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Killing Violets: Gods' Dogs
1934...
Starving to death somewhere in Europe, Anna meets Raoul.
She is ready to sell herself for a meal, but he has other plans. He takes her to England, to a summer of torrential rain, and the dubious mansion of his arrogant and unsavoury relatives, the Basultes.
It seems Anna is also to 'enjoy' the godly Basulte life. But the mounds of stodgy food, the genuflecting servants, the mindless cruelty of class, (the endless rain), affront her. Besides, she is becoming aware of the family, Raoul included, is playing with her a macabre and silly game.
Anna is a survivor - she has had to be - practiced at acting out the impossible. Both the aristocratic malignities, and the Hogarthian orgies of the servants, can be accommodated, if they must. For did they but know, Anna has a past as savage and explicit as anything seen in the Basulte house.
The past, that was Preguna, where Anna loved Arpad, during a European summer of soft heat. Until love ended in the darkness that now hangs on every moment of her life, reducing all other things, however murderous, to nothing.
Starving to death somewhere in Europe, Anna meets Raoul.
She is ready to sell herself for a meal, but he has other plans. He takes her to England, to a summer of torrential rain, and the dubious mansion of his arrogant and unsavoury relatives, the Basultes.
It seems Anna is also to 'enjoy' the godly Basulte life. But the mounds of stodgy food, the genuflecting servants, the mindless cruelty of class, (the endless rain), affront her. Besides, she is becoming aware of the family, Raoul included, is playing with her a macabre and silly game.
Anna is a survivor - she has had to be - practiced at acting out the impossible. Both the aristocratic malignities, and the Hogarthian orgies of the servants, can be accommodated, if they must. For did they but know, Anna has a past as savage and explicit as anything seen in the Basulte house.
The past, that was Preguna, where Anna loved Arpad, during a European summer of soft heat. Until love ended in the darkness that now hangs on every moment of her life, reducing all other things, however murderous, to nothing.
192 pages, Paperback
First published March 30, 2012
82 people want to read
About the author
Tanith Lee
615 books1,970 followersTanith Lee was a British writer of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. She was the author of 77 novels, 14 collections, and almost 300 short stories. She also wrote four radio plays broadcast by the BBC and two scripts for the UK, science fiction, cult television series "Blake's 7."
Before becoming a full time writer, Lee worked as a file clerk, an assistant librarian, a shop assistant, and a waitress.
Her first short story, "Eustace," was published in 1968, and her first novel (for children) The Dragon Hoard was published in 1971.
Her career took off in 1975 with the acceptance by Daw Books USA of her adult fantasy epic The Birthgrave for publication as a mass-market paperback, and Lee has since maintained a prolific output in popular genre writing.
Lee twice won the World Fantasy Award: once in 1983 for best short fiction for “The Gorgon” and again in 1984 for best short fiction for “Elle Est Trois (La Mort).” She has been a Guest of Honour at numerous science fiction and fantasy conventions including the Boskone XVIII in Boston, USA in 1981, the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, Canada, and Orbital 2008 the British National Science Fiction convention (Eastercon) held in London, England in March 2008. In 2009 she was awarded the prestigious title of Grand Master of Horror.
Lee was the daughter of two ballroom dancers, Bernard and Hylda Lee. Despite a persistent rumour, she was not the daughter of the actor Bernard Lee who played "M" in the James Bond series of films of the 1960s.
Tanith Lee married author and artist John Kaiine in 1992.
Before becoming a full time writer, Lee worked as a file clerk, an assistant librarian, a shop assistant, and a waitress.
Her first short story, "Eustace," was published in 1968, and her first novel (for children) The Dragon Hoard was published in 1971.
Her career took off in 1975 with the acceptance by Daw Books USA of her adult fantasy epic The Birthgrave for publication as a mass-market paperback, and Lee has since maintained a prolific output in popular genre writing.
