If someone wants a masterclass in writing compelling and realistic female characters, then surely reading and dissecting Elizabeth Engstrom’s fiction would be a great step to take. Her stories excel at probing the emotional depths of her characters, at piercing the veils and curtains of their psychology, and framing that exploration through clever manipulation of genre tropes that reflect the truths underlying female experiences in society.
The second Paperbacks from Hell volume republished When Darkness Loves Us, a collection of two novellas from Engstrom that showcase those skills at female-character driven fiction across divergent types of horror. Already with the sixth release of the series, Valancourt Books double-dips into an author’s oeuvre by choosing Engstrom’s 1988 ‘vampire’ novel Black Ambrosia.
I place ‘vampire’ in quotes because, as the introduction to this release points out, it’s debatable whether the protagonist of Black Ambrosia is actually a vampire, merely imagines herself one, or if wishing/acting to be one simply makes one such a creature. There is a voice that speaks to Angelina, telling her what she is, what she should do. She can love, she can release people. And so she discovers killing, and embraces the force she believes herself to be.
Black Ambrosia is quiet, introspective and slowly draws the reader into the mind of its unreliable protagonist Angelina’s mind, slowly revealing the building consequences of her thoughts and actions. A surreal, dream-like uncertainty pervades everything the reader experiences through Angelina’s perspective, and so Engstrom intercuts the main text of the novel with the viewpoint of those she encounters, particularly the one man who comes to recognize Angelina for what she is and is willing to catch up to her, confront her, and stop her. Interestingly, his actions are also driven by a humanistic compassion to release her from the pain and brokenness of her life, not afar from the core desires of Angelina herself.
Engstrom portrays Angelina in a way that makes the reader sympathize and empathize with her brokenness and her murderous desires, by showing societal/relational interactions in her life that have contributed to forming Angelina as she is. Very often horror attempts a way to explain the ‘evil’ of its villain, but usually does so terribly, or unnecessarily. Here it is essential to the story Engstrom is telling, and she manages it superbly.
It may be because I just went to a screening of Jesús Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos last night, but my mind is now drawn to how Engstrom’s novel is an artistic and thematic written counterbalance to much of what Franco’s film is, with a feminist perspective rather than a work dominated by the male gaze on femininity. As much as Black Ambrosia plays with the tropes of vampire folklore and media, it also is an exploration of Angelina’s sexuality (both in a physical sense and an emotional one in her romantic or intimate connections to others.) Like a female vampire, she is inherently a woman alone, a creature isolated from others by her mind and behaviors. Yet she yearns for human contact and love, even if a twisted form her mind has created. The slow-burn, surreal aspects of Black Ambrosia also certainly vibe with Franco’s work.
I continue to be impressed by the diversity that the Paperbacks from Hell series offers: novels that are pulp fun to deeply complex works of literature. And at both ends of that spectrum, books that have been unfairly neglected or forgotten. Don’t miss out on Engstrom.
