Book Review: The Elementals by Michael McDowell

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“Savage mothers eat their children up!”

📚

The Elementals is a gothic horror novel that opens on a sweltering end-of-May Wednesday in Mobile, Alabama, as the Savage and McRay families, intertwined by marriage, attend the funeral of the Savage family matriarch. Following a gruesome and bizarre funerary ritual, the plot then follows the clan on their summer relocation to Beldame, an identical trio of isolated Victorian mansions situated together and facing different directions on Alabama’s Gulf Coast. Built by a Savage ancestor in 1875, Beldame turns into an island at high tide, and only two of the three mansions house occupants. The third — unoccupied for as long as anyone can remember — has been overrun by a huge, glittering white sand dune that has morphed it into a morbidly fascinating, partially buried time capsule.

Featuring an intriguing cast of characters, The Elementals packs a huge punch in only 218 pages. Fascinatingly gruesome family history lore predating Mobile’s existence feeds directly into the storyline’s grisly contemporary continuation, the horror of which is perfectly offset by bizarrely hilarious moments and witty banter that actually make the reader laugh out loud. Similarly, the oppressive Alabama heat feels almost tangible, while the mouthwatering, food-related descriptions add an almost cozy element to the mix. And while some portions are terrifying, appalling, and absolutely page-turning, others function as a purposeful slow burn, drawing the mysterious sense of foreboding and tension out and making the reader itch to get back to the (dark) heart of the matter.

After devouring Michael McDowell’s Southern gothic masterpiece, Blackwater, I was really excited to dive into The Elementals and thrilled to have it chosen as the June/July Gothic Ghouls Book Club selection. This book is loaded with fantastic gothic elements and memorable characters, including Odessa Red, longtime employee of the Savage family who, as noted in the book’s prologue, “serves as the novel’s ‘Van Helsing’ figure,” and India McRay, a precocious and sometimes snarky 13-year-old who immediately aims to unravel Beldame’s secrets (and whose storytelling, one-liners, and interactions with her father provide some of the funniest moments in the book).

This is a macabre and creative take on the haunted house unlike any I’ve read before that further solidifies my intention to read as many of Michael McDowell’s books as I can get my hands on. It will, without a doubt, make for a fascinating book club discussion, and its grim and funny moments will haunt my thoughts for years to come. It was also exciting and satisfying to see shades of McDowell’s humor here that are so apparent in the screenplays he wrote for Beetlejuice and Clue, two of this reader’s all-time favorite movies.

❤Amanda

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