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The Doloriad
Macabre, provocative, depraved, and unforgettable, The Doloriad marks the debut of Missouri Williams, a terrifyingly talented writer
In the wake of a mysterious environmental cataclysm that has wiped out the rest of humankind, the Matriarch and her brother, and the family descended from their incest, cling to existence on the edges of a ruined city. The Matriarch, ruling with fear and force, dreams of starting humanity over. Her children and the children they have with one another aren’t so sure. Surrounded by the silent forest and dead suburbs, they feel closer to the ruined world than to their parents. Nevertheless, they scavenge supplies, collect fuel, plant seeds, and attempt to cultivate the poisoned earth, brutalizing and caring for one another in equal measure. For entertainment, they watch old VHS tapes of a TV show called Get Aquinas in Here, in which a problem-solving medieval saint faces down a sequence of logical and ethical dilemmas. But as the Matriarch’s fragile order breaks down and her control over the sprawling family weakens, the world of the freewheeling television saint Aquinas and that of the family begin to melt together with terrible consequences.
Told in extraordinary, intricate prose that moves with a life of its own, at times striking with the power of physical force, Missouri Williams’s debut novel is a blazingly original document of depravity and salvation. Gothic and strange, moving and disquieting, and often hilarious, The Doloriad stares down, with narrowed eyes, humanity’s unbreakable commitment to life.
In the wake of a mysterious environmental cataclysm that has wiped out the rest of humankind, the Matriarch and her brother, and the family descended from their incest, cling to existence on the edges of a ruined city. The Matriarch, ruling with fear and force, dreams of starting humanity over. Her children and the children they have with one another aren’t so sure. Surrounded by the silent forest and dead suburbs, they feel closer to the ruined world than to their parents. Nevertheless, they scavenge supplies, collect fuel, plant seeds, and attempt to cultivate the poisoned earth, brutalizing and caring for one another in equal measure. For entertainment, they watch old VHS tapes of a TV show called Get Aquinas in Here, in which a problem-solving medieval saint faces down a sequence of logical and ethical dilemmas. But as the Matriarch’s fragile order breaks down and her control over the sprawling family weakens, the world of the freewheeling television saint Aquinas and that of the family begin to melt together with terrible consequences.
Told in extraordinary, intricate prose that moves with a life of its own, at times striking with the power of physical force, Missouri Williams’s debut novel is a blazingly original document of depravity and salvation. Gothic and strange, moving and disquieting, and often hilarious, The Doloriad stares down, with narrowed eyes, humanity’s unbreakable commitment to life.
224 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2022
About the author
Missouri Williams
2 books112 followersMissouri Williams is a writer and editor who lives in Prague. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Astra, Granta, and Five Dials. Her first book, The Doloriad, was published this year by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US and Dead Ink Books in the UK.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 665 reviews
April 26, 2023
The Doloriad is a remarkable work from Missouri Williams, a hauntingly grotesque novel set in the vicinity of Prague after a cataclysmic event has wiped out all but a remnant of human life. The remnant is primarily a single family, led by the matriarch, who endeavor to survive through repopulation and the creation of a new society in the matriarch's image. Williams shows humanity at its most depraved, with many of our worst impulses in full display. Reduced to its bare essence, humanity is revealed for what it is, vulgar and ultimately inconsequential. One of the more interesting themes is a commentary on human ethics - and Thomist ethics in particular - as humanity is stripped to its bare existence. Indeed, what is the role of ethics when humanity itself is on the verge of extinction. The prose is remarkable for a debut novel with strong echoes of Krasznahorkai, both formally and thematically. Others have detected passages reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard and parallels to Cormac McCarthy's work. Williams brings those forebears into conversation with more current climate fiction, with an aesthetic that is all her own. Erudite and literary, this is a book that rewards engagement.
February 4, 2023
A book with truly world-class prose that can disturb as easily as entrance.
This is a dense, literary novel thick with symbolism and themes. I don't suggest it for readers who aren't already fond of the more challenging end of the literary fiction spectrum. It's not as obscure as Ulysses, but it's in that ballpark. It's a heavy read but one that rewards intellectual curiosity.
The force of the author's intellect can be felt behind every line, and if you turn your back on it then prepare to be bludgeoned.
The story is variously violent, disturbing, mysterious, and intriguing. There are even moments of humour lurking.
I'm not sufficiently immersed in literary fiction and intellectualism of this sort to claim that I fully understood the various subtexts. I'm sure many allusions were lost on me. I did, however, feel that my time reading the novel was well spent and I probably added an IQ point for trying.
It feels like the sort of book that will either win all the literary prizes or drown amid the indifference of the wrong sort of audience.
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This is a dense, literary novel thick with symbolism and themes. I don't suggest it for readers who aren't already fond of the more challenging end of the literary fiction spectrum. It's not as obscure as Ulysses, but it's in that ballpark. It's a heavy read but one that rewards intellectual curiosity.
The force of the author's intellect can be felt behind every line, and if you turn your back on it then prepare to be bludgeoned.
The story is variously violent, disturbing, mysterious, and intriguing. There are even moments of humour lurking.
I'm not sufficiently immersed in literary fiction and intellectualism of this sort to claim that I fully understood the various subtexts. I'm sure many allusions were lost on me. I did, however, feel that my time reading the novel was well spent and I probably added an IQ point for trying.
It feels like the sort of book that will either win all the literary prizes or drown amid the indifference of the wrong sort of audience.
Join my Patreon
Join my 3-emails-a-year newsletter #prizes
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December 27, 2021
Incredibly cursed and evil!!!!!!!
March 28, 2022
I need to stop reading shite books fucks sake man
September 3, 2021
I’m actually glad to be the first person reviewing this on GR. And normally this would be because I’m excited to tell readers about an awesome new book I found, but this time it is to warn reader to stay far, far away from this flaming bag of…um…excrement.
The thing with being a completist…well, it’s kinda tedious, to be honest. It’s the sunken cost bias concept but in a book. Meaning you figure well, you already spent some time on the book, you might just finish it. And it’s almost never, ever worth it, either.
Take this waste of digital ink…I pretty much knew from the very first paragraph free image heavy overlong sentence prone first page this wasn’t going to be for me. But did I put it down? No. I persevered. Much to my shame and annoyance. And read the entire thing in one 230 minute or so bewildering sitting.
And bewildering it was…bewildering that a major publisher would produce this. That people will presumably read and enjoy this. That anyone would find it worthy of their time.
But those are all just vague opinions, what about specifics, you might ask? Well, specifically, this tediously dense dystopian nightmare is about an incestuous and partially deformed family of survivors who…well, just kind of exist. And this existence of theirs is so grotesque, so disgusting, so meaningless, that there’s no real reason for them to be alive and definitely no reason for them to have a book written about them.
And the frustrating thing here is that author actually has a nice way with words, but it’s overstylized into this mess, obviously deliberately. Definitely lamentably.
In a way it sort of reads like a kind of book that wins awards. One of those pretentiously unreadable tomes that critics tend to adore. Except that this one is especially vile, exceptionally viscerally vile. Not sure I ever used that word to describe a book, but reading this one, it was one of the first that came to mind.
And no, it isn't because I'm delicate or easy offended or dainty. I frequently read a variety of dark and scary things. It was just this terrible book.
This was a very sad waste of my time. And while there are some books you can not like but understand how someone might…with this one, I’m not sure how anyone can honestly enjoy it. Stay away, stay away. Thanks Netgalley.
This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/
The thing with being a completist…well, it’s kinda tedious, to be honest. It’s the sunken cost bias concept but in a book. Meaning you figure well, you already spent some time on the book, you might just finish it. And it’s almost never, ever worth it, either.
Take this waste of digital ink…I pretty much knew from the very first paragraph free image heavy overlong sentence prone first page this wasn’t going to be for me. But did I put it down? No. I persevered. Much to my shame and annoyance. And read the entire thing in one 230 minute or so bewildering sitting.
And bewildering it was…bewildering that a major publisher would produce this. That people will presumably read and enjoy this. That anyone would find it worthy of their time.
But those are all just vague opinions, what about specifics, you might ask? Well, specifically, this tediously dense dystopian nightmare is about an incestuous and partially deformed family of survivors who…well, just kind of exist. And this existence of theirs is so grotesque, so disgusting, so meaningless, that there’s no real reason for them to be alive and definitely no reason for them to have a book written about them.
And the frustrating thing here is that author actually has a nice way with words, but it’s overstylized into this mess, obviously deliberately. Definitely lamentably.
In a way it sort of reads like a kind of book that wins awards. One of those pretentiously unreadable tomes that critics tend to adore. Except that this one is especially vile, exceptionally viscerally vile. Not sure I ever used that word to describe a book, but reading this one, it was one of the first that came to mind.
