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Lovers Living Lovers Dead
The story of Michael, a professor of Comparative Literature who is beginning to suspect that his wife, Christine, an ex-student some 20 years his junior, is harboring dark secrets about her past.
To uncover these secrets, he teams up with Christine's psychologist, and the two use deception to find out about her mysterious past, which is personified by her even more mysterious father, whose ghost-like presence is felt throughout the novel.
To uncover these secrets, he teams up with Christine's psychologist, and the two use deception to find out about her mysterious past, which is personified by her even more mysterious father, whose ghost-like presence is felt throughout the novel.
223 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 27, 2023
--(Update 8/19/2016) I'm upping my rating from 4 stars to 5 since I still think about this book quite frequently, even though it's been over five months since I'd read and reviewed it, and I'm already considering a re-read in the near future. Sometimes a story leaves a more lasting impression than you expect, and this is a perfect example (even though I really enjoyed at the time). I'll leave my review from March as is, as I feel it still accurately represents my initial thoughts.--
This was very nearly a 5-Star novel for me. There is not a single fault I can find with it, and every page builds on the constant atmosphere of unease and dread, which is there from the very start. There is no bloat here to speak of, and each scene is a precisely placed part of an intricate puzzle. And yet, there wasn't that little something extra to bump this up to a perfect rating. Still, this is a top-tier horror novel.
It tells the tale of fifty-ish English professor Michael and his wife of seven years, Christine. She's 25 years his junior, and seemingly totally insane. She prances around their enormous-yet-crumbling 30-room mansion* (one room of which has a tree growing all around and within the walls and ceiling) in various theatrical costumes, acting as various characters in an exaggerated, overly-dramatic way. She's a literal drama queen. She also enjoys playing "games," such as the time Michael wakes in the middle of the night to find Christine lying on the floor downstairs, covered in fake blood.
Michael and their two kids go along with these "games," but her strange and distant emotional attitude, as well as her hallucinations, is getting to be a bit much for Michael. Sometimes she goes into a dissociative, almost fugue-like state, and dozens, even hundreds of moths will cover her body at times when she's still. He's certain she has some dark secrets, but knows next to nothing of her past, only snippets of various fantastic, almost unbelievable tales of her adventures around the world with her late, mysterious father during her youth (which Michael assumes she made up). But, with the help of a psychiatrist, he's determined to get to the bottom of all the weirdness, the answer to which may reside in Christine's coffin-shaped chest she keeps in her locked, private attic room.
This could almost have been marketed as a literary novel as opposed to horror, as there is a sort of poetic grace to Lortz's prose, but not in any showy or ostentatious way. It's dream-like quality and near-flawless pace kept me turning the pages, and I finished the book in just two sittings. There's a sinister feel pervading its entirety, even when nothing overtly threatening or scary at all was happening. Sometimes that sort of thing is based on the reader's own perceptions and preconceived notions, but here I felt that Lortz embedded that underlying eerie atmosphere into his prose somehow. And the suspense and terror subtly build and build until the end.
This is up there with the very best 70s horror novels I've read. Just don't go in expecting some non-stop fright fest, as the chills here are much more understated than the cover would lead you to believe.
4.5 Stars
*How an English professor can afford a 30-room mansion, even if it is a bit run-down, is beyond me.
December 22, 2018
she's not from this world, she's from her own world, a world of bizarre things and bizarre practices. a father who loved her, all too well. a trunk in the attic, locked, full of secrets. costumes and roles and personas, put on and taken off, whenever a whim moves her. the children run amok. the husband strays. the chauffeur comes to visit. black moths that cover her body. birds that see her and aren't quite sure what they're seeing.
it is a chamber piece: an older man who loves his young fey bride; a young fey bride who loves her dear dead dad; an elderly psychiatrist, getting in over her head and saying all the right and all the wrong things. they dance together: a danse macabre.
the prose quirks and the characters surprise and the story darkens and darkens and darkens. it starts out strange and only gets stranger. once you feel you have a grasp of it, an understanding, it turns and strikes you. you don't know what you know, or perhaps you are trying not to hold what you are grasping. it escalates, it escalates, it escalates. the path winds slowly, then quickly, moving ever downward.
such a perplexing, unnerving novel. hypnotic and beautifully accomplished. horrible.
it is a chamber piece: an older man who loves his young fey bride; a young fey bride who loves her dear dead dad; an elderly psychiatrist, getting in over her head and saying all the right and all the wrong things. they dance together: a danse macabre.
the prose quirks and the characters surprise and the story darkens and darkens and darkens. it starts out strange and only gets stranger. once you feel you have a grasp of it, an understanding, it turns and strikes you. you don't know what you know, or perhaps you are trying not to hold what you are grasping. it escalates, it escalates, it escalates. the path winds slowly, then quickly, moving ever downward.
such a perplexing, unnerving novel. hypnotic and beautifully accomplished. horrible.
