one approaches this book with the moral measuring stick some readers seem to bring with them everywhere so they can determine if a character is “a good character”, then one is going to be severely disappointed. There are no good characters here: absolutely none. Not one single character has any kind of moral ascendancy over everyone else. Some might start out seemingly good, but just give it some time; they will reveal the uglier facets eventually. And again, I like this a lot: not only is it a reminder that some authors out there still respect their readership’s ability to enjoy nuanced characterization, but it makes the characters feel more like actual people, instead of paragons that the reader must admire or hate, with no in-between.

Another thing that readers might find challenging are the themes. This book is not escapist AT ALL. In fact, it tackles the Christofascist Far Right and their growing hold on governments around the world, and paints a very clear picture of what the world might look like if politics, economics, and the overall sociolcultural milieu keep going in the same direction they are now. Some people turn to fiction for escapism; this book does not let the reader do that. It forces the reader to confront the realities of the world as it stands today, forces the reader to ask if they might themself be COMPLICIT in all the ways that world has gone wrong, and really makes them LOOK. I understand that some readers turn to fiction to get away from how terrible the world’s become, but it’s also good to engage with narratives, fictional or otherwise, that remind the reader of the world and why they find it unbearable in the first place. And that makes for hard reading, I know, but I still think it’s important to remember that the world DOES exist, and it needs to be dealt with.

But that doesn’t mean this book is all depressing, all the way. It’s got a spark of hope in there, for sure. The darkness, after all, isn’t really darkness unless you’ve got some light to contrast with it. But the novel makes it clear that that spark of hope is hard-won, and not easily achieved, and getting to it can and WILL hurt. But it exists. It can be created. One just has to stop being afraid, and commit. And if more people did that, then maybe our current world’s bleak outlook wouldn’t be so bleak after all.

Overall, this novel was a great reminder that there are still writers out there who respect their readers and their own creativity enough to really go full tilt with whatever style they’re aiming for without thinking about catering to the most common readership denominator. Readers who are too smooth-brained to cope with the style; who are unwilling to embrace genuinely morally ambiguous characters because they need black-and-white levels of simplicity to “like” a character; and who are not mature enough to accept that fiction that’s not purely escapist can be enjoyable need to either walk away from this and leave it to the rest of us. Hopefully when they’ve grown up enough, they’ll come back and give it a shot.