Someone on Facebook read The Beast and Other Tales by Jóusè d'Arbaud and enjoyed it and that encouraged me to read it, and thanks to you if that was you (I don’t remember). The first story and longest tale is the main attraction of the book. Still, the three other surprising and moving stories also deal with the inexplicable, the vastness of the universe (even on the most local scale), loneliness, and guilt. They are all set in a place I’d more or less otherwise never heard of: the Camargue Delta, a region where the Rhöne River meets the Mediterranean, a flat delta of shrubs and grass and water and mud south and east of the town of Arles, France.
Written in 1926, “The Beast of Vacarés” is a horror story of sorts, reminiscent to me of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (obviously) and Arthur Machen’s Hill of Dreams (more subtly). It’s a tale with a moody sweep of landscape that features an profoundly odd encounter between an isolated bull herder and something (someone?) that, well, I won’t say any more about. The back cover of the book does say more, and what it says feels both right and wrong in its implications of what the encounter involves. The tale is not going to provide easy answers, or a lot of comfort. Powerful, strange, unforgettable.
If you’re looking for a story to take you to a place far out of the world you recognize, there’s one right here.
No comments:
Post a Comment