And Death Dreamt Us All
by Cheryl Anne Gardner
Twisted Knickers Publications
ISBN: 978-0982214541
Copyright © December 2011
$7.99 Paperback
$2.99 Kindle
138 Pages

ABOUT:

Rowan lives at the edge of reality. After witnessing a terrible childhood tragedy, her life has evolved into a shifting state of death and decay. Barely a night without restlessness, barely a breath without torment, she exists at the edge, her mind merely a footfall away from the abyss. Within that abyss stirs a creature so vicious, so evil, and it lies in wait, staring back at her, waiting for her to fall.

REVIEW:

Having read almost all of Cheryl Anne Gardner’s books, I always look forward to a new one and try to approach it with a clear mind and give it my full attention. This is because Mrs. Gardner’s novellas are often philosophical, poetic, and downright challenging to read. Her prose are full of lyricism and imagery that you will find both stunning and disturbing. And Death Dreamt Us All is no different.

Our protagonist is Rowan, a crime scene photographer, who convinces herself that she is numb to what she captures through the lens. She attempts to remain undisturbed by the human horror and atrocities that she snaps photos of. However, Rowan is instead disturbed by her ability to see evil, envisioning the killers right there who have committed the brutality, seeing everything through their eyes.

In real life, Rowan is sleeping with her therapist, Killy.  It’s a love-hate relationship fed my liquor, pills, and intense sex. Those who easily blush might want to turn on the fan and pour themselves a glass of ice water before sitting down with this book.

Gardner makes no apologies for the way her characters treat each other, emotionally or physically.  But she does have a sense of humor at times which cannot go unappreciated. There is one chapter where Rowan visits a strip club which had me laughing out loud. Her use of the most foul images and descriptions of not just a stripper’s body, but of the clientele who frequent this place, right down to the gay Adonis bartender, read so vividly like I was right there in the middle of it all.

Never one to be wax-poetic, the author gives equal treatment to the beauty and the grotesque.  At times reminiscent of Poe himself, visual sketches themselves would practically rob you of the sheer essence in art with words that Gardner has such a talent for.  There is one scene where a raven actually lands on the hood of Rowan’s car.  Those well versed in the classics can easily see where Gardner draws her inspiration. Here talent is evident in quotes like this from her lead female character:

While wallowing in the chaos of my life, I’ve come to know one true thing. I have seen the world. I have seen the demons: Formless. Timeless. Faith in absentia. I have seen absolute darkness. This is the only reality, the only truth I know. I feel as if I am just beginning to see a faint glimpse of the future – the real future. The end of days. I’m not getting it in any finite detail, but it is perceptible even in the dim light. I can see the action, the reaction, and the consequence, and I have become dreadfully aware of everything around me. I’ve always feared that someday I might be plagued by madness. It happens often enough in my profession, but I don’t think this is madness. One cannot be self-aware and mad at the same time. Can a madman know they’re mad?

And some may think, like her characters, this author is mad. Her writing is definitely not for the faint of heart. Like Poe, like Shirley Jackson even, she celebrates and studies the human condition, whittling it down to the bare bones and blood drops that frighten us but remind us what we are all made of.

At less than 200 pages, you’d think I could get through Cheryl Anne Gardner’s latest book in a day.  Having read and reviewed her two previous novellas, I knew I better clear at least a week from my reading schedule to devote my time and attention to her work.

Logos took two weeks, as I devoted one single evening to each chapter. Each page is packed with detailed prose, and poetry even, that reads like Psalms from the Bible. I believe her protaganist, Selena, says it best in the first chapter:

Sometimes you just have to have faith in that which you cannot explain, and sometimes, you just have to do what you are told to do. We work for the greater anarchy of the Universe. We answer to no one, and it doesn’t have to make sense.

That said, Gardner views her writing as artwork, and indeed it is. It is her heart and soul on paper.  She offers up no apologies, and you aren’t always going to understand it.  But as a whole, it’s hard not to walk away with the beauty and rage she intended you to feel and see by the time you finish the last page. I began by wanting to know what the hell “Logos” was. Our narrator explains early on:

The Aenid is an epic poem, glorifying the heroic greatness of Rome. This greatness, however it seemed to permeate every fiber of my life, was not was absorbed me so profoundly. What held my heart and mind in suspended animation was the Stoic philosophy imbued through its text – a philosophy which held that the Universe was deliberately patterned, and within that complex pattern of mystery, truth, and lies, there existed a secret balance between order and chaos. This balance had a larger purpose and meaning, so the Stoics called it logos, and it was believed that this Logos originated in the divine mind of the Universe.

And so Selena begins to obsess over all the answers to her questions which she believes can be found in the Logos, answers that can set her free.  It is here that our journey with her begins. She is a child of Rome, which is at war, and she becomes a slave to a family.  But her masters appreciate her thirst for education.  As she matures, she purges herself of the past.  Her birth name escapes her.

