 “Beguiling tale of a society which worship carnivorous houses” There is nothing better than reviewing a book, with little in the way of expectations, and then realising you have stumbled upon a little gem. Andrew J Stone’s highly imaginative 140-page novella “All Hail the House Gods” led me along one of those rare literary paths and I was genuinely disappointed to reach the end of. I wrapped it up almost in one sitting, such was my tunnel vision into his strange world. As I approached the final pages, it looked likely to be heading towards an infuriating cliff-hanger, or potential sequel, however Andrew Stone concluded it beautifully with a final page which remained with me long after I finished. I will lay my cards on the table; I really loved “All Hail the House Gods” and highly recommend you give it a try. If you read fifty novels in 2019 you are not going to find many with an odder story than this beguiling treat. It’s set in a world where houses are treated as gods over humans, the houses are also mobile, being able to move around and live on the other side of a bridge (‘Harmony Crossing’) from where the humans of the story are based. The people live in tents, existing in a never-ending cycle where they continually have to procreate, boosting a dwindling population. Once a woman gives birth, she keeps the baby for thirty days, before it is removed and sent to a new home (the ‘Offspring Oasis’), where all the children live together, almost as if they were orphans. However, the parents are permitted to see their children for thirty minutes once a month. After giving birth, if the woman is not pregnant again within a couple of months she (and her husband) are effective breaking the law and are reported and checked out and quizzed upon whether they are having enough sex. “All Hail the House Gods” has a highly unsettling attitude towards sex. Why must couples procreate all the time? Why must they have children all the time? At regular intervals the society has a lottery of children’s names, in which the ‘winning’ name is sacrificed to the House Gods lurking over the bridge. This regular sacrifice is a great honour and the parents of the children eaten by the House Gods are expected to be very proud of their family’s great sacrifice. The core of the novella centres upon a clever concept: many of us would be okay when it is the child of another family being the chosen sacrifice, however, we might not feel the same when our kid’s name is called, no matter what the powers that be believe. So, there is a quiet rebellion in the air. Worshipping mobile-houses which are living entities is a bizarre one, but Andrew Stone brings the idea to live startingly well in a story that rarely wastes a word, and also drip feeds how the current situation came to pass. I was fascinated by the occasional sneaky reference to the House God War of fine-hundred years earlier and how the sacrifice of children became a way of negotiating a partial truce between mankind and house. Then further revelations that there are different generations of houses, some of which might not actually eat people! There was just so much going on in this wonderfully crafted story. Back to sex… Andrew Stone uses his own vocabulary for this sort of stuff, for instance, the penis is referred to as the ‘plank’ and it is against the law not to have sex at least twice a day (as dictated by the ‘Coupling Caucus’). Soups with strong aphrodisiacs are common-place to ensure the males are continually rising to the occasion! Children are taught from a very young age to experiment with sex as much as possible. Pre-pubescent children are told to try to practice this, even if they are too young to ejaculate or have no emotional attachment to the opposite sex. There is one powerful, but excruciating scene, when a father quizzes his son on what he has/hasn’t done in the bedroom department, when he is obviously very uncomfortable and not at all ready. The novella opens with Katie and Kurt about to hand over their latest child, Kurt Jr, to the ‘Collector’ to join his elder siblings Haley, Jude, Mitch, Ruthie and Paul in the ‘Offspring Oasis’ where sadly their children do not recognise them particularly well. Why would they when they only see them for thirty minutes per month? Interestingly, and cleverly, the story is told in the first person by Kurt who for the most part is happy to go along with the flow of things and follow the lead of his wife. As most people are, until one of their own children are sacrificed to the House Gods. In actual fact, Kurt gives us a hint of where the story is heading in the opening sentence: “Katie wasn’t always an anarchist. Or rather, as she likes to put it, a political activist.” “All Hail the House Gods” was a clever, original, curious and moving read which I urge you to check out. I have never come across this author before but will certainly be investigating his other fiction. It is an outstanding example of how that in fiction sometimes ‘less can be more’. Other writers may have spent a hundred pages laying the ground strokes in their world-building in a story such as this, whereas Andrew Stone does it cleverly with the minimal of effort. A truly excellent novella. Tony Jones ALL HAIL THE HOUSE GODS BY ANDREW J STONE A joy-ride of a read, Stone has created a compelling morality tale that's moral lies somewhere in tomorrow's déjà vu. Funny, sad, stunning in its imaginative realization, Andrew J. Stone's new novel is as topical, timely, and telling as a Freudian slip." —Laura Lee Bahr, author of Haunt and Angel Meat "Andrew Stone writes like a laser beam shot out of a unicorn horn. His books will alter your brain in the best possible way. If an LSD Bible had babies with a hand grenade poetry collection, you'd get what Stone can do. He's dazzling." —Brian Allen Carr, author of Sip and Motherfucking Sharks Long live the House Gods! Author Andrew J. Stone (The Mortuary Monster) envisions a unique dystopia where harmony and happiness means feeding our children to sentient, human-eating houses. Can the House Gods be defeated? One family is about to find out . .   Comments are closed.
|
Archives
May 2023
|
RSS Feed
|
|