First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women

Martha Wilson is Canadian correspondent for the Japan Times (Tokyo) and
a Toronto-based freelance editor and writer.

Early in Eric McCormack’s dizzying new novel, the narrator informs us,
“[i]n my journey, I experienced things few, if any, other inhabitants
of this earth have ever had to undergo.” If anything, this is an
understatement. Andrew Halfnight is a kind of traveling apocalypse.
Devastation and ruin—of whole towns and islands, as well as of
individuals—follow him as he flees across the globe toward an
ever-shrinking series of possible destinations. Save for the periodic
appearances of an elusive sailor, Andrew is profoundly alone; his
relatives are busy killing one another or dying off in other horrific
ways.

Andrew must battle constraints and puzzle-ments that only a gothic
imagination could dream up. “So it was that Uncle Norman came smiling
home to his murderer,” he relates. “For the next week, I might
almost have believed Lizzie’s attempt to kill him had been a
misunderstanding, she was now so kind to him, so loving.” Later,
Andrew finds himself in the House of Mercy orphanage. “The inside wall
... was made of ordinary glass and had a glass door. The nuns, who
worked in pairs, sat invisible in the central towers, and could see into
every room just as though they were looking into a doll’s house.”

Half fable, half nightmare, this is a dazzling freak show of a book.