Lee twice won the World Fantasy Award: once in 1983 for best short fiction for “The Gorgon” and again in 1984 for best short fiction for “Elle Est Trois (La Mort).” She has been a Guest of Honour at numerous science fiction and fantasy conventions including the Boskone XVIII in Boston, USA in 1981, the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, Canada, and Orbital 2008 the British National Science Fiction convention (Eastercon) held in London, England in March 2008. In 2009 she was awarded the prestigious title of Grand Master of Horror.
Lee was the daughter of two ballroom dancers, Bernard and Hylda Lee. Despite a persistent rumour, she was not the daughter of the actor Bernard Lee who played "M" in the James Bond series of films of the 1960s.
Tanith Lee married author and artist John Kaiine in 1992.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 15, 2013
Certain works of art are meant to be disquieting and disturbing. I think of the work of film-makers like David Lynch or Lars Von Trier, or the paintings of Francis Bacon or the music of Siouxsie And The Banshees. Classical music that incorporates dissonance into their sounds, like some of Stravinsky or artists that include menstrual blood or urine in their work. The diamond-encrusted skulls of Damian Hirst…. The list can go on. At it’s worst, such works of art feel like they are chores to get through; I am not fond, for example, of the “torture porn” sub-genre of horror films and some Goth/Emo music that is dark for the sake of being dark is tedious. At its best, though, disturbing art can be illuminating, cathartic and empowering. Think of Octavia Butler’s bleak futures or the blistering satire of Herzog’s film Even Dwarves Started Small.
Tanith Lee’s short novel, Killing Violets (subtitled God’s Dogs) is one of her most disturbing works. It has the raw, unadulterated atmosphere as a Von Trier film. Plot-wise, it has “break the beauty” as a major trope. Certainly, Lee has explored this theme before in many of her works. What makes Killing Violets different is it set in the recent historical past (1934) and is a realistic novel.
The novel opens with a lost, fragile woman named Anna starving to death in some small European town. She is picked up by a man, Raoul, who dashingly brings her out of the rain and gives her food and shelter at his hotel. He also initiates a sexual relationship with her, and lures her to England and his obscure aristocratic family’s vast estate. Once there, Anna notices that the Basultes are horrible people, who play complex power games with their servants. The Basulte men, in particular, delight abusing the female servants. Realizing this, Anna attempts to escape, but is captured, and, as a punishment, demoted from love interest to scullery maid. Anna’s tragic past in an unnamed small town (it seems vaguely Hungarian) is interspersed throughout these horrific stories, like a dreamy fable.
Like Selma in Von Trier’s Dancer In the Dark, Anna is an innocent, a shattered, vulnerable soul who is forced to suffer for no reason. And like many Von Trier heroines, she also has dark secrets of her own, and can assert her atavistic power when she has to. Like many Lee characters, Anna mostly lives in her head, and is aloof and allusive, sometimes maddeningly so. In that way, she reminds one of Blanche DuBois—stubbornly clinging to illusions of the past at the expense of her sanity.
Killing Violets is beautifully written, with a blurred water-color touch to the imagery. Love and passion is at the center of novel, but it is a horror novel in way, with the brutish, rigid class caste British system rather than the supernatural as the thing that terrifies. Indeed, some of the scenes recall the elegant cruelty depicted in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s films. The title’s meaning becomes brilliantly clear in the tragic third act.
Tanith Lee’s short novel, Killing Violets (subtitled God’s Dogs) is one of her most disturbing works. It has the raw, unadulterated atmosphere as a Von Trier film. Plot-wise, it has “break the beauty” as a major trope. Certainly, Lee has explored this theme before in many of her works. What makes Killing Violets different is it set in the recent historical past (1934) and is a realistic novel.
The novel opens with a lost, fragile woman named Anna starving to death in some small European town. She is picked up by a man, Raoul, who dashingly brings her out of the rain and gives her food and shelter at his hotel. He also initiates a sexual relationship with her, and lures her to England and his obscure aristocratic family’s vast estate. Once there, Anna notices that the Basultes are horrible people, who play complex power games with their servants. The Basulte men, in particular, delight abusing the female servants. Realizing this, Anna attempts to escape, but is captured, and, as a punishment, demoted from love interest to scullery maid. Anna’s tragic past in an unnamed small town (it seems vaguely Hungarian) is interspersed throughout these horrific stories, like a dreamy fable.