And no, it isn't because I'm delicate or easy offended or dainty. I frequently read a variety of dark and scary things. It was just this terrible book.
This was a very sad waste of my time. And while there are some books you can not like but understand how someone might…with this one, I’m not sure how anyone can honestly enjoy it. Stay away, stay away. Thanks Netgalley.
This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/
May 6, 2023
Winner of the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize, UK & Ireland
Only the chosen were saved. One family has been the start of everything. But Agatha was scared. Marta was dead and the Matriarch was gone. They rain crept into the dark stone catacombs beneath the towering skyscrapers, and the city licked the moisture from the crack that was its mouth and laughed in a way that meant nothing good for any of them.
Missouri Williams’ The Doloriad is the latest book from the Republic Of Consciousness Book of the Month club, which showcases the finest literature from the UK and Ireland’s vibrant small press scene. The Doloriad is published by Dead Ink Books: “ We see it as Dead Ink’s job to bring the most challenging and experimental new writing out from the underground and present it to our audience in the most beautiful way possible.”
The Doloriad certainly fits that bills introducing us to a distinctive and brilliant new voice, although one drawing on inspiration from similarly challenging writers.
The novel is its own unique self, although for me most called to mind the Krasznahorkai of Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance, and indeed the author has acknowledged her love of his novels alongside Thomas Bernhard, Olga Tokarczuk, Fernanda Melchor, Olga Ravn, and Claire-Louise Bennett, Jenny Hval, Bruno Schuulz and Clarice Lispector.
If Krasznahorkai’s novels were in atmosphere post- apocalyptic, this is more explicitly so. The story is set on the outskirts of (an unnamed) Prague, with a small family, led by a Matriarch and her brother, actually the childrens’s father but referred to as their Uncle. They are the sole survivors, along with a Schoolteacher, of an event that wiped all others from the face of the earth, at least as far as they know. But are they, the survivors, the chosen few, or rather forgotten, or perhaps even condemned?
Nothing violent is eternal, he thought, and looked at his sister.Another thing came to their uncle then and it was this: To question the perfection of the creatures is to question the perfection of the power that made them.He couldn't remember where it was from or who had said it but the powerful truth of this claim reverberated through his frail body. Outside his sister's office the encampment was creaking to life, and again their uncle was overwhelmed by the idea that intruded on his mind in regular intervals. The imperfection all around him—it was true the Creator was gone. As usual this conclusion cut through the hebetude of his daily existence, the thread of which was woven into the dull warp of their collective enterprise, the sole brightness in the void" —though it could hardly be understood in those terms, being so purposeless, so ugly—and he became aware of a relentless sadness somewhere beneath the surface of his soul, slopping around in the pitted basin of his stomach, and he turned his face away from the Matriarch in order to hide his sudden pain from her eyes that missed nothing. The necessity of this perpetual forgetting, the hiding of the past beneath the successive layers of the unchanging present, drained him, though the light that burned away memory and desire helped too, helped him forget his memories of the old world in service of hers, the faint hope that humanity could live on slowly dying within him when he looked into the empty eyes of every wailing infant that emerged from his sister's uterus. In the nights when he was able to avoid her company, he was bold enough to think about the university, and the same agony overcame him. The abandoned citadels of his dreams; an old library in the mountains through whose limitless corridors he was sure he'd once walked—where had these things gone? The fire that had purified the earth had taken them too, though there had been no evil in them, only beauty; and although his sister maintained that the disaster had been a purge, their uncle could not be so certain when faced with the pitiful mess of the survivors, who—it could not be argued otherwise—lived in a kind of torpid sin, a lethargy and lust that corroded any claim to a higher moral purpose, the necessity of survival, or the particular worthiness of their species, and so over time he had come to see them as simply forgotten. The departed gods had left their task incomplete; they had neglected to wipe away these last remnants of their great error, and in the vacuum of their intention these things had bred and clung on to a meagre existence on a world more inhospitable than ever simply because “nature hateth emptiness.
As 3:AM Magazine put it in a review, the basic set-up “has all the elements of post-apocalyptic fiction (an undefined cataclysm at an undated point in the past; survivors thereof; a toxic, predatory natural environment; vague references to improvised agriculture and the raiding of abandoned supermarkets for food; an unexplained power source for intermittent electric current)”, and the author has explained in an interview that “with world-building, I wanted it to mostly take place in terms of how it feels—in terms of trees, the sky, the forest, and just the minute-to-minute experience of the children, versus any kind of explanation that would situate the reader any more than they needed to be situated. Some of the sci-fi elements of The Doloriad are quite tongue-in-cheek.”
This sense of humour extends to the family watching (via their aforementioned unexplained and intermittent power source) videos of a surreal TV series “Get Aquinas in Here!” where various insoluble moral dilemmas are presented to the characters’ despair, until one utters the key words, whereby the Saint, usually accompanied by a sheep, arrives to save the day, although this also speaks to the philosophical and theological underpinning of the novel (the author also cites Descartes as an influence).
But the real power of the novel lies in the powerfully bleak prose, with flavours of Hilbig and Bernhard, darkly lyrical, brutal and unsparing.
Highly recommended. 4.5 stars
Interview sources:
Bookforum
Triquarterly
Book recommendations from the author:
Foyles website
Further extract:
LRB Bookshop
Only the chosen were saved. One family has been the start of everything. But Agatha was scared. Marta was dead and the Matriarch was gone. They rain crept into the dark stone catacombs beneath the towering skyscrapers, and the city licked the moisture from the crack that was its mouth and laughed in a way that meant nothing good for any of them.
Missouri Williams’ The Doloriad is the latest book from the Republic Of Consciousness Book of the Month club, which showcases the finest literature from the UK and Ireland’s vibrant small press scene. The Doloriad is published by Dead Ink Books: “ We see it as Dead Ink’s job to bring the most challenging and experimental new writing out from the underground and present it to our audience in the most beautiful way possible.”
The Doloriad certainly fits that bills introducing us to a distinctive and brilliant new voice, although one drawing on inspiration from similarly challenging writers.
The novel is its own unique self, although for me most called to mind the Krasznahorkai of Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance, and indeed the author has acknowledged her love of his novels alongside Thomas Bernhard, Olga Tokarczuk, Fernanda Melchor, Olga Ravn, and Claire-Louise Bennett, Jenny Hval, Bruno Schuulz and Clarice Lispector.
If Krasznahorkai’s novels were in atmosphere post- apocalyptic, this is more explicitly so. The story is set on the outskirts of (an unnamed) Prague, with a small family, led by a Matriarch and her brother, actually the childrens’s father but referred to as their Uncle. They are the sole survivors, along with a Schoolteacher, of an event that wiped all others from the face of the earth, at least as far as they know. But are they, the survivors, the chosen few, or rather forgotten, or perhaps even condemned?
Nothing violent is eternal, he thought, and looked at his sister.Another thing came to their uncle then and it was this: To question the perfection of the creatures is to question the perfection of the power that made them.He couldn't remember where it was from or who had said it but the powerful truth of this claim reverberated through his frail body. Outside his sister's office the encampment was creaking to life, and again their uncle was overwhelmed by the idea that intruded on his mind in regular intervals. The imperfection all around him—it was true the Creator was gone. As usual this conclusion cut through the hebetude of his daily existence, the thread of which was woven into the dull warp of their collective enterprise, the sole brightness in the void" —though it could hardly be understood in those terms, being so purposeless, so ugly—and he became aware of a relentless sadness somewhere beneath the surface of his soul, slopping around in the pitted basin of his stomach, and he turned his face away from the Matriarch in order to hide his sudden pain from her eyes that missed nothing. The necessity of this perpetual forgetting, the hiding of the past beneath the successive layers of the unchanging present, drained him, though the light that burned away memory and desire helped too, helped him forget his memories of the old world in service of hers, the faint hope that humanity could live on slowly dying within him when he looked into the empty eyes of every wailing infant that emerged from his sister's uterus. In the nights when he was able to avoid her company, he was bold enough to think about the university, and the same agony overcame him. The abandoned citadels of his dreams; an old library in the mountains through whose limitless corridors he was sure he'd once walked—where had these things gone? The fire that had purified the earth had taken them too, though there had been no evil in them, only beauty; and although his sister maintained that the disaster had been a purge, their uncle could not be so certain when faced with the pitiful mess of the survivors, who—it could not be argued otherwise—lived in a kind of torpid sin, a lethargy and lust that corroded any claim to a higher moral purpose, the necessity of survival, or the particular worthiness of their species, and so over time he had come to see them as simply forgotten. The departed gods had left their task incomplete; they had neglected to wipe away these last remnants of their great error, and in the vacuum of their intention these things had bred and clung on to a meagre existence on a world more inhospitable than ever simply because “nature hateth emptiness.
