Tom Ahern; The Petrus Borel Stories
Series No.: NAF 21
ISBN: 978-1557130280, Pages:
A Sun & Moon title.
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Blades sever sexual organs; a man slowly boils his wife in a vat as he strips her body of flesh; two friends duel to their deaths; a student with a gun pointed to his head, within which he imagines a vision of his lover with an orangutan mounted on her shoulders, pulls the trigger—these are not tales for the faint-hearted.
Based on his notion of the infamous contes immoraux of Petrus Borel and the few “bonechips of plot” left by Borel’s biographer, Enid Starkie, these new tales at once capture the tone of Borel’s “seven bitter tales” and his hatred of mankind, and accost the reader with yet new grotesqueries. Even the author muses on why he wanted to rebirth such horrific stories.
Perhaps these tales—like Borel’s originals—serve as a sort of exorcism; by presenting us with the physicality of evil hidden in our hearts, we can better comprehend how to control such forces. As in the stories of Edgar Allen Poe, moreover, there is true wit and humor that lies always within the horrific that permits us to otherwise lead very ordinary lives. Perhaps no justification is needed; for these are powerful tales, absolutely spellbinding in their detail of the dress and paint of immorality, and brilliantly written besides.