January 12, 2020
This is my favorite sort of horror! Quiet, unsettling, confounding, thorny!
Lovers Living, Lovers Dead is a 1977 insular horror novel that doesn’t get much attention these days—even from lovers of vintage horror. It’s a shame, because what does get attention from vintage horror collectors is largely crap (looking at you, Zebra Publishing).
What must be made clear, however, is this isn’t loud and in-your-face horror novel. It’s the sort that slowly gets under the reader’s skin, often confusing but so rewarding. I spent the first few chapters almost scratching my head, wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into. Curiously dated and overtly erotic, this little novel could make even the most case-hardened horror reader shiver. It’s just nasty.
Perhaps what this book is most successful as is an amusingly quant commentary on mid-century sexuality and feminism. This is a good read if for nothing more than allowing the reader to look back on how far we’ve come since the first wave of the sexual revolution.
Lovers Living, Lovers Dead is a 1977 insular horror novel that doesn’t get much attention these days—even from lovers of vintage horror. It’s a shame, because what does get attention from vintage horror collectors is largely crap (looking at you, Zebra Publishing).
What must be made clear, however, is this isn’t loud and in-your-face horror novel. It’s the sort that slowly gets under the reader’s skin, often confusing but so rewarding. I spent the first few chapters almost scratching my head, wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into. Curiously dated and overtly erotic, this little novel could make even the most case-hardened horror reader shiver. It’s just nasty.
Perhaps what this book is most successful as is an amusingly quant commentary on mid-century sexuality and feminism. This is a good read if for nothing more than allowing the reader to look back on how far we’ve come since the first wave of the sexual revolution.
July 31, 2023
I find it a real joy to encounter some gold among the dross from the vintage horror boom, and Lovers Living, Lovers Dead is just such a find. The story centers upon Christine, Michael, and Dr. Ellenbogen. Michael works as an English professor in some university in the Northeast US. Teaching one somewhat remedial summer course, he met Christine and they were married 4 days later, never mind that Michael is some 25 years senior. The story starts about 7 years after their marriage, but Lortz deftly weaves in flashbacks to the earlier days of Michael and Christine.
Christine is an enigma. It seems she travelled with her father from one exotic location to another her entire life until he died when she was 17. The first essay she turned in to Michael was basically incomprehensible but her child-like beauty and mysterious airs caused him to fall for her like a ton of bricks. At first, he would bring her to faculty parties and she was a hit; after the twins were born about a year after their marriage, she basically stays at home. And what a home! Michael rents a huge old mansion (32 rooms!) of which only seven or so rooms are habitable, the rest fallen into serious decay. In fact, some of the rooms actually have apple trees growing in them!
When the lastest timeline starts, Michael is seriously worried about Christine; it seems she takes nothing seriously, is always playing 'games' and runs around naked. Also, their carnal relations have been zip since the twins; he makes do with his students (can you say Title IX? I guess that was not such a big deal when this was first published in 1977). He induces her to see Dr. Ellenbogen, a retired shrink, and the story takes off from there...
Lortz's poetic prose was a bit difficult to step into right away, but became almost hypnotic and captivating as the slim novel progressed. Christine is more than an enigma, she is hauntingly mysterious, at times childlike (especially when playing her 'games', such as "I'm-a-Severe-Catatonic-and-Can't-Move-a-Muscle"), alarmingly sexual, possesses deep secrets, some of which she keeps locked in a massive truck, and a completely indifferent mother. Lortz did not pack Lovers Living, Lovers Dead with excessive verbiage, with each word chosen carefully to build the tension and overall hypnotic feel of the lovely prose.
I need to thank Jack Tripper for putting this one on my radar (and check out his awesome review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). 4.5 mysterious and eerie stars, happily rounding up!!
Christine is an enigma. It seems she travelled with her father from one exotic location to another her entire life until he died when she was 17. The first essay she turned in to Michael was basically incomprehensible but her child-like beauty and mysterious airs caused him to fall for her like a ton of bricks. At first, he would bring her to faculty parties and she was a hit; after the twins were born about a year after their marriage, she basically stays at home. And what a home! Michael rents a huge old mansion (32 rooms!) of which only seven or so rooms are habitable, the rest fallen into serious decay. In fact, some of the rooms actually have apple trees growing in them!