And at twenty, we find her working in a brothel and wooing the heart of a soldier from which she acquires a certain sword which she shall wield upon helpless souls for centuries to come.  She is indeed the fourth horseman, death, and she reaps souls for a thousand years until she finds herself in modern-day London and falling in love with an artist named Ian. Can love defeat death?  Or is it that love remains, even after death has come?  Gardner leaves that to the reader, and to Selena’s immortal soul, to decide.

With Selena’s immortality, Gardner transcends space and time, taking the reader on a bizarre journey where you witness Celt sacrifice and Pagan rituals, with death as your own personal tour guide.  Selena  pulls the trigger.  Selena slits the throat.  Selena lights the match. She takes life without mercy.  It is not her job to be merciful:

The years seemed endless. There was no afterlife for me, no rest, no divine transcendence, no dreams of eternal peace, nothing. Stumbling backwards and forwards, time had lost all significance or purpose. It taunted me with its irony, and I had only the power to remain still and watch and wait…wait for the change in seasons…wait for the stars to burn out in the sky.

Only love can end Selena’s own suffering, if you call it that. And boy does she suffer.  But until then…

Once a soul has surrendered to the urgings of their shadow, it takes a rare miracle indeed to bring them back. I was no such miracle. Yes, I answered their prayers – with deceit… Ritual. Living is a ritual, and so is dying.

Gardner does not romanticize death here. Logos is far from Victorian.  She does not baptize us with the story of Revelation either.  In a sense, she merely asks what if death was a woman?  And if so, how would death be different?  Selena may have harvested souls for centuries, she may have been witness to war and famine throughout history, but on the inside she still has a heart that yearns for more.

The history books don’t know her.  The Bible may have mentioned her.  But in the end, as Selena says, she is still the “sword in the shadows.”  And the pale horse riding off into the sunset doesn’t just happen in fairy tales.

As I previously stated, Logos is best read in small doses so that you can absorb each and every word. Gardner does not waste any.  Her prose are brilliant, and the imagery she paints will indeed haunt you. Part history, part religion, part supernatural horror, part romance, Gardner has written her best work yet. If Milton were alive today, he’d probably read this book and rededicate Paradise Lost to Cheryl Anne Gardner.

It is ironic, is it not, how everything seems so poetic in death, yet we rarely see the poetry in life?

I couldn’t think of a more truer statement than this, spoken by a God-like king on the first page of Cheryl Anne Gardner’s book, The Splendor of Antiquity.  True, we’d expect our Gods to say such profound things and the narrator of  this book does not disappoint with such expectations. After all, he has been dead for centuries and our lead female, an archaeologists named Joliette Deneauve, is about to dig him up.

Gardner has magnificently given the book a theme about faith. The reader will know that right from the start.  But this is also a book about passion, and there are two kinds here.  First the passion, both physical and emotional, felt between two people.  This is evident between Joliette and her fellow archaeologist named Olivier Botton. But then there’s the feeling of passion that one has when they find themselves so truly captivated by some thing that also steals their heart away.  For many, this second passion is the love and faith one feels for God, or should I say a God. And so Joliette finds herself torn between the two.  She struggles against her connection with Olivier and is overcome with passion for the dead king she discovers deep in the Siberian mountains.

Tittering on the brink of fantasy, Gardner presented herself with quite a challenge when writing this book. Olivier and Joliette are both human so conversation between the two would obviously come quite naturally.  However, remember this book is narrated by the dead king. Though he speaks to the reader, he cannot verbally speak to Joliette.  But the one sided conversations Joliette has with his skull will send shivers up your spine.  In Chapter 5, Joliette uses technology to sculpt a model of what the king might have looked like, a beautiful metaphor for God breathing life into each of us, but held at bay by the fact Joliette uses technology, science, to recreate the features of the king:

“In the simplest and most poetic of terms, she believed, devoutly in her heart, that a thing, once created, should never die. “Doesn’t matter what that thing is: flesh, stone, or bone,” she said. “Even the idea that sparked the courage to create in the first place has merit beyond the moment and should never fade from the world. Neither the memory nor the emotion behind it should ever be cast away and forgotten as if it had never existed, as if it had meant nothing.” Everything means something in a metaphysical sense, even the trivial things. At least they did to Joliette. Restoring to me my face, my name, and my honor was the least trivial of all.

I loved the fact that this book was also not too philosophical despite the boundaries of both religion and science that are explored. Yes, Joliette is consumed with her work as a scientist and shows great passion for her work, but her obsession with the king and with finding out who he is also consumes her.  Just as churchgoers long to be closer to God but denounce the scientific explanations behind who we are or how we got here, there’s always that boundary between stories.  Joliette never sways in either direction. We are a culture of secrets and history.  Gardner reminds us that societies long before us bury their secrets, their sadness, and their past, only to have later societies dig them up all over again:

Over the course of a lifetime, one might never be able to calculate how many tears could be shed on account of death.