Like Selma in Von Trier’s Dancer In the Dark, Anna is an innocent, a shattered, vulnerable soul who is forced to suffer for no reason. And like many Von Trier heroines, she also has dark secrets of her own, and can assert her atavistic power when she has to. Like many Lee characters, Anna mostly lives in her head, and is aloof and allusive, sometimes maddeningly so. In that way, she reminds one of Blanche DuBois—stubbornly clinging to illusions of the past at the expense of her sanity.
Killing Violets is beautifully written, with a blurred water-color touch to the imagery. Love and passion is at the center of novel, but it is a horror novel in way, with the brutish, rigid class caste British system rather than the supernatural as the thing that terrifies. Indeed, some of the scenes recall the elegant cruelty depicted in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s films. The title’s meaning becomes brilliantly clear in the tragic third act.
February 17, 2016
Killing Violets makes a departure from Tanith Lee's usual work in that it is almost entirely grounded in the real world with no fantasy or supernatural elements (other than the very vague, locations).
The setting is 1934, Raoul Basulte finds Anna starving by a river in an unspecified European city. He takes her back to his family home in England to become his wife. Here she meets the rest of his family, mother, father, sister, 2 brothers and a cousin/brother-in-law. The Basultes are dark gods who play cruel games with each other and the female servants. Anna is upset when she finds she's slept with one of Raoul's brothers, but the final straw comes when she catches Raoul with one of the maids.
She runs away only to be drugged by the villages and returned to the house where she is installed as one of the servants now a dog instead of a god.
Running parallel to this story, Anna's past is revealed in the city of Preguna where she falls madly in love with Arpad, a mysterious book keeper with a hideous birthmark.
While this is a historical/psychological thriller it does bear some resemblance to her other works we have the dark godlike family reminiscent of the Scarabes in the Blood Opera trilogy and her trademark generally passive, slightly unbalanced, fragile heroine.
It also has the themes which crop up frequently in her work:
• Beauty/ugliness
• Love/Hate
• Physical disfigurement
• Murderess
• Slave/Master
• Gods/Dogs
• Unstable heroine
This novel, in feel and subject matter reminded me of the later works of Sarah Waters (The Littlest Stranger/Paying Guests) - The way the story unfolds and the setting are quite similar. It also has some lesbian themes - Anna's boss Peepy is a lesbian living with her great love, and we get some suggestion that there could be something between Anna and the maid Lilith - although it is clear that Anna's heart has always belonged to her beloved Arpad.
Couldn't put this down but it certainly wasn't what I was expecting, which shows just what a talented and versatile writer Tanith Lee is.
The setting is 1934, Raoul Basulte finds Anna starving by a river in an unspecified European city. He takes her back to his family home in England to become his wife. Here she meets the rest of his family, mother, father, sister, 2 brothers and a cousin/brother-in-law. The Basultes are dark gods who play cruel games with each other and the female servants. Anna is upset when she finds she's slept with one of Raoul's brothers, but the final straw comes when she catches Raoul with one of the maids.
She runs away only to be drugged by the villages and returned to the house where she is installed as one of the servants now a dog instead of a god.
Running parallel to this story, Anna's past is revealed in the city of Preguna where she falls madly in love with Arpad, a mysterious book keeper with a hideous birthmark.
While this is a historical/psychological thriller it does bear some resemblance to her other works we have the dark godlike family reminiscent of the Scarabes in the Blood Opera trilogy and her trademark generally passive, slightly unbalanced, fragile heroine.
It also has the themes which crop up frequently in her work:
• Beauty/ugliness
• Love/Hate
• Physical disfigurement
• Murderess
• Slave/Master
• Gods/Dogs
• Unstable heroine
This novel, in feel and subject matter reminded me of the later works of Sarah Waters (The Littlest Stranger/Paying Guests) - The way the story unfolds and the setting are quite similar. It also has some lesbian themes - Anna's boss Peepy is a lesbian living with her great love, and we get some suggestion that there could be something between Anna and the maid Lilith - although it is clear that Anna's heart has always belonged to her beloved Arpad.
