Split Image
is best read cold, and this review is loaded with spoilers. Read ahead at your
own peril and rest assured it is fantastic. But if you insist…
“It occurred to me—and this was my
first conscious thought upon ‘awakening’—that the crows did not object to the
carnage. Of course not. They were scavengers and were impatiently waiting their
opportunity. Even so, I could not entirely dispel the notion that they were
judging me—small black magistrates, feathery clerics.”
The idea is Andrew
Neville’s; a failed playwright, three early critical successes and nothing
since, making his living as an editor of a corporate newsletter. On a whim he
travels to the woods of northern Wisconsin to the primitive hunting cabin of a
friend. It is autumn, and deer are in season. He takes an old bow and its
matching arrows from the cabin. He doesn’t expect a kill, but when a buck cuts
his trail a lusty greed overtakes him. The deer is wounded, and while tracking
it Andrew comes to a man cleaning a buck.
Andrew believes the deer
is his, but the man calmly and reasonably claims it. The two have a cold
exchange of words; at the end Andrew kills the other. He doesn’t remember the
actual killing, but Andrew knows he did. He cleans up the cabin, disposes of
the clothing and other evidence and returns to Chicago. A few days later he
learns the man’s identity, and realizes, for the first time, he once knew the
man. They were in the same theater company, and while Andrew failed as a writer
his victim found significant success in Hollywood.
Andrew, after meeting his
victim’s widow at the funeral, calculatingly insinuates himself into the dead
man’s life. He moves into the boat house on his wooded estate, wears his
clothes, befriends his only child, and smoothly woos his wife. The only hold up
is a despicable man named Roland Scheiss—
“‘Scheiss means
‘shit’ in German, doesn’t it?’”
—hired by the murdered
man’s parents to prove his widow, and by extension, Andrew Neville killed him.
Scheiss is loathsome. He is filthy, crude, and corrupt. His game is blackmail,
and he begins calling Andrew at odd moments of the night threatening, cajoling,
taunting. Andrew remains calm, but his sanity begins to unravel; he converses
with his victim in the dark hours, and small meaningless events begin to weigh
heavily, and finally his narrative turns suspect; is the tale truly as it is
being told, or is the reader being deceived?
Split Image
is a fine novel. It is dark, riveting, and curious. It is as much literature as
commercial. It weaves an enticing mixture of Edgar Allan Poe—think “The
Tell-Tale Heart”—Alfred Hitchcock, and a 1950’s Gold Medal novel. Andrew
Neville is a cold, almost empty narrator, who is as interesting, and enigmatic
as any character in popular literature. The prose is sparse, poetic and
meaningful. It is also satisfying, thought-provoking, and damn good.
Split Image
is Ron Faust’s tenth published novel. It was published in 1997 by Forge as a
hardcover. It is currently available as a trade paperback and ebook from Turner
Publishing.
1 comment:
This was a great recommendation! A book that stays with you long after you have finished the final page. An unsung classic!
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