Review: The Book of the Night, by Rhoda Lerman

Review: The Book of the Night, by Rhoda Lerman

by Rich Horton

I mentioned recently that in looking to see if this particular book -- recommended by Tim Walters -- was available in audio form, and instead I stumbled across the Campbell Memorial Award winner Radiomen, by Eleanor Lerman (no relation.) For The Book of the Night I had to read a physical copy! Which I have now done. (I should note that I read physical books at about a 10-1 ratio over audiobooks, and also that yes I do consider listening to an audiobook "reading" it.)

Not to bury the lede -- The Book of the Night (1984) is an astonishingly weird novel. It is set at a monastery on the island of Iona, in distant history, about 900 A.D. But from the beginning, with the monks rescuing an enormous (some 200 feet tall) woman being rescued (temporarily) from the ocean, which also yields a World War I soldier and Coca-Cola caps, it's clear that very strange things are going on. The woman warns of war in heaven before dying. And then the narrative shifts to a young girl, Celeste, who lives as a boy (women being forbidden in the monastery) with her insane hermit father; and it's no more "normal" from there forward. Besides the unstuck in time narrative, the prose is fascinating, playing linguistic games throughout. 

Rhoda Lerman (1936-2015) published six novels in her lifetime, with a posthumous work appearing in 2023. She was quite successful: her first novel, Call Me Ishtar, from 1973, which has the goddess in contemporary times wreaking havoc for feminist purposes, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer; and her later novels seem to have gotten consistently good notices. Most of her other novels seem to have been antically and often bitterly comic, such as The Girl That He Marries (1976), about a woman who figures out the tricks of getting a man to do her bidding -- and perhaps regrets it; and Jewish themes seem important, as with God's Ear (1989), also apparently a comic novel about a dead rabbi. Her most successful novel seems to have been Eleanor (1979), which also became a one-woman play -- it's about Eleanor Roosevelt and to me it seems by a long stretch her least interesting work. Later in her life she wrote a couple of memoirish books about her dogs.

Back to The Book of the Night. The main thread concerns Celeste's life on Iona. Her father, Manuel, left her mother (whom Celeste misses even as she still loves her rather dreadful father) and game to the monastery, presenting Celeste as a boy named CuRoi. The Abbot -- who turns out to be her grandfather -- is a mystical sort of Irish Christian, and there is a rival who wishes to hew closely to the leadership of Rome. So at one thematical level the book is about the clash between an older, more mystical Irish religion, with significant syncretic elements, and Roman Catholicism. (All of this arguably a strange choice for a seemingly very Jewish writer.) But the book is much weirder than that seems -- Rome has an army made up of Carthaginians, plus modern weapons like submachine guns, and seeminly airships as well. There are Ethiopian Catholics as well. 

Manuel's religion (or lack thereof) is even stranger. And he teaches Celeste strictly but oddly, and here again we see the timelessness of the book, for "non-linear thermodynamics" and "the uncertainty principle" are among the subjects; and too the strangeness: "What is the effect of the uncertainty principle on the fugue?" One of his methods -- repeated to great effect throughout the book -- is to string together eccentrically related words and phrases: "Zeus, Deus, juice, Jews, Yid, Druid, druse." "Methuselah, Medea, Medua, Medusa, Madonna." As Celeste grows, Manuel becomes more obsessed. A female Cook is hired, with consequences, and the Abbot's sister (armed with a submachine gun) visits as well. Celeste, or CuRoi, takes up duties in the monastery, mostly copying. And then some shocking events: a fire, killings, a transformation into a cow, a flying man, a new Abbot, too much more to mention, leading to a wild and transcendent conclusion.

It's a really remarkable effort. The linguistic inventions, the mystical speculations, the sex and death (I wonder if Alice Sheldon read this book -- at times it seems in sympathy with her work), the sheer wildness, the gods. It's unexpected everywhere -- not like any other novel I've read, not, unless I miss my guess, very much like anything else Lerman wrote. It can be a bit hard going at times, to be sure, but we shouldn't regret the work, for there are rewards.