When Olivier reveals that their research has not brought them any closer to the real identity of the king, Joliette vows to return to the dig site in an attempt to learn more, growing even more obsessed with the unnamed king.  The king tells us he’s already been haunting her dreams, but Joliette returning to his grave is the chance he needs to finally reveal himself to her. Joliette’s fate is oddly revealed to the reader early on in Chapter 2:

As the passing of the world slips down through fractures in the muck-covered gravel of time, everything is absorbed into everything else. Every bit of matter, whether it be rock, stone, or bone becomes a part of antiquity. Mist, magic, or trembling lips, everything transcends in an elemental eclipse

Everything.

Every atom, every slight or obtuse particle of dust, and every swirling cloud of detritus will eventually posses the memory of everything else, etched into its core.

And so it’s not about having to choose between what we believe and what we know is real. Joliette simply accepts her fate and succumbs to it, but not before her and the king share a secret that Joliette chooses to keep to herself. Despite research, despite science, despite the opportunity to be known for something great, sometimes it is just about faith and that which we hold so dear inside ourselves.

This is the second book by Cheryl that I’ve read.  I love the nontraditional 8×5 size she uses, which is offered by CreateSpace.  It’s perfect for a novella and gives the book a nice pocketbook feel to it that I really admire. For authors publishing work under 200 pages, you should definitely give this size some consideration. And while you are at it, you should invest in a copy of Cheryl’s book simply as a guideline to following for formatting.  The front matter and body of text are flawless. Great story!  Great physical book!  Indie authors should take note because this is a perfect example to follow.

Ever lived in an apartment where the walls were a bit too thin and you often overheard music from the next apartment?  Did you ever wonder who was listening to that music and why?  What did the music do for them?  How did it make them feel?  What were they doing while listening to it?  Did you ever overhear too much of a conversation?  Or maybe you just heard bits and pieces and you were left to fill in the missing pieces?

Did you ever overhear an argument that sounded detrimental to someone, and yet your curious mind just listened instead of turning up the television?  You didn’t do anything to stop it.  Did you ever wonder if someone was on the other side listening to you?  While the majority of my questions suggest you could somehow judge Cheryl Anne Gardner’s book, The Thin Wall, by its title, if you did you’d be wrong.

At 124 pages, Gardner embraces the novella format, a particular type of book I have to admit I haven’t read in a while.  And in her book, the reader is treated to those brief scenarios, those un-muffled pieces of conversation you could hear through the wall once you turned off your television.  I was constantly eager to turn the page to find out what would happen next, only to find the characters in a new setting and having new conversations on a different day without any of the “in between” movements that often push a longer novel along.  Gardner has whittled the story down to its bare essence and given you, quite purely, only what you need to know.

The story revolves around five friends and the relationships that mingle between them, and Gardner does not just scratch the surface of their friendships. She tunnels through the very veins of each of these characters, carefully dissecting the differences that lie between their hearts and their souls.  Laleana O-Reilly, a librarian slightly obsessed with the Marquis de Sade, finds herself torn between two very different men.  To make things worse, the two men are close friends within the group of five.  Julian,  the dominant one of the bunch, visits Laleana’s bed with maddening “monsteresque” fury.  The two explore the brutal realms that lie between pleasure and pain.  But their blood-laced habits soon run Laleana spiritually dry, and she finds herself bored with Julian’s lust as her heart desires something much much more.

The “something more” is a shy introvert named Ioan.  He’s quiet.  He’s an artist.  And he spends his nights burning his paintings of nude women because he just “can’t get the blood right.”  Might I add that several of these paintings are portraits Laleana herself has posed for.  Between posing for Ioan, having afternoon tea with her girlfriend Cecile, and hanging out in the projection booth of  a porn theater with an addict named Tom, Laleana ignores their warnings about Julian as they spy the healing cuts on her back.  But an awkward and intense moment shared with Ioan one night will soon change everything.

Brimming with passion and sexual tension, their story lines often reveal more to the reader than what is written right on the page in front of you.  Laleana’s love for literature and her own writing habits give the book a certain depth outside of the submission and dominance her and her friends explore.  The book even ends with a short story written by Laleana entitled “The Muse and the Alchemist.”

By blatantly presenting her characters with such honesty, Gardner commands her readers to question their own inner identity, as presented in these lines from the last chapter:

A person is defined by what they do and what they don’t do. It really is that simple.

Our lives belong to us and no one else.

Were we better people for the self-imposed trials and tribulations we had endured? Had we gained anything appreciable from the choices we had made, the blood we had shed, the secrets we had chosen to reveal, or the shadows we had confronted in blind faith?  We would all like to think so.

True salvation lies in this knowledge.  It lies in the cruelly eroded crevices of a cold thin wall.

Cheryl Anne Gardner tears those walls down!  She has given us a brilliant character study focusing on where the lines between sex and friendship blur.  It’s a place you don’t want to go to, a conversation you don’t want to overhear, but curiosity will have its way with you.  And when it does, The Thin Wall is the book you should treat yourself to.

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