The Hell Screens: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Obsessive Horror
Review: Alvin Lu has written a first novel that inextricably combines a rich and unnerving spirit world with the very real actions of an elusive serial murderer. The result is the kind of labyrinthine story telling which never fails to entrance.

Set in modern Taipei, the story is ostensibly the tale of Cheng-Ming, a Chinese-American researcher who is drawn into and seduced by the superstitions and myths of the city. We are treated to an ever darker study of of the Oriental spirit world, as we move through layers of myth and malevolence. This world intrudes upon and is intruded on by modern Taipei. We see ceremonies in sneakers and sacred comic books. Signs and portents appear everywhere.

The novel is tremendously atmospheric, gaining momentum as the world he moves thru gradually overwhelms Cheng-Ming's westernized sensibilities. At some point Cheng-Ming ceases to be an academic in search of signs and clues and becomes an obsessive seeker after knowledge which is always just beyond his reach.

The Hell Screens is far more than the typical serial killer horror story, combining the raw action and realities of murderous violence with a refined psychological study of a wanderer in the mist. Prepare for a truly unusual, enjoyable experience.

Rating:
Summary: Obsessive Horror
Review: Alvin Lu has written a first novel that inextricably combines a rich and unnerving spirit world with the very real actions of an elusive serial murderer. The result is the kind of labyrinthine story telling which never fails to entrance.

Set in modern Taipei, the story is ostensibly the tale of Cheng-Ming, a Chinese-American researcher who is drawn into and seduced by the superstitions and myths of the city. We are treated to an ever darker study of of the Oriental spirit world, as we move through layers of myth and malevolence. This world intrudes upon and is intruded on by modern Taipei. We see ceremonies in sneakers and sacred comic books. Signs and portents appear everywhere.

The novel is tremendously atmospheric, gaining momentum as the world he moves thru gradually overwhelms Cheng-Ming's westernized sensibilities. At some point Cheng-Ming ceases to be an academic in search of signs and clues and becomes an obsessive seeker after knowledge which is always just beyond his reach.

The Hell Screens is far more than the typical serial killer horror story, combining the raw action and realities of murderous violence with a refined psychological study of a wanderer in the mist. Prepare for a truly unusual, enjoyable experience.

Rating:
Summary: Cultural Collisions: Locus, Taipei
Review: When we in the western world think of China and Chinese spritiual beliefs, we tend to think of the lone sage meditating on the fog-entrenched mountains with lush pine greenery supplying the mist for his mysterious knowledge. Such an image is, of course, more two-dimensional than the brush-paintings we have seen this sage inhabit.

In the noise and chaos and odors of the city--and not just any city, this is the simultaneously more modernly western and traditionally eastern Taipei, Taiwan--and see what "spirit" means to the authentic characters in Alvin Lu's novel "Hell Screens". By the end of the novel, if you've paid attention, you notice that everything has come together in a hodge-podge of past & present, colonialism and nativism, body and spirit, and, yes, life and death.

This is no simple novel. Many times I found myself scratching my head, or my chin, wondering if this book were taking me anywhere I could afford to go. If I had not ever lived in Taipei myself, I probably wouldn't have picked up this novel. But now that I have, and have been forced to read it with both my eyes open & still not know if my contact lenses have been cursed or blessed, I can only recommend this book to anyone who doesn't balk at letting the head swim while the world (oh, but which world?) explodes.

I can't prove it, but I think the narrator's name Cheng-ming is a reference to the Confucian concept of the Rectification of Names. If yours is a world where such alleged rectification has long-ago shattered, leaving you to sweep up the pieces, then buy a plane-ticket to Taipei and bring this book along with you.