When the lastest timeline starts, Michael is seriously worried about Christine; it seems she takes nothing seriously, is always playing 'games' and runs around naked. Also, their carnal relations have been zip since the twins; he makes do with his students (can you say Title IX? I guess that was not such a big deal when this was first published in 1977). He induces her to see Dr. Ellenbogen, a retired shrink, and the story takes off from there...
Lortz's poetic prose was a bit difficult to step into right away, but became almost hypnotic and captivating as the slim novel progressed. Christine is more than an enigma, she is hauntingly mysterious, at times childlike (especially when playing her 'games', such as "I'm-a-Severe-Catatonic-and-Can't-Move-a-Muscle"), alarmingly sexual, possesses deep secrets, some of which she keeps locked in a massive truck, and a completely indifferent mother. Lortz did not pack Lovers Living, Lovers Dead with excessive verbiage, with each word chosen carefully to build the tension and overall hypnotic feel of the lovely prose.
I need to thank Jack Tripper for putting this one on my radar (and check out his awesome review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). 4.5 mysterious and eerie stars, happily rounding up!!
February 10, 2019
Monday’s reco .... it was all I hoped it would be.....but Monday’s reco, Monday’s reco couldn’t guarantee, that Monday’s four stars this sick book would get from meeeeeeeee..................
But it did!!!
But it did!!!
September 18, 2016
***Very mild spoilers***
Well, this was an unexpected treat! I picked this up just to see if it was something I'd want to read later in the year, and the first chapter, a surreal, slightly hysterical set piece involving swarms of starlings, a avian mating dance, and loads of flying feathers, drew me immediately in; before I knew it, it was nearly 3 AM and I was halfway through the book.
In some ways this is a very typical '70s American horror novel (middle-class nuclear family moves out to isolated mansion and weird supernatural hijincks ensue) but in others, the ways that count, this is defiantly odd. A strong Oedipal undercurrent runs throughout the book and pseudo-Freudian analysis coupled with mind-altering drugs helps to move what little plot there is along smartly. "Kinkiness" for want of a better, more '70s appropriate word, pervades the entire novel. From the phantom chauffeur who "radiates a strong and peculiar kind of love" that makes the married couple's neglected 6-year-old twins "bend quickly towards his mouth, aching to receive his warm and smiling kisses" to the ultimate revelation that the heroine's deceased father lives on in a most peculiar and outrageous form*, this novel revels in transgressive sex (much of which is deeply disturbing to a contemporary reader in ways it might not have been for those in the late 1970s).
The power and beauty of this book, for me, lie primarily in the set pieces. Rather than follow a standard narrative structure, Lortz frequently interrupts or brackets what little plot fodder there is by focusing intently on surreal scenes, ones in which nature goes berserk and the characters' increasingly pathological interior states are illuminated through wild, almost hallucinatory imagery.
Had the book ended just a little more quickly, had the supernatural connection been ultimately less obvious, I probably would have given this another half star. Still, this is an excellent and unusual book and for anyone looking for horror that's distinctly weird and out of the ordinary, this should satisfy.
*I'll admit it-I laughed out loud when the final horror of horrors** was revealed to our hapless hero. I suspect '70s readers (at least the male ones) might have been more shocked and distinctly more sympathetic.
**Spoiler
*
*
*
*
An anatomically correct latex dildo
Well, this was an unexpected treat! I picked this up just to see if it was something I'd want to read later in the year, and the first chapter, a surreal, slightly hysterical set piece involving swarms of starlings, a avian mating dance, and loads of flying feathers, drew me immediately in; before I knew it, it was nearly 3 AM and I was halfway through the book.
In some ways this is a very typical '70s American horror novel (middle-class nuclear family moves out to isolated mansion and weird supernatural hijincks ensue) but in others, the ways that count, this is defiantly odd. A strong Oedipal undercurrent runs throughout the book and pseudo-Freudian analysis coupled with mind-altering drugs helps to move what little plot there is along smartly. "Kinkiness" for want of a better, more '70s appropriate word, pervades the entire novel. From the phantom chauffeur who "radiates a strong and peculiar kind of love" that makes the married couple's neglected 6-year-old twins "bend quickly towards his mouth, aching to receive his warm and smiling kisses" to the ultimate revelation that the heroine's deceased father lives on in a most peculiar and outrageous form*, this novel revels in transgressive sex (much of which is deeply disturbing to a contemporary reader in ways it might not have been for those in the late 1970s).
The power and beauty of this book, for me, lie primarily in the set pieces. Rather than follow a standard narrative structure, Lortz frequently interrupts or brackets what little plot fodder there is by focusing intently on surreal scenes, ones in which nature goes berserk and the characters' increasingly pathological interior states are illuminated through wild, almost hallucinatory imagery.
Had the book ended just a little more quickly, had the supernatural connection been ultimately less obvious, I probably would have given this another half star. Still, this is an excellent and unusual book and for anyone looking for horror that's distinctly weird and out of the ordinary, this should satisfy.
*I'll admit it-I laughed out loud when the final horror of horrors** was revealed to our hapless hero. I suspect '70s readers (at least the male ones) might have been more shocked and distinctly more sympathetic.
**Spoiler
*
*
*
*
An anatomically correct latex dildo
June 3, 2018
My goodness. 1970s horror had such an interesting, incesty take on sexuality. This one is light on the horror, heavy on the sex, and quite creepy. An exasperated professor tries to handle his quirky child bride whose idea of welcoming her husband home after a day's work is to dress up as Nefertiti and pretend to be pregnant. And when I say "handle", I mean bitch about it to his wife's therapist who is vigorously opposed to the concept of confidentiality. All I can say is: if your spouse has a trunk in their padlocked attic room, you either leave it alone, or you bolt. You DO NOT open the trunk.
December 28, 2024
lol fuck yeah
July 28, 2018
Utter trash. Full read, but there were a couple parts that really pissed me off.
November 15, 2025
Wild, surreal, disturbing, grim, fascinating…but the revealed secret didn’t surprise me.
The atmosphere was most effective. A gown of black moths…a huge, isolated, half-ruined house with an apple tree growing through one room…a handsome, silent chauffeur in black who brings a gorgeous car to the house when Christine’s husband is not around…a psychologist who looks like Alice in Wonderland, but is really an old woman…building, roiling uncertainty about sexuality and sexual identity, and sanity and normality in general.
It was startling when Dr. Ellenbogen told Michael that he could simply stop Christine’s sessions if he wished. He’s her husband; it’s a given. Of course his wife will be biddable and obedient. Of course he is in charge of her therapy.
He’s not even paying for it! Why would the brilliant Dr. Ellen talk about another woman, her patient, this way?
Dr. Ellen, despite her brilliance, is an arrogant, insensitive fool. (Aren’t they all, the author implies.)
One loose end for me was about Christine’s mother.
Another was the starlings. If Christine likes the moths, why is she so terrified and disgusted by the starlings?
The atmosphere was most effective. A gown of black moths…a huge, isolated, half-ruined house with an apple tree growing through one room…a handsome, silent chauffeur in black who brings a gorgeous car to the house when Christine’s husband is not around…a psychologist who looks like Alice in Wonderland, but is really an old woman…building, roiling uncertainty about sexuality and sexual identity, and sanity and normality in general.
It was startling when Dr. Ellenbogen told Michael that he could simply stop Christine’s sessions if he wished. He’s her husband; it’s a given. Of course his wife will be biddable and obedient. Of course he is in charge of her therapy.
He’s not even paying for it! Why would the brilliant Dr. Ellen talk about another woman, her patient, this way?
Dr. Ellen, despite her brilliance, is an arrogant, insensitive fool. (Aren’t they all, the author implies.)
One loose end for me was about Christine’s mother.
Another was the starlings. If Christine likes the moths, why is she so terrified and disgusted by the starlings?
May 25, 2023
Amazing, gripping, horrifying and stunning - this is the ultimate suburban nightmare that goes from creepy to absolutely perverse. I personally consider this a masterwork of horror fiction, one of perhaps the five greatest novels I've ever read. It's really that powerful and that devastating. Whether you love it or hate it, you'll never forget it. An absolute page-turner that will shock and surprise you - yes even you jaded readers of strong horror fiction. This is a must read for anyone who truly loves suspenseful and atmospheric horror fiction.
August 9, 2024
What does it take to truly be a horror book? This one makes the grade. It has an unexpected ending that, well, is sickening, frightening, nauseating, obscene and gross, and deliberately so. It is very horrific. We’ll done! A great book.
May 28, 2013
Starts strong, gets murky, becomes murkier, deteriorates into psycho-babble.
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