Couldn't put this down but it certainly wasn't what I was expecting, which shows just what a talented and versatile writer Tanith Lee is.
December 9, 2012
A pleasant enough read, slightly racy, slightly sexy with some kink in there but not enough to make it rated.
The prose is Lyric Tanith at her best, somewhat reminiscent of Elphantasm in that it is a single disconnected female in a very strange family and also like Elphantasm it does meander a little bit at times. I do think the style of writing and the plot are both better and more mature than Elphantasm however.
Unlike much of Tanith's other work it is set in this world rather than a pure fantasy one, and the era is even almost modern (1930's or so).
I would rate it four stars rather than three but for one thing; like almost all of Tanith Lee's female protagonists Anna is passive beyond belief. I like Anna better than most of Tanith's females in that she does actually make a couple of strong decisions and actions in this story, and her passiveness is better explained.
The prose is Lyric Tanith at her best, somewhat reminiscent of Elphantasm in that it is a single disconnected female in a very strange family and also like Elphantasm it does meander a little bit at times. I do think the style of writing and the plot are both better and more mature than Elphantasm however.
Unlike much of Tanith's other work it is set in this world rather than a pure fantasy one, and the era is even almost modern (1930's or so).
I would rate it four stars rather than three but for one thing; like almost all of Tanith Lee's female protagonists Anna is passive beyond belief. I like Anna better than most of Tanith's females in that she does actually make a couple of strong decisions and actions in this story, and her passiveness is better explained.
February 22, 2022
Yes, it's miserable and depressing but Lee's beautiful writing is a pleasure to read.
June 1, 2015
Not sure why this was published as sf: it's gothic weird fantasy sort-of (can't really make a case for realism) with something of a Jean Rhys (waifish drifting protag) hommage feel to it.
June 13, 2012
What a dark, dark little novel this was. I will not lie, the cover drew my eye even though at first glance, it's not that flashy. But there is a strange little creepy element to it.
I had a hard time putting this tale down, but there were some confusing moments in the beginning as we flash to Anna's past. I find it helpful when an author assists in the transition by dating it, or indicating in some way that you are at a different period of the character's past, and I didn't find a smooth transition at all. However, once you become familiar with the characters, the flow of the story becomes more comprehensible.
Anna tugged at my heart strings. She just doesn't seem to catch a break in her life. The deeper you get into her story the more you feel for her. And yet, she isn't really a victim, or more accurately, stays a victim. She has an uncanny ability to adapt and survive in the worst of circumstances.
Raoul finds her and takes her into this madhouse, where false promises are made. The Basulte family are a strange and repulsive lot and the antics of the house staff had me snorting very unladylike with amusement.
This was a very entertaining if dark story which kept me intrigued from beginning to end.
**For this and more reviews check out http://bookluvrshaven.blogspot.**
I had a hard time putting this tale down, but there were some confusing moments in the beginning as we flash to Anna's past. I find it helpful when an author assists in the transition by dating it, or indicating in some way that you are at a different period of the character's past, and I didn't find a smooth transition at all. However, once you become familiar with the characters, the flow of the story becomes more comprehensible.
Anna tugged at my heart strings. She just doesn't seem to catch a break in her life. The deeper you get into her story the more you feel for her. And yet, she isn't really a victim, or more accurately, stays a victim. She has an uncanny ability to adapt and survive in the worst of circumstances.
Raoul finds her and takes her into this madhouse, where false promises are made. The Basulte family are a strange and repulsive lot and the antics of the house staff had me snorting very unladylike with amusement.
This was a very entertaining if dark story which kept me intrigued from beginning to end.
**For this and more reviews check out http://bookluvrshaven.blogspot.**
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June 4, 2015A Jean Rhys heroine in a Gothic world. The world goes strangely Rabelaisian at one point, but the heroine remains Jean Rhys to the end. Although she's more active than the typical Rhys heroine or, for that matter, the typical Tanith Lee heroine.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews