BLUNT TRIUMPHS WITH INTENSE TALE
Dark undercurrents and untold secrets power this psychological thriller
In precise, delicate, building fashion, author Blunt makes clear that, as with Heloise and Abelard, none of this will end well.
In any competition of techniques, blunt violence — the staple of far too much fiction (and life) — comes up a distant emotional second when it’s up against the rumble of sinister, unspecific suspense.
Alfred Hitchcock knew that, and so does Giles Blunt, the Toronto author of an award-winning series of atmospheric cop novels set in Northern Ontario.
Now he has shifted his attention to New York, where he used to live, and a stand-alone novel driven by an apparently gentle and compassionate man with an increasingly powerful obsession.
Brother William, who’s in his early 30s, used to be a student named Peter Meehan, before something propelled him to the safely out-of-the-world confines of the Our Lady of Peace monastery in upstate New York and its small community of hard-working, prayerful men.
That unknown “something” thrums throughout the novel, a mystery rarely referred to, but always just under the surface.
For some 10 years, dutiful, obedient and devout, Brother William performs his farm chores and his religious rituals with discipline and dedication, a calm and helpful presence.
He is also the monastery librarian and naturally obeys, however reluctantly, when he’s ordered to help a poet researching the romantic and anguished story of lovers Heloise and Abelard.
Lauren Wolfe is attractive, inquisitive and sad.
William thinks she may even be tragic, judging by the scar on her wrist — the “hesitation cut” of the title — that signifies a suicide attempt.
Immediately mesmerized, he tries not to keep watching her as they go about their separate pursuits in the library.
He keeps a pencil she leaves behind, and tries to fit his own teeth into the marks hers have left on it. Her image enters his prayers. And suddenly, what he tells himself is a desire to protect her from whatever has caused her to be such an apparently solitary, sad little person, has become his passion.
He runs off from the monastery, casting aside his vows and his community.
In New York, where she lives and where he used to live, he determines to rescue and save her, although he doesn’t know from what, or whom.
He even rents a closet-sized room in the building where she has her own larger apartment, and cultivates an acquaintanceship.
She doesn’t at first recognize him as the monastery’s Brother William.
This is all obviously creepy, weird and eerily pathetic, observed from the outside. To William/Peter, it’s love. To Lauren — well, to Lauren he’s a helpful neighbour, a fan of her work and, more ominously, a handy sexual partner as she grieves for a lover who has lapsed out of touch.
His brother warns him that Lauren is too troubled — a mad, bad woman — to attach himself to, but he won’t be deterred from caring for her.
Nor is he moved when the monastery prior arrives, trying to persuade him to return to the community, with hints that William/Peter needs to save himself from repeating whatever event sent him to the monastery in the first place.
In precise, delicate, building fashion, author Blunt makes clear that, as with Heloise and Abelard, none of this will end well.
Obsession is neither love nor romance, and calm repression may cover a multitude of crimes, not just sins.
The result is a brilliantly written, quiet nightmare of a novel, another triumph for Blunt.