Gabriel

by Lisa Tuttle

'Eyes like shards of noonday sky, pure colour. It was a physical sensation, as if he had touched me inside. I was aware of him more as a presence than a person, as if he was some form of energy. Compared to him, I had no life...'

Their love was obsessive, sometimes a little mad. Dinah and Gabriel, she so young, he an artist driven by a passion that could terrify, an unearthly fury as violent as his sudden, senseless death.

For ten years, Dinah's life was a blur as she fought to rid herself of the cruel memories which ached like raw weals in her soul. She was about to start anew, with a good job, when someone with a sick sense of humour sent her a birthday card signed 'Gabriel'. And then, while she walked alone in an empty park, a slight, short-haired boy, no more than eight years old, with an oddly familiar face, called her name...

Genres: Horror

216 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

(Wife of Colin Murray) aka Maria Palmer (house pseudonym).

Lisa Tuttle taught a science fiction course at the City Lit College, part of London University, and has tutored on the Arvon courses. She was residential tutor at the Clarion West SF writing workshop in Seattle, USA. She has published six novels and two short story collections. Many of her books have been translated into French and German editions.

Reviews

[Alex (The Bookubus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Grady Hendrix · Rating 2 out of 5]

Who is Lisa Tuttle and why is she such a pervert? We may never find an answer to that second question. After all, what drives an author to write some of the most psychologically harrowing, squick-inducing, “find your soft places and dig in with my fingernails” mass market paperbacks of the 1980s? Why does she seem to delight in our discomfort? But maybe the answer is easy.

Why is Lisa Tuttle so perverse? It might be because her books taste better that way.

Especially this one.

Get squicky and read the rest of this review.

[Amy Gentry]

Well, she went there. I mean, not all the way there (though a lot of people seem to read the crucial scene differently than I did), but far enough that it's a deeply squicky read. It's intended to be. The themes explored in this book are not, on their face, creepy--mostly this seems to be about a woman approaching her thirties and fantasizing about having kids and a better life, while worrying that she's already missed her shot. But...the way the premise plays out is like a slow-motion train wreck, and the train is made of squick.

Worth noting that Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock plays out a similar premise in a way that's arguably more squicky because it's romanticized, and the book wants you to root for it. Whereas this book does not. Hence the horror. It's effective, but I would not go out of my way to recommend it to someone unless I had a very, very thorough knowledge of their particular triggers.

On a different note: I continue to love Lisa Tuttle's commitment to portraying normal, boring life problems alongside the fantastical ones. I think it makes the books so much weirder. A large part of this book is taken up with the main character trying to figure out her new job as manager of a gym. The dude who was in charge before her resents being managed by a woman, but that's not really the problem--she's just not very good at managing a gym and doesn't like it, so she eventually gets fired, and it's the first time she's ever been fired and she's mortified. It has nothing to do with the premise, and it delights me.

[Mikepottz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dinah married at 18 years old and widowed less than a year later after her husband and her have a three way with her husbands ex girlfriend before he throws himself out a window on LSD. 10 years later she will go back to New Orleans her husband's town. The smell from the French Quarter seep through the pages. She will meet her dead husband's child who was conceived in the three way with the lady. Doubts arise if the child is the reincarnation of her dead husband. A dream like moment of her in bed with this child and both survive a moment of near death. What is inside Dinah's head? Her husband is everywhere.

[Joanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second Lisa Tuttle book and my first five star read of the year.

Dinah is at a pivotal moment in her life. She's on the verge of turning thirty and has no career, children or marriage prospects. The trifecta of the 1980s woman, well quite a few anyway. She is still not over her husband's death ten years ago (he jumped out of a window high on LSD in the throes of a threesome - the 1970s!). She moves back to New Orleans (I loved the descriptions of the city. They took me back to the time I visited: the immense heat, artwork on park railings and beignets) to become a manager of a health and fitness club situated on top of a skyscraper. Very 1987! I loved that the lobby was bright yellow and that she had a wood-panelled office with a two-way mirror wall. Also, the descriptions of Dinah's blue and white rented apartment were very vivid. All this interior design talk has no relevance to the plot, I just liked it.

The horror comes in the form of Gabriel, the dead husband, being reincarnated in his nine year old son. I won't go into any sordid details but it's not the most agreeable storyline and that's an understatement. I recoiled on more than one occasion. It can be argued that Dinah's longing for a child is mirrored in aspects of the Ben plot that come into frightful fruition at the close of the book. Tuttle has a talent for easing the reader in gently. She begins by innocently describing mundane events, slowly building to a creeping unease and culminating in all out revulsion. That's her strength - the horror in the everyday. On a side note, the mention of the Escher print in Dinah's apartment can be seen to symbolise the undercurrent of the book, i.e realism juxtaposed with unsettling fantasy. Lisa Tuttle knows what she's doing.

I liked both Dinah's and Ben's/Gabriel's endings. There should be a sequel following up on Ben and his baby sister, and Dinah every time she tells Max that she wants "the time to write a book". Or, in other words, escaping from her lacklustre life with the next man reincarnated as Gabriel. Dinah's fate made me smile as she refuses to be dulled and confined by marriage and her new job in an art gallery. She chooses the extraordinary life over the ordinary as she pursues her own desires. Even in a 1980s mass market horror paperback, Tuttle manages to address gender issues (also, Rick's attitude to having a female boss in the health spa storyline). By the end, Dinah becomes a strong female protagonist in a piece of true feminist horror. This is female-driven horror at it's best (and most depraved).

[Andrew ✝️ · Rating 1 out of 5]

I decided to not post my original review just because. Basically. Sort of. Apparently, there's loads of books with the situation found in this book... one that I didn't really like ... That was sure news to me. In a nutshell, in its entirety, I'm not a fan of this book, nor am I feeling the urge to seek out Tuttle's other novels. Up until the last couple of chapters, before the part that made me dislike the story, the story was pretty interesting. So to be fair, I'll give it as much as saying that this story would've been really good had the author gone in a different, more legal direction. My original review also would seem a bit harsh to post since literature like this is apparently legal. With the changing political and social landscape, though, the least of the author's worries would be that this would become a banned book. I'd reckon the reason I reacted to this book the way I did was because I seriously had no idea that novels like this were in print. Be that as it may, other readers may read her books, but I still don't feel compelled to seek out her other books. 1 star.

[Bibliophile · Rating 2 out of 5]

Creepy for all the wrong reasons.