Mirror Mirror on the Wall

by Stanley Ellin

There is a dead whore in a black negligee lying on the bathroom floor of Peter Hibben's locked, guarded apartment. This is the story of a man driven by nightmarish glimpses of erotic horrors to a journey into his sexual past in a desperate attempt to escape that nightmare.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Stanley Bernard Ellin was a mystery writer of short stories and novels. He won the Edgar Allan Poe Award three times and the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere once, and in 1981 he was awarded with the Mystery Writers of America's highest honor, the Grand Master Award.

Reviews

[joyce g · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a strange story, told with the most fluid word use.

[Sally Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an outstanding book by an outstanding author. As a writer myself, I can only gasp at the brilliance of the structure, and the way in which Ellin allows the narrator to tell us a story which is quite the opposite of the one he thinks he is telling us.
I can also recommend as equally (but differently) brilliant, VERY OLD MAN and STRONGHOLD.

[Conor Bateman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first Ellin book to leave me cold; this novella, despite its fairly well-contructed twist, doesn't quite seem to capture the 'dreamworld' of the subconscious that it attempts to over the course of the novel. This isn't to say that the narrative device doesn't work, it does, but that dialogue and interactions within this space seem hammy and fake, particularly in those of Ira Gold and the Doctor.

The interplay of sexuality and memory was excellent yet the shifts between each memory, with the grand inquistor of Dr. Ernst, felt like an unecessary connector that stilted the process of self-discovery. Because of the odd size of the story, I felt at times that it should have just been shortened to the length of a slightly longer story than those in The Specialty of the House because this didn't seem to pack the narrative weight of his novels.

The best part of the novel though, in relation to its twist, was the ending. Ellin always seems to have a stick of dynamite up his sleeve when writing (I'm thinking in particular of Dreadful Summit here) and the last few pages of this hit you with a gut punch.

[Ericpegnam Pegnam · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is an amazing short novel. It has the impact of a short story but the depth of a novel.

[Jessie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly trippy. I went into this with absolutely no preparation, so it took me a while to understand what was going on. But I loved the language and style- beautiful and tragic noir.

[rndgmoat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Huh.

Well that was an interesting random library find. It was shelved in the horror section and, because (I'm ashamed to admit) I've never heard of Ellin, I assumed that I found some vintage horror goodness.

Not quite.

Ellin, as it turns out, is an OG in the mystery and suspense genre from the 1950s-1980s. While it looks like much of his work was transformed into episodes of respectable but slightly edgy TV during the early days of the medium, I'm just going to assume that this book was a departure. It starts with our narrator staring down at a dead body and then rapidly goes off the rails, into a lengthy dreamlike journey through the main character's life. An intense first-person read that doesn't shy away from some very non-PC racism and sexism that is probably a good representation of this "All American Male's" thought process, I was also surprised by the sexual content, of which there is a lot. Overall, it's a highly bizarre page turner that sucks you in. It also has a wallop of a twist, although it's that ending which prevents me from giving this a higher rating--in our current world, I'm unsure whether I can or should defend its indulgence of one very specific trope that may or may not make you roll your eyes.

[John Marr · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've always found the mid-century neurotic Jew novel annoying as hell, so just the fact that I waded through this one to the end says something for Ellin. A high-powered publishing exec finds a murdered whore in his bathrooom and dreams/hallucinates his sex life is on trial with his analyst presiding. Let the Freud roll! Plenty of kink, but the ending is only surprising because the narrative device is inherently confusing. Ellin remains a short-story writer, and a masterful one, to me.

[Michael Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bold exploration of the madness that comes when life is lived according to the flesh.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: there is a dead whore lying on the bathroom floor of Peter Hibben's locked apartment. He's having nightmarish glimpses of erotic horrors.