As 3:AM Magazine put it in a review, the basic set-up “has all the elements of post-apocalyptic fiction (an undefined cataclysm at an undated point in the past; survivors thereof; a toxic, predatory natural environment; vague references to improvised agriculture and the raiding of abandoned supermarkets for food; an unexplained power source for intermittent electric current)”, and the author has explained in an interview that “with world-building, I wanted it to mostly take place in terms of how it feels—in terms of trees, the sky, the forest, and just the minute-to-minute experience of the children, versus any kind of explanation that would situate the reader any more than they needed to be situated. Some of the sci-fi elements of The Doloriad are quite tongue-in-cheek.”
This sense of humour extends to the family watching (via their aforementioned unexplained and intermittent power source) videos of a surreal TV series “Get Aquinas in Here!” where various insoluble moral dilemmas are presented to the characters’ despair, until one utters the key words, whereby the Saint, usually accompanied by a sheep, arrives to save the day, although this also speaks to the philosophical and theological underpinning of the novel (the author also cites Descartes as an influence).
But the real power of the novel lies in the powerfully bleak prose, with flavours of Hilbig and Bernhard, darkly lyrical, brutal and unsparing.
Highly recommended. 4.5 stars
Interview sources:
Bookforum
Triquarterly
Book recommendations from the author:
Foyles website
Further extract:
LRB Bookshop
Read
June 20, 2022I do not have words for how much I hate this book.
April 26, 2023
Winner of the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize
A debut novel which more than hints at an outstanding writing talent. The author’s ability to switch seamlessly from one intense stream of consciousness to another mid flow is particularly strong; similarly, she manages to blend the worlds of reality, dreams, oral stories and a TV show the characters watch in a way when the barriers between them prove porous in both directions.
But the talent is sadly misdirected in this case into an attempt to endow a rather hackneyed/cliched post-apocalyptical tale (the world has almost ended and a small band of survivors live on the outskirts of what we know as a major City from our world – in this case Prague – no really how original) with sub-Moshfegh grotesquerie (together with apparently obligatory fat-shaming and ableism) in an attempt to provoke but which in me raised more like boredom.
The blurb of the book pretty well describes the entire set up and most of the plot – and just to be sure the author has the rather odd Thomas Aquinas character (*) tell the story again 5 pages before the end – and end which was surprisingly hopeful by the book’s standards and did go some way to redeem the preceding 200 page slog I felt.
(*) his game-show inclusion was an intriguing idea – both to add a bizarre and comic twist and to give a meta-commentary on one of the key aspects of the book: what survives of morality in an entirely reshaped world – but one which she I felt failed to really know how to develop)
The necessity of this perpetual forgetting, the hiding of the past beneath the successive layers of the unchanging present, drained him, though the light that burned away memory and desire helped too, helped him forget his memories of the old world in service of hers, the faint hope that humanity could live on slowly dying within him when he looked into the empty eyes of every wailing infant that emerged from his sister's uterus. In the nights when he was able to avoid her company, he was bold enough to think about the university, and the same agony overcame him. The abandoned citadels of his dreams; an old library in the mountains through whose limitless corridors he was sure he'd once walked--where had these things gone? The fire that had purified the earth had taken them too, though there had been no evil in them, only beauty; and although his sister maintained that the disaster had been a purge, their uncle could not be so certain when faced with the pitiful mess of the survivors, who it could not be argued otherwise lived in a kind of torpid sin, a lethargy and lust that corroded any claim to a higher moral purpose, the necessity of survival, or the particular worthiness of their species, and so over time he had come to see them as simply forgotten. The departed gods had left their ask incomplete; they had neglected to wipe away these last remnants of their great error, and in the vacuum of their intention these things had bred and clung on to a meagre existence in a world more inhospitable than ever simply because "nature hatech emptiness." And meanwhile the city loomed behind them like a great stone disgrace, and the silent forest slunk into their dreams and rooted away at their minds.
A debut novel which more than hints at an outstanding writing talent. The author’s ability to switch seamlessly from one intense stream of consciousness to another mid flow is particularly strong; similarly, she manages to blend the worlds of reality, dreams, oral stories and a TV show the characters watch in a way when the barriers between them prove porous in both directions.
But the talent is sadly misdirected in this case into an attempt to endow a rather hackneyed/cliched post-apocalyptical tale (the world has almost ended and a small band of survivors live on the outskirts of what we know as a major City from our world – in this case Prague – no really how original) with sub-Moshfegh grotesquerie (together with apparently obligatory fat-shaming and ableism) in an attempt to provoke but which in me raised more like boredom.
The blurb of the book pretty well describes the entire set up and most of the plot – and just to be sure the author has the rather odd Thomas Aquinas character (*) tell the story again 5 pages before the end – and end which was surprisingly hopeful by the book’s standards and did go some way to redeem the preceding 200 page slog I felt.
(*) his game-show inclusion was an intriguing idea – both to add a bizarre and comic twist and to give a meta-commentary on one of the key aspects of the book: what survives of morality in an entirely reshaped world – but one which she I felt failed to really know how to develop)
August 24, 2022
Intense and claustrophobic, bleak and extreme, yet with an unexpected chink of possible light at the end, this is likely to be a divisive book as Williams unleashes a high octane and misanthropic vision of humanity boiled down to a desperate essence. Violent, sickening, frequently grotesque and with a wayward sense of humour, this pulls out all the stops to force a response from readers. It's literature as confrontation: aggressive and yet somehow pleading for attention, too, before it's too late.
Williams is clearly well-read: there's a variegated network of allusions that are put in play from creation myths like Adam and Eve, the Greek myth (probably inherited from the East) of Deucalion and his sister-wife repopulating the drowned world via stones, through to environmental and other dystopias via Lord of the Flies, 1984 and a sort of matriarchal inversion of The Handmaid's Tale. I'm sure there's more, too, that I missed.
My point is that while this is frequently gross and vulgar in tone, it's produced through intention and a subsumed literary sensibility that, perhaps, has no cultural foothold in the world of the book, but which, nevertheless, informs the textuality of the book.
Blazing with energy and originality, this is hideous and yet fascinating. Just open those covers with care.
Williams is clearly well-read: there's a variegated network of allusions that are put in play from creation myths like Adam and Eve, the Greek myth (probably inherited from the East) of Deucalion and his sister-wife repopulating the drowned world via stones, through to environmental and other dystopias via Lord of the Flies, 1984 and a sort of matriarchal inversion of The Handmaid's Tale. I'm sure there's more, too, that I missed.
My point is that while this is frequently gross and vulgar in tone, it's produced through intention and a subsumed literary sensibility that, perhaps, has no cultural foothold in the world of the book, but which, nevertheless, informs the textuality of the book.
Blazing with energy and originality, this is hideous and yet fascinating. Just open those covers with care.
March 28, 2022
A bit gutted as I thought I'd love this. Post-apocalyptic? Full of horrible people eeking out a living? Check and check. Oddly enough I found this slightly more boring than I expected. I love plotless art, especially film, but found myself struggling with the weird pacing and general lack of any discernible plot here. The lore of this collapsed world is also frustratingly missing; not even sparse, just missing. Also there was practically no differentiation between any of the characters (save for maybe the schoolmaster). It's a cop out to say that's the point given their incestous homogeneity etc, I think. I had no idea what any of these characters looked like, talked like, thought like, beyond a bizarrely consistent, incest-induced leg disfigurement...just generally felt it wasnt worthy of the mythic overtures the title suggests. This is barely Dolores's story, and there is no Heroic journey here.
Some gorgeous writing in parts, and a few memorable scenes of skin-crawling detail, but just not enough for me.
Some gorgeous writing in parts, and a few memorable scenes of skin-crawling detail, but just not enough for me.
May 24, 2024
An oppressive, airless last-people-on-earth novel with a cast of incestuous siblings all torturing the obese, legless Dolores, who spends most of her time crawling through mud in an amateur reenactment of Beckett’s How It Is. In an encampment overseen by a coolly tyrannous Matriarch, the interchangeable vile characters have an unlimited stream of abstract and intellectual sensations and vibes that pour forth in relentless, smothering blocks of prose that sweat hard to elevate this grim tableau of nothing-much-happening into a monolith of poetic grandiloquence and “powerful imagery”. The characters, allowed no room to reveal themselves as humans, are ciphers swaddled in their cloaks of breathless prose, wafting around committing incest and violence and in their downtime soaking in long baths of breathless what-the-fuck-does-that-even-mean prose that sacrifices coherence for the vibes and the feels. A frustrating novel that with a little more breathing space for the characters and less smothering the reader in a swamp of surreal, abstract images, could have been a more satisfying vision of desolation.
August 31, 2024
Just wow to all the snowflakes on here who rated this one star because they were offended by what they perceived as the promotion of 'fatphobia' and 'ableism' in the book. Are you kidding me? Maybe you should learn to be discerning readers instead of writing up ignorant knee-jerk responses to a novel. Here are a few points to keep in mind for the future.
(1) In a novel, a writer makes things up—this is what we call fiction.
(2) In many cases, this fiction has nothing to do with the writer's own feelings, beliefs, or personal experience. To assume that it does, and to criticize it based on this belief, is something called 'intentional fallacy'. Look it up—people do it on this site all the time and it is wrong.
(3) Often in fiction, writers use concepts we may recognize from 'real life' to make larger points about 'real life' and/or imagined examples of future 'real life' (we often find this in 'speculative fiction', which is why it is called speculative).
(4) These concepts may be exaggerated and/or may not directly correspond to our understanding of them in 'real life' due to their appearance in unfamiliar (and fictional) contexts and/or settings (e.g., an isolated community living in a post-apocalyptic future). If you're easily shocked and upset by this, you should be much more selective in what fiction you read.
(5) Just because you think a novel has no point or purpose does not make it so. Very few, if any, novels are published that lack any point or purpose whatsoever, even if it is only to entertain.
Happy reading.
(1) In a novel, a writer makes things up—this is what we call fiction.
(2) In many cases, this fiction has nothing to do with the writer's own feelings, beliefs, or personal experience. To assume that it does, and to criticize it based on this belief, is something called 'intentional fallacy'. Look it up—people do it on this site all the time and it is wrong.
(3) Often in fiction, writers use concepts we may recognize from 'real life' to make larger points about 'real life' and/or imagined examples of future 'real life' (we often find this in 'speculative fiction', which is why it is called speculative).
(4) These concepts may be exaggerated and/or may not directly correspond to our understanding of them in 'real life' due to their appearance in unfamiliar (and fictional) contexts and/or settings (e.g., an isolated community living in a post-apocalyptic future). If you're easily shocked and upset by this, you should be much more selective in what fiction you read.
(5) Just because you think a novel has no point or purpose does not make it so. Very few, if any, novels are published that lack any point or purpose whatsoever, even if it is only to entertain.
Happy reading.
December 7, 2023
This books just wasn’t for me. I didn’t really like the way it was written. I found it very confusing a lot of the time, and when I wasn’t confused, I was bored.
March 6, 2023
I am so confused. I loved it. I understood nothing. It was perfect.
March 14, 2022
This is dark and hateful little book and I loved it. It's 100% not going to be for everyone, but I feel like if you read the blurb about an incestuous family surviving an undescribed environmental disaster at the end of the world, you probably have some idea of what you're setting yourself up for.
I read a review of this before reading which critiqued the book for having no moral centre to speak of, but I kind of think that's less a critique than it was the whole point. In the midst of some absolute, toe-curling horror, this family born of incest "religiously" watches an old TV show called "Get Aquinas in Here!". It's a darkly comedic way of acknowledging that a moral centre once existed, but in this awful new world, the siblings can't recognise morality at all because they're completely unequipped for it. They've moved beyond morality in such a way that they've somehow gone right past amorality into something that's animal and environmental, rather than human.
Overall: incredibly cursed and incredibly well-written. It won't make you feel warm and fuzzy, but it is one of the best things I've read in a while.
I read a review of this before reading which critiqued the book for having no moral centre to speak of, but I kind of think that's less a critique than it was the whole point. In the midst of some absolute, toe-curling horror, this family born of incest "religiously" watches an old TV show called "Get Aquinas in Here!". It's a darkly comedic way of acknowledging that a moral centre once existed, but in this awful new world, the siblings can't recognise morality at all because they're completely unequipped for it. They've moved beyond morality in such a way that they've somehow gone right past amorality into something that's animal and environmental, rather than human.
Overall: incredibly cursed and incredibly well-written. It won't make you feel warm and fuzzy, but it is one of the best things I've read in a while.
January 10, 2022
WASTELAND, BABY!
Read
April 14, 2023The prose is so dense it’s giving me a headache 😅 I’m sure it’s disturbing but I just cannot I’m so sorry.
November 2, 2021
It’s hard to know where to begin with Missouri Williams’ debut novel, which is simultaneously shocking, beautiful, and intense. The story follows a large incestuous family that has survived an unspecified climate catastrophe. In the wake of losing everything, they have clung to existence through brute force and misguided hope. As you might already be sensing, the Doloriad is certainly not going to be for everyone, especially due to its intense violence and general feel of pessimism and gloom. But this is not a novel of drudgery, and the language is anything but maudlin. Instead the prose has a dizzying energy, with writing that is intricate, controlled, and at times overwhelming. Williams’ long, winding, accretive sentences are balanced by short and surprising statements that carry an uncanny profundity. The bizarre density often brings to mind the accumulative despair of Krasznahorkai only combined with Calvino’s sense of humour, though other references span as far as Kafka and Pynchon.
Despite the disgust we may feel for the sorry crew of inbred survivors and the awful things they do, the Doloriad is often very moving. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself coming to care for them, pitying their inability to grasp the world that surrounds them. Other unconnected characters appear in interludes that break up the dense narrative of the family, though these also provide an oblique comment on their experiences. St Thomas Aquinas stars in his own absurdist sitcom in which he is called upon to help people in extremely painful (but often hilarious) situations. These sections are stylistically varied, and give the sense of multiple, fragmented narratives that elaborate (in a very abstract and metaphorical way) on the novel’s central problem, which is how we make meaning in the face of a meaningless and hostile world.
But meaningless might be the wrong word to describe the world of The Doloriad, mind you. Although the family insists their world is empty, it is in fact incredibly alive and diverse; it’s just that this world is inaccessible to the broken minds of our characters. The strange prose of the book – at times it feels as if it has been translated from another language – allows things that aren’t human to come into our attention; objects and animals vie with the family for life. Chickens, books, sunlight, ruined cars and plants all become common allies in how they evade any understanding that tries to exhaust their being, and Williams frequently hints at the dangers of a human mind that is convinced of its complete grasp of the external world. Although it is never explicitly stated, it seems that the illusion of control over the world and its future is what has brought down the human species– a subtext that gives this book a very timely presence in our age of climate breakdown. Throughout the book we are reminded of the richness and apparent glory of the ‘old world’, with tales of abundance that have since taken on the status of myths. But the younger characters, particularly Dolores, push against this kind of nostalgia. In the end, the Doloriad is frightening precisely because the despair and isolation it foresees is not far-flung science fiction, but a possible consequence of the deathly drives that are pushing humans into catastrophe today (and taking the rest of the world with them).
I don’t doubt that The Doloriad will require multiple readings for all of its many meanings to sink in. (I am making my way through for a second time as I write). Where much contemporary fiction is dominated by stories about middle class white people struggling with the ennui of living in London or New York, the Doloriad is nothing less than a shock to the system, and one that will continue to resonate with me for a long time.
Thank you FSG / MCD for my advanced reading copy.
Despite the disgust we may feel for the sorry crew of inbred survivors and the awful things they do, the Doloriad is often very moving. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself coming to care for them, pitying their inability to grasp the world that surrounds them. Other unconnected characters appear in interludes that break up the dense narrative of the family, though these also provide an oblique comment on their experiences. St Thomas Aquinas stars in his own absurdist sitcom in which he is called upon to help people in extremely painful (but often hilarious) situations. These sections are stylistically varied, and give the sense of multiple, fragmented narratives that elaborate (in a very abstract and metaphorical way) on the novel’s central problem, which is how we make meaning in the face of a meaningless and hostile world.
But meaningless might be the wrong word to describe the world of The Doloriad, mind you. Although the family insists their world is empty, it is in fact incredibly alive and diverse; it’s just that this world is inaccessible to the broken minds of our characters. The strange prose of the book – at times it feels as if it has been translated from another language – allows things that aren’t human to come into our attention; objects and animals vie with the family for life. Chickens, books, sunlight, ruined cars and plants all become common allies in how they evade any understanding that tries to exhaust their being, and Williams frequently hints at the dangers of a human mind that is convinced of its complete grasp of the external world. Although it is never explicitly stated, it seems that the illusion of control over the world and its future is what has brought down the human species– a subtext that gives this book a very timely presence in our age of climate breakdown. Throughout the book we are reminded of the richness and apparent glory of the ‘old world’, with tales of abundance that have since taken on the status of myths. But the younger characters, particularly Dolores, push against this kind of nostalgia. In the end, the Doloriad is frightening precisely because the despair and isolation it foresees is not far-flung science fiction, but a possible consequence of the deathly drives that are pushing humans into catastrophe today (and taking the rest of the world with them).
I don’t doubt that The Doloriad will require multiple readings for all of its many meanings to sink in. (I am making my way through for a second time as I write). Where much contemporary fiction is dominated by stories about middle class white people struggling with the ennui of living in London or New York, the Doloriad is nothing less than a shock to the system, and one that will continue to resonate with me for a long time.
Thank you FSG / MCD for my advanced reading copy.
May 10, 2023
Dolorous Dolores
Review of the Dead Ink Books (UK) paperback* (March 3, 2022) published almost simultaneously with the Farrar Straus Girard (FSG) (USA) paperback (March 1, 2022)
The Doloriad is not rateable on the Goodreads scale of likeability such as a 3-star 'I liked it' or a 4-star 'I really liked it'. It is more likely that it will repulse and repel you, which would then result in a 1-star 'I did not like it' rating. But if you are prepared to enter its world of a post-apocalyptic community, bred by incest and surviving by scavenging and meager farming on the outskirts of a deserted city, ruled by its savage Matriarch and policed by her even more savage eldest son Jan, you may find that it will still engage you and compel you to read it regardless.
I found The Doloriad engaging in that way and it evoked various memories of other bleak visions of either the end of humanity, such as in the plays of Samuel Beckett (e.g. Waiting for Godot. Endgame, etc.) or in Russell Hoban's novel Riddley Walker (esp. due to some parallels with the latter's St. Eustace vs. St. Thomas Aquinas in The Doloriad) or in the inhumanity of isolated tribes, such as in William Golding's Lord of the Flies.
Although the character of Dolores is introduced quite early in The Doloriard, she is not really its main protagonist, although she does instigate momentous change in its community. So instead of the story of Ilium (aka Troy) in The Iliad or of Aeneas in The Aeniad or of Tom Ripley in The Ripliad, The Doloriad is more of a story of anguish and distress (i.e. some sample definitions of the word dolor).
Illustration by Sydney Smith for the New York Times review of 'The Doloriad.' See source link below under Other Reviews.
The tribe of the Matriarch appears to consist of 3 generations descended from is leader and her brother known as Uncle. Various mutations exist in the descendants due to either incest or due to environmental poisoning. Primarily only the second generation is named, with enforcer & organizer Jan, scavenger Jakub, eldest sister Marta, the conniver Agathe and legless younger sister Dolores being the main roles. The only other elder is the Schoolmaster, also legless (likely due to environmental mutation, as no family tie-in is mentioned). The legless characters are usually transported in wheelbarrows by the others, unless when they crawl along on their own. The Matriarch, although not legless, travels by means of a wheelchair.
The 'entertainment' of the tribe consists of daily lectures by the Schoolmaster, reciting the works of Thomas Aquinas and Hesiod in the examples given, or in a weekly viewing on VHS tapes of an apparent English language sit-com? reality show? 'Get Aquinas in Here!' where the theological scholar (presumably an actor) is called in to adjudicate on various problem situations. The VHS tapes are dubbed in Czech, and we learn from various other situations that the geographical location of the story is in the former Czech Republic (the author Missouri Williams lives in Prague). The line 'Get Aquinas in Here!' is the only comic relief in the entire work that I noticed except for some surreal segments portrayed as if Aquinas was viewing the outside action from inside the television or when Jan's chickens become self-aware as the humans around them battle for supremacy:
The plot is propelled by the Matriarch having a vision of another tribe living beyond the nearby forest. In order to seek an alliance or perhaps to offer a sacrifice, the legless Dolores is carted off to the middle of the forest and abandoned. The envisioned other tribe does not appear however and Dolores crawls back to the community, revealing the fallibility of the Matriarch to all the others. This provokes various murders, revenge and savagery as the children jockey for position as the possible inheritors of leadership. In a way, it all ends with the meek inheriting the earth.
The Dead Ink Books (UK) cover uses a very precisely cropped segment of the painting "Woman Tuning a Lute" (1624) by Gerrit van Honthurst (1590-1656) which manages to turn something joyful into something which hints of the diabolical. Cover design by Luke Bird. Image sourced from the collection of the Musée des Beaux Arts Montreal (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts).
I read The Doloriad through my subscription to the Republic of Consciousness Book of the Month where it was the April 2022 selection, although I passed over it at the time due to being repulsed by its beginning. When it won the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2023 for the UK/Ireland, I decided to finally make an effort to finish it. So I can't say that I 'liked it', but I at least understood its vision and admired the author's commitment to see it through.
Footnote
* I also made reference to the Dead Inks Book Kindle eBook edition, in order to mark selected excerpts for quoting or for further research.
Other Reviews
The novel awes on a sentence level, but ultimately bludgeons the reader with the brutality of its larger vision, Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2022.
In a Debut Novel, Humans are Scarce and Humanity Scarcer by J. Robert Lennon, New York Times, March 1, 2022.
Missouri Williams' 'The Doloriad' pulls itself along the ground, Pop Matters, March 2, 2022.
The Doloriad (Book Review), by Jonathan Thornton, Fantasy Hive, March 3, 2022.
Trivia and Links
The Guardian reports Dead Ink wins Republic of Consciousness Prize with Missouri Williams’ astonishing debut.
Review of the Dead Ink Books (UK) paperback* (March 3, 2022) published almost simultaneously with the Farrar Straus Girard (FSG) (USA) paperback (March 1, 2022)
The Doloriad is not rateable on the Goodreads scale of likeability such as a 3-star 'I liked it' or a 4-star 'I really liked it'. It is more likely that it will repulse and repel you, which would then result in a 1-star 'I did not like it' rating. But if you are prepared to enter its world of a post-apocalyptic community, bred by incest and surviving by scavenging and meager farming on the outskirts of a deserted city, ruled by its savage Matriarch and policed by her even more savage eldest son Jan, you may find that it will still engage you and compel you to read it regardless.
I found The Doloriad engaging in that way and it evoked various memories of other bleak visions of either the end of humanity, such as in the plays of Samuel Beckett (e.g. Waiting for Godot. Endgame, etc.) or in Russell Hoban's novel Riddley Walker (esp. due to some parallels with the latter's St. Eustace vs. St. Thomas Aquinas in The Doloriad) or in the inhumanity of isolated tribes, such as in William Golding's Lord of the Flies.
Although the character of Dolores is introduced quite early in The Doloriard, she is not really its main protagonist, although she does instigate momentous change in its community. So instead of the story of Ilium (aka Troy) in The Iliad or of Aeneas in The Aeniad or of Tom Ripley in The Ripliad, The Doloriad is more of a story of anguish and distress (i.e. some sample definitions of the word dolor).
Illustration by Sydney Smith for the New York Times review of 'The Doloriad.' See source link below under Other Reviews.
The tribe of the Matriarch appears to consist of 3 generations descended from is leader and her brother known as Uncle. Various mutations exist in the descendants due to either incest or due to environmental poisoning. Primarily only the second generation is named, with enforcer & organizer Jan, scavenger Jakub, eldest sister Marta, the conniver Agathe and legless younger sister Dolores being the main roles. The only other elder is the Schoolmaster, also legless (likely due to environmental mutation, as no family tie-in is mentioned). The legless characters are usually transported in wheelbarrows by the others, unless when they crawl along on their own. The Matriarch, although not legless, travels by means of a wheelchair.
The 'entertainment' of the tribe consists of daily lectures by the Schoolmaster, reciting the works of Thomas Aquinas and Hesiod in the examples given, or in a weekly viewing on VHS tapes of an apparent English language sit-com? reality show? 'Get Aquinas in Here!' where the theological scholar (presumably an actor) is called in to adjudicate on various problem situations. The VHS tapes are dubbed in Czech, and we learn from various other situations that the geographical location of the story is in the former Czech Republic (the author Missouri Williams lives in Prague). The line 'Get Aquinas in Here!' is the only comic relief in the entire work that I noticed except for some surreal segments portrayed as if Aquinas was viewing the outside action from inside the television or when Jan's chickens become self-aware as the humans around them battle for supremacy:
Now a different world was coming—a world for the animals. The chickens exchanged glances. They thought, as one, This is the age of chickens!
The plot is propelled by the Matriarch having a vision of another tribe living beyond the nearby forest. In order to seek an alliance or perhaps to offer a sacrifice, the legless Dolores is carted off to the middle of the forest and abandoned. The envisioned other tribe does not appear however and Dolores crawls back to the community, revealing the fallibility of the Matriarch to all the others. This provokes various murders, revenge and savagery as the children jockey for position as the possible inheritors of leadership. In a way, it all ends with the meek inheriting the earth.
The Dead Ink Books (UK) cover uses a very precisely cropped segment of the painting "Woman Tuning a Lute" (1624) by Gerrit van Honthurst (1590-1656) which manages to turn something joyful into something which hints of the diabolical. Cover design by Luke Bird. Image sourced from the collection of the Musée des Beaux Arts Montreal (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts).
I read The Doloriad through my subscription to the Republic of Consciousness Book of the Month where it was the April 2022 selection, although I passed over it at the time due to being repulsed by its beginning. When it won the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2023 for the UK/Ireland, I decided to finally make an effort to finish it. So I can't say that I 'liked it', but I at least understood its vision and admired the author's commitment to see it through.
Footnote
* I also made reference to the Dead Inks Book Kindle eBook edition, in order to mark selected excerpts for quoting or for further research.
Other Reviews
The novel awes on a sentence level, but ultimately bludgeons the reader with the brutality of its larger vision, Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2022.
In a Debut Novel, Humans are Scarce and Humanity Scarcer by J. Robert Lennon, New York Times, March 1, 2022.
Missouri Williams' 'The Doloriad' pulls itself along the ground, Pop Matters, March 2, 2022.
The Doloriad (Book Review), by Jonathan Thornton, Fantasy Hive, March 3, 2022.
Trivia and Links
The Guardian reports Dead Ink wins Republic of Consciousness Prize with Missouri Williams’ astonishing debut.
August 3, 2022
The apocalypse has come and gone, some sort of natural or man-made catastrophe, and has left behind a group of people: the woman called the Matriarch, who, having survived this catastrophe in a country foreign to her (there are clues that we are in Czechia, somewhere near Prague, but the survivors are not from here) puts her mind to re-populate earth, her brother called "uncle", the children they produce in their incestuous relationship and a single individual outside of this family, the Schoolmaster.
Williams' writing is so elaborate, so sublime that it's useless trying to describe. Just take a look at these two sentences which capture the zeitgeist of this post-apocalyptic universe perfectly:
The fire that had purified the earth had taken them too, though there had been no evil in them, only beauty; and although his sister maintained that the disaster had been a purge, their uncle could not be so certain when faced with the pitiful mess of the survivors, who -it could not be argued otherwise- lived in a kind of torpid sin, a lethargy and lust that corroded any claim to a higher moral purpose, the necessity of survival, or the particular worthiness of their species, and so over time he had come to see them as simply forgotten. The departed gods had left their task incomplete; they had neglected to wipe away these last remnants of their great error, and in the vacuum of their intention these things had bred and clung on to a meager existence in a world more inhospitable than ever simply because "nature hateth emptiness."
Wow! Not only is this extract a perfect example of the author's prose, it so well describes the oppressive nature and meaninglessness of this hostile world we are looking at that it renders any attempt at finding the trace of something good, something comforting futile. Heavily characterized by solitude, a feeling of un-solidarity, a lack of morals, of humanity, of history and identity. We are in fact witnessing the instability of a time that marks the passage between the first and second to third generation post cataclysm; the death of every remnant from our world as the last people who remember disappear or die and a new generation with a different understanding and different morals emerges and takes over.
Although the title can be attributed to Dolores, the handicapped character, who seemingly suffers the most, is most subject to abuse, mockery and malice -, there is pain, suffering galore and enough for each and every character; the Matriarch in her ambitions of saving humanity, the schoolmaster in his quest of building his perfect mound for the moth gods, older brother Jan who, after the cataclysm re-built most the infrastructure and attempts to take over the leadership from his mother, Agathe, the other sibling with an affliction that gravely affects her life. The question of nature or nurture is answered with a big, black eyeroll here.
Luckily not everything is as grim and dark in The Doloriad. In more lighthearted interludes, a fictional sitcom called "Get Aquinas in Here" from before the cataclysm features the medieval saint Thomas Aquinas (and his sidekick sheep) solving morally dilemmatic situations and will put a smile on your face. It reminds us that, if not now, there once was a moral system, a reconciliation of belief and reason for which Aquinas stands. I wish someone would get Aquinas into my life sometimes!
Ultimately, this is by no means a perfect book. You will by no means feel remotely satisfied when you finish it. Despite its brilliance and intricate prose, there are sentences which may seem paltry. It is kind of hard to keep track of the siblings and some may feel interchangeable due to lack of stronger characteristics. It is impossible to read more than one chapter at a time because of the gloomy subject matter. But it is a book that is deeply interesting and full of ideas that you may want to explore now and then. I personally felt the immediate need to re-read it after having finished.
Williams' writing is so elaborate, so sublime that it's useless trying to describe. Just take a look at these two sentences which capture the zeitgeist of this post-apocalyptic universe perfectly:
The fire that had purified the earth had taken them too, though there had been no evil in them, only beauty; and although his sister maintained that the disaster had been a purge, their uncle could not be so certain when faced with the pitiful mess of the survivors, who -it could not be argued otherwise- lived in a kind of torpid sin, a lethargy and lust that corroded any claim to a higher moral purpose, the necessity of survival, or the particular worthiness of their species, and so over time he had come to see them as simply forgotten. The departed gods had left their task incomplete; they had neglected to wipe away these last remnants of their great error, and in the vacuum of their intention these things had bred and clung on to a meager existence in a world more inhospitable than ever simply because "nature hateth emptiness."
Wow! Not only is this extract a perfect example of the author's prose, it so well describes the oppressive nature and meaninglessness of this hostile world we are looking at that it renders any attempt at finding the trace of something good, something comforting futile. Heavily characterized by solitude, a feeling of un-solidarity, a lack of morals, of humanity, of history and identity. We are in fact witnessing the instability of a time that marks the passage between the first and second to third generation post cataclysm; the death of every remnant from our world as the last people who remember disappear or die and a new generation with a different understanding and different morals emerges and takes over.
Although the title can be attributed to Dolores, the handicapped character, who seemingly suffers the most, is most subject to abuse, mockery and malice -, there is pain, suffering galore and enough for each and every character; the Matriarch in her ambitions of saving humanity, the schoolmaster in his quest of building his perfect mound for the moth gods, older brother Jan who, after the cataclysm re-built most the infrastructure and attempts to take over the leadership from his mother, Agathe, the other sibling with an affliction that gravely affects her life. The question of nature or nurture is answered with a big, black eyeroll here.
Luckily not everything is as grim and dark in The Doloriad. In more lighthearted interludes, a fictional sitcom called "Get Aquinas in Here" from before the cataclysm features the medieval saint Thomas Aquinas (and his sidekick sheep) solving morally dilemmatic situations and will put a smile on your face. It reminds us that, if not now, there once was a moral system, a reconciliation of belief and reason for which Aquinas stands. I wish someone would get Aquinas into my life sometimes!
Ultimately, this is by no means a perfect book. You will by no means feel remotely satisfied when you finish it. Despite its brilliance and intricate prose, there are sentences which may seem paltry. It is kind of hard to keep track of the siblings and some may feel interchangeable due to lack of stronger characteristics. It is impossible to read more than one chapter at a time because of the gloomy subject matter. But it is a book that is deeply interesting and full of ideas that you may want to explore now and then. I personally felt the immediate need to re-read it after having finished.
May 9, 2022
I received this book as part of my subscription to the Republic of Consciousness book club. It comes with a note that warns you:
"This is a totally unique novel, featuring a post-apocalyptic hellscape, a twisted incestuous family drama, a revolution and a sitcom based around Thomas Aquinas. So yes, fair warning, it’s dark - but it’s also absurd and gripping and I hope you find it as strange and engaging as we did."
Unfortunately, for me, I could relate to the "strange" but not to the "engaging".
I was a bit disappointed as I read because the comments I’d seen posted on GR about the book led me to believe that it was going to be one I would be offended by and it’s not often I get to DNF a book by throwing it away in disgust. I was quite looking forward to it. But, although this book is definitely unsavoury, distasteful, violent and a few other things, there was never a point where I felt like I ought to stop reading. There were, however, several points where I felt like I wanted to stop reading (see the engagement comments above).
I find myself in complete agreement with everything except the last ten words of this review at 3AM Magazine:
"I had to stop and come up for air several times. Its claustrophobically long sentences, blocky paragraphs and dense thickets of language summon the world of the book, one narrowly circumscribed and surrounded by a dead yet growing forest thick with its own menaces. The effect is often that of reading a slightly-off translation, or one which we cannot quite trust, one whose source text may be very different to the version presented here. This was not a book I enjoyed reading, though once I had read it, I found it fascinating."
Despite my lack of engagement, I did read closely enough to recognise that there are some clever things going on here, some that I should have stopped to work out but I really just wanted to get to the end so that I could move on, so I don’t have anything intelligent to say.
It isn’t a book for me. That’s probably the best way to leave it.
"This is a totally unique novel, featuring a post-apocalyptic hellscape, a twisted incestuous family drama, a revolution and a sitcom based around Thomas Aquinas. So yes, fair warning, it’s dark - but it’s also absurd and gripping and I hope you find it as strange and engaging as we did."
Unfortunately, for me, I could relate to the "strange" but not to the "engaging".
I was a bit disappointed as I read because the comments I’d seen posted on GR about the book led me to believe that it was going to be one I would be offended by and it’s not often I get to DNF a book by throwing it away in disgust. I was quite looking forward to it. But, although this book is definitely unsavoury, distasteful, violent and a few other things, there was never a point where I felt like I ought to stop reading. There were, however, several points where I felt like I wanted to stop reading (see the engagement comments above).
I find myself in complete agreement with everything except the last ten words of this review at 3AM Magazine:
"I had to stop and come up for air several times. Its claustrophobically long sentences, blocky paragraphs and dense thickets of language summon the world of the book, one narrowly circumscribed and surrounded by a dead yet growing forest thick with its own menaces. The effect is often that of reading a slightly-off translation, or one which we cannot quite trust, one whose source text may be very different to the version presented here. This was not a book I enjoyed reading, though once I had read it, I found it fascinating."
Despite my lack of engagement, I did read closely enough to recognise that there are some clever things going on here, some that I should have stopped to work out but I really just wanted to get to the end so that I could move on, so I don’t have anything intelligent to say.
It isn’t a book for me. That’s probably the best way to leave it.
June 2, 2022
I see this as a book about femininity/womanhood. Maybe it's too simplistic to say that the "departed gods" referred to in The Doloriad symbolise the patriarchy, but I definitely think there's something here (maybe Dolores herself) that expresses a kind of shattered subjectivity that is particularly female and contemporary.
I do think it would have been better as a shorter work, like a novella or maybe even a short story. Near the very end we get a kind of condensed version of the novel and I found this part more powerful than all the rest put together. It would have worked as a story on its own. My feeling here may also have something to do with the style; the prose in that late section felt less self-conscious or laboured than the earlier parts.
An example of the early style that felt a little bit forced/distracting:
And of the late style that I liked more:
Special mention of the TV show, Get Aquinas in Here. Hilarious!!
I do think it would have been better as a shorter work, like a novella or maybe even a short story. Near the very end we get a kind of condensed version of the novel and I found this part more powerful than all the rest put together. It would have worked as a story on its own. My feeling here may also have something to do with the style; the prose in that late section felt less self-conscious or laboured than the earlier parts.
An example of the early style that felt a little bit forced/distracting:
"The Matriarch turned to look at her youngest daughter with coldness in her pale eyes and thought about lack."
And of the late style that I liked more:
"Was it that the weight of the future they carried inside of themselves dragged them down toward the earth and prevented them from lifting their eyes heavenward, up to higher things?"
Special mention of the TV show, Get Aquinas in Here. Hilarious!!
November 13, 2022
(...) and the cruelty that lay beneath it all, and looking into her bruised face the schoolmaster thought to himself that the history of the world was the history of cruelty, that it had never been anything else: (...)
an extremely complex and convoluted examination of the human psyche in the apocalyptic landcaspe. offers a bleak look into our future—though highly grotesque, it's disturbingly relatable (or maybe i'm just rotten to the core). confusing and disgusting and soooo philosophical but so so excellent. if only some flood!!!!!
an extremely complex and convoluted examination of the human psyche in the apocalyptic landcaspe. offers a bleak look into our future—though highly grotesque, it's disturbingly relatable (or maybe i'm just rotten to the core). confusing and disgusting and soooo philosophical but so so excellent. if only some flood!!!!!
March 13, 2022
I literally don’t know what to say
Read
January 14, 2024dnf p.63
maybe i’m just not smart enough to get it
maybe i’m just not smart enough to get it
January 30, 2023
Like Moshfegh's older, more terrifying, less accessible sister
April 11, 2022
I would like to preface this review with the noble assertion that I, dear reader, am not a prude. I am, however, a despiser of needlessly vile and depraved narratives and descriptions.
The blurb does a pretty good job of summarising the events of the novel. It does such a good job that 120 pages in (out of 210) nothing massively significant to the plot had happened which I had not already been briefed on thanks to the blurb.
Now I knew this book was going to be disturbing. I bought it for that very reason. I love a good old unhinged book written by a woman. It's my shit. BUT I do not like traumatic reads for the sake of shock factors. It's why I refuse to read A Little Life. I'll read a traumatic book if I or someone else is going to gain from reading, but trauma porn is not my thing. That is what makes a good dystopia in my mind: if it made a valid comment on some aspect of society or humanity then it's a good dystopia. Unless I have missed out on something, I don't see what this book made a comment on. Was the incestuous rape and ableism a comment on something I I apparently unaware of? Unsure.
Something else that just didn't sit right with me was the portrayal of Dolores' physical appearance. As a midsize woman I just didn't enjoy reading about how repulsive all of Dolores' rolls and folds were perceived to be. Maybe I'm being particularly sensitive but I haven't read another review from another mid or plus sized woman so I'd be keen to hear if she has the same thoughts.
I'm not going to be an asshole and claim that Williams is not a good writer, because she is, and there's a really fantastic piece of writing on page 118 which I'll happily share with year 13 dystopia students. It's deliriously deranged and dilapidated and isolated and just genuinely a brilliant piece of prose. The rest of this book with its stomach-churning depictions of incest, rape, cruelty and brutal disfigurement and mutilation will remain firmly removed from my recommendation list.
The blurb does a pretty good job of summarising the events of the novel. It does such a good job that 120 pages in (out of 210) nothing massively significant to the plot had happened which I had not already been briefed on thanks to the blurb.
Now I knew this book was going to be disturbing. I bought it for that very reason. I love a good old unhinged book written by a woman. It's my shit. BUT I do not like traumatic reads for the sake of shock factors. It's why I refuse to read A Little Life. I'll read a traumatic book if I or someone else is going to gain from reading, but trauma porn is not my thing. That is what makes a good dystopia in my mind: if it made a valid comment on some aspect of society or humanity then it's a good dystopia. Unless I have missed out on something, I don't see what this book made a comment on. Was the incestuous rape and ableism a comment on something I I apparently unaware of? Unsure.
Something else that just didn't sit right with me was the portrayal of Dolores' physical appearance. As a midsize woman I just didn't enjoy reading about how repulsive all of Dolores' rolls and folds were perceived to be. Maybe I'm being particularly sensitive but I haven't read another review from another mid or plus sized woman so I'd be keen to hear if she has the same thoughts.
I'm not going to be an asshole and claim that Williams is not a good writer, because she is, and there's a really fantastic piece of writing on page 118 which I'll happily share with year 13 dystopia students. It's deliriously deranged and dilapidated and isolated and just genuinely a brilliant piece of prose. The rest of this book with its stomach-churning depictions of incest, rape, cruelty and brutal disfigurement and mutilation will remain firmly removed from my recommendation list.
November 21, 2022
Thank god I'm done with this thing! A 240 page book that felt like it was 500 pages long, the Doloriad is an extremely dense read and required all of my mental energy. It sounded like it would be right up my alley, and I had high expectations, which made it a bigger disappointment than it probably should have been.
I mean, wouldn't you want to read something like this:
A family somehow survives an apocalyptic event that kills off, from what they can tell, the entire human race. In order to keep the species from dying off completely, the Matriarch and her brother begin to repopulate, and teach their children to repopulate with each other. They attend "school", they plant and harvest food, and they even watch old VHS tapes to remind them of the old days. When she learns of another small group of people on the other side of the forest, she rushes to send her daughter Dolores out into the woods to meet them, hoping to break the cycle of incest. But when Dolores comes back the next day, everything the Matriarch built begins to quickly crumble.
That sounds pretty fricken good, doesn't it? Only it really wasn't. Told in paragraphs that stretch multiple pages in length, sometimes shifting perspective without any advance warning, and sometimes told from the perspective of Saint Aquinas, a character in the only TV show they watch as they gathered weekly around the Matriarch's television set, The Doloriad is a hot mess of a debut.
If I could go back and DNF when I had thought to, I would. I held out hope, and in the end, it didn't pay off.
I mean, wouldn't you want to read something like this:
A family somehow survives an apocalyptic event that kills off, from what they can tell, the entire human race. In order to keep the species from dying off completely, the Matriarch and her brother begin to repopulate, and teach their children to repopulate with each other. They attend "school", they plant and harvest food, and they even watch old VHS tapes to remind them of the old days. When she learns of another small group of people on the other side of the forest, she rushes to send her daughter Dolores out into the woods to meet them, hoping to break the cycle of incest. But when Dolores comes back the next day, everything the Matriarch built begins to quickly crumble.
That sounds pretty fricken good, doesn't it? Only it really wasn't. Told in paragraphs that stretch multiple pages in length, sometimes shifting perspective without any advance warning, and sometimes told from the perspective of Saint Aquinas, a character in the only TV show they watch as they gathered weekly around the Matriarch's television set, The Doloriad is a hot mess of a debut.
If I could go back and DNF when I had thought to, I would. I held out hope, and in the end, it didn't pay off.
October 29, 2021
The only reason 'The Doloriad' doesn't get a 1-star rating is simply because Missouri Williams' writing was pretty strong for a debut. Without that, there really isn't much here to enjoy.
The synopsis gives you the entire story, minus the ending, and without having to read all 200+ pages of this drag of a book. It's more or less miserable and unlikeable without any redeeming qualities to it.
Not even kidding, the last 5 pages (going off of Kindle page count here) has a character summarize the whole story up until that part which makes everything before it useless. It's a baffling choice that doesn't do the book any favors.
The characters are practically all the same, besides Dolores since she's described by everyone as a slob and fat and made of blubber, Jan since he's practically a little psychopath except when he isn't and then is again, and The Matriarch since she's an adult and just kind of there until she isn't. Oh and I guess there's the schoolmaster but he's only there to internally monologue to himself about not liking the Matriarch and wanting to have Dolores as his own. It's genuinely hard to keep track of everyone and dare I say this story doesn't really have a main character? I mean, you could argue Dolores is but she has nothing to do and is mostly just written to be pathetic.
I'm all for shock value but when you're constantly beaten over the head with it, it takes a lot of oomph out of what you're trying to go for. And there is a lot here that's trying to offend your delicate sensibilities. Major content warnings of incest, rape and pregnancy from it, murder, abuse, bullying, the list goes on and on. But before you even reach the halfway point you come to expect it at every turn so there's nothing to be surprised or shocked about. It falls flat on its face and you just feel more awkward than anything.
If Missouri Williams went for a more engaging story and cast of characters, instead of trying to shock people while also wanting to be artsy, they would be a force of nature to be reckoned with. As it stands, The Doloriad thinks it's cool and interesting, but it's just not very good.
Thanks to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this debut novel.
The synopsis gives you the entire story, minus the ending, and without having to read all 200+ pages of this drag of a book. It's more or less miserable and unlikeable without any redeeming qualities to it.
Not even kidding, the last 5 pages (going off of Kindle page count here) has a character summarize the whole story up until that part which makes everything before it useless. It's a baffling choice that doesn't do the book any favors.
The characters are practically all the same, besides Dolores since she's described by everyone as a slob and fat and made of blubber, Jan since he's practically a little psychopath except when he isn't and then is again, and The Matriarch since she's an adult and just kind of there until she isn't. Oh and I guess there's the schoolmaster but he's only there to internally monologue to himself about not liking the Matriarch and wanting to have Dolores as his own. It's genuinely hard to keep track of everyone and dare I say this story doesn't really have a main character? I mean, you could argue Dolores is but she has nothing to do and is mostly just written to be pathetic.
I'm all for shock value but when you're constantly beaten over the head with it, it takes a lot of oomph out of what you're trying to go for. And there is a lot here that's trying to offend your delicate sensibilities. Major content warnings of incest, rape and pregnancy from it, murder, abuse, bullying, the list goes on and on. But before you even reach the halfway point you come to expect it at every turn so there's nothing to be surprised or shocked about. It falls flat on its face and you just feel more awkward than anything.
If Missouri Williams went for a more engaging story and cast of characters, instead of trying to shock people while also wanting to be artsy, they would be a force of nature to be reckoned with. As it stands, The Doloriad thinks it's cool and interesting, but it's just not very good.
Thanks to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this debut novel.
May 20, 2022
If Cormac McCarthy’s The Road was too cheerful for you, may I present you with Missouri Williams’ The Doloriad. While McCarthy’s novel could be said to explore how a radical love for humanity can survive even in the absolute worst possible post-apocalyptic scenario (think of the boy urging his father to give food to the old man they passed, or urging his father to spare the thief who stole all their goods), Williams seems to explore how much abuse can be withstood by a wretched product of a wretched humanity down to its last grim remnants. Love? For oneself, maybe.
In its stance towards humanity and often in its vituperative prose it reminds me of the Thomas Bernhard I’ve read, and perhaps will be best enjoyed by fans of Bernhard. For instance, I offer up the following two passages:
A peculiar and interesting facet of this novel is the inclusion of Thomas Aquinas through episodes of an old sitcom the characters repeatedly watch, in which Aquinas is invited to solve some sort of moral dilemma. While the plot of The Doloriad is I think a secondary characteristic of the novel, it can be said to follow an application of Aquinas’ conception of natural law to this group’s situation. Man’s first concern is to remain alive, and so they carry out tasks that support this goal like growing crops. Secondly natural law dictates that man will be concerned with sexual intercourse and education of offspring, and so they have frequent sexual intercourse despite the very limited pool in which to do so, and they have a (useless) schoolmaster. Thirdly man wishes to know God and to live in society, and while the former gets short shrift here, best presented as the schoolmaster’s faith that he’ll be transformed and reborn as a moth, the Matriarch creates a sternly ordered society that the rest of the group feels they have to live within, until she weakens… at which point the unraveling of the established society leads to chaos and death until a new society is reconstituted.
Early in the novel the uncle character remembers a line from his seminary training in the Before times, which went “To question the perfection of the creatures is to question the perfection of the power that made them,” which would seem to be related to the writing of Aquinas. No doubt a reader trained in philosophy/theology would get the connections between Aquinas and this novel far better than I can, but for me the novel seems to pose just such a question, or a challenge, that is answered in a Bernhardian negativity.
I prefer The Road, myself.
In its stance towards humanity and often in its vituperative prose it reminds me of the Thomas Bernhard I’ve read, and perhaps will be best enjoyed by fans of Bernhard. For instance, I offer up the following two passages:
… faced with the pitiful mess of the survivors, who - it could not be argued otherwise - lived in a kind of torpid sin, a lethargy and lust that corroded any claim to a higher moral purpose, the necessity of survival, or the particular worthiness of their species, and so over time he had come to see them as simply forgotten. The departed gods had left their task incomplete; they had neglected to wipe away these last remnants of their great error, and in the vacuum of their intention these things had bred and clung on to a meagre existence in a world more inhospitable than ever simply because “nature hateth emptiness.”
- - -
… looking into her bruised face the schoolmaster thought to himself that the history of the world was the history of cruelty, that it had never been anything else: they limped along the great curve of extinction, one foot in the void, dwindling each year, and it was cruelty that made them cling on, pain and the paining of others that kept them moving.
A peculiar and interesting facet of this novel is the inclusion of Thomas Aquinas through episodes of an old sitcom the characters repeatedly watch, in which Aquinas is invited to solve some sort of moral dilemma. While the plot of The Doloriad is I think a secondary characteristic of the novel, it can be said to follow an application of Aquinas’ conception of natural law to this group’s situation. Man’s first concern is to remain alive, and so they carry out tasks that support this goal like growing crops. Secondly natural law dictates that man will be concerned with sexual intercourse and education of offspring, and so they have frequent sexual intercourse despite the very limited pool in which to do so, and they have a (useless) schoolmaster. Thirdly man wishes to know God and to live in society, and while the former gets short shrift here, best presented as the schoolmaster’s faith that he’ll be transformed and reborn as a moth, the Matriarch creates a sternly ordered society that the rest of the group feels they have to live within, until she weakens… at which point the unraveling of the established society leads to chaos and death until a new society is reconstituted.
Early in the novel the uncle character remembers a line from his seminary training in the Before times, which went “To question the perfection of the creatures is to question the perfection of the power that made them,” which would seem to be related to the writing of Aquinas. No doubt a reader trained in philosophy/theology would get the connections between Aquinas and this novel far better than I can, but for me the novel seems to pose just such a question, or a challenge, that is answered in a Bernhardian negativity.
I prefer The Road, myself.
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