Satan Wants Me

by Robert Irwin

Satan Wants Me is a novel for anyone who wants to know what it was like to be young in the 1960s ... amphetamines, weird sex and Devil-worship.

'... the Lodge requires him to find a new partner, and they make him fill in the dating agency form that leads to Maud, one of the more memorable characters in recent fiction. Peter's initial contempt for Maud as a straight and boring hairdresser soon gives way to a kinky menage a trois, in which Sally eagerly dons a dog collar and frilly apron and has herself tattoed with the words 'I am Sally, the slave of Maud and Peter'. So extraordinary is Maud, in fact, that she has more than a little to do with the title of the book...... No doubt this contributes to the feel of Satan Wants Me as something to relish and curl up with, capable of inducing sensations rarely felt by people who have to read novels as work. With darkness outside and a drink to hand, I lay back on the sofa in the happy knowledge that I still had half of the book to go. Ah yes, I thought. This is the life.'
Phil Baker in The Times Literary Supplement

'Irwin is a writer of immense subtlety and craftmanship, and offers us a vivid and utterly convincing portrait of life on the loopier fringes of the Sixties. Satan Wants Me is black, compulsive and very, very funny.'
Christopher Hart in The Daily Telegraph

'Irwin's writing is witty and scabrous but it is also subtle in a way that keeps catching the reader out. The blend of the fantastical with the philosophical has been the defining characteristic of Irwin's fiction and in Peter's drug-drenched, satan-haunted diary, it has found its perfect expression.'
Tom Holland in The New Statesman & Society

'Part of the book's fertile comedy stems from the ironic interweaving of the jargons of sociology, hippiedom and magick. It is hard to resist a pot-head mystic who hopes the Apocalypse will come on Wednesday because it will break up the week.'
Tom Deveson in The Sunday Times

Genres: Fiction, Horror, Historical Fiction, Occult, Novels, Supernatural

320 pages, Paperback

First published March 18, 1999

About the author

Robert Graham Irwin was a British historian, novelist, and writer on Arabic literature.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Satan Wants Me is fundamentally risqué, murky and trippy black comedy of black magic…

After queuing for about twenty minutes, I secured my own copy of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. The sleeve gave me a start, for there, standing towards the left in the Beatles’ fantasy entourage, was a scowling Aleister Crowley.

It all happened in the era when deportment and ideas were the products of the great alchemical revolution…

When I woke up this morning I decided that I was dead. I can’t remember how I died or what my previous existence was like, but that is sort of the point. London is the Spectral City in the Afterlife. There can be no other explanation for the strangeness of London and its grey lifelessness. At every hour the big red buses ferry more crowds of the newly dead into the City of Shadows. Sally and I and the rest of us are spirits who have to hover about in this deceitful place until we wake up to full consciousness of our true state and we manage to shed any lingering attachment to our former mode of existence.

Voyaging all around in the yellow submarine… Flying high in the sky full of diamonds… So many fantastic colours… But every psychedelic rainbow has to it its white side and its black side.

[Rob Atkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange and unsettlingly spooky novel set in the swinging London of 1967, ’Satan Wants Me’ is cast in the form of a diary kept by Peter Keswick, a graduate student in Sociology. The diary is a daily exercise commanded by “The Master”, leader of a Crowleyan cult of Satanists to whom Peter has pledged obedience, apparently to gain occult knowledge. It appears that while bright, he’s of the flaky, new-agey sort, casting about for esoteric knowledge and experiences beyond the fringe, including through frequent drug-induced hallucination. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all is not necessarily as it seems, however, and as he gets drawn deeper and deeper into the ritual of the cult, the reader is thrown for a loop more than once. The set pieces at Horapollo House, the cult’s headquarters in North London, and the visions Peter’s experiences there impose on his drug-addled mind, certainly create a palpable sense of evil menace. But this isn’t a traditional gothic horror novel, even so. It should please fans of that genre, but it’s also about the disillusionment of the youth of that era, whose open-minded, utopian aims ironically left them open to all kinds of manipulation and corruption; ultimately it’s also an elegy to their thwarted dreams and ideals.

As in his earlier novel “Exquisite Corpse”, also set in an esoteric subculture in London (the Surrealist set of the 1930s), there’s a lot of interesting arcana woven into the plot, and Irwin’s prose maintains a high level of suspense while keeping the reader off-balance until the very end.

End note: There are also numerous references in this novel to author Dennis Wheatley, who wrote successful horror novels from the 1930s through the 60s, and with whom I was unfamiliar, but he does sound likely for a good pulpy horror read. I may have to try him on, around Halloween.

[Eve Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a twist at the end!
What a complete and utter shock!
How incredibly perfectly timed, though.
I found the beginning and the middle of this book pulling me on the inside.
On the one hand I found it tedious, uninteresting, the characters were being manipulated and lacked so called ambition in life. I'm not that into the occult or any kinds of cults or, well, any kind of group activity really, to be interested in reading about people getting together and enjoying all the togetherness.
On the other hand all of the characters provoked some kind of feeling in me, all the events were interesting even if I wouldn't care for them in my own life, the occult and cult and togetherness was on some level waking a kind of a beast in me.
If it hadn't been for the ending, I probably would have slided right into the arms of my first, initial feelings. Thanks to the brilliant story-telling of Irwin though, who I'm happy didn't let me down, I ended up surprising myself by letting my inner beast break free and run wild.

[Dan Sumption · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dark and comic tale of the 60s occult and counterculture which, this being Robert Irwin, takes some very surprising twists and turns along the way. The period is conjured up wonderfully, and the story is shocking and hilarious.

[Max (Outrage) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, as others have said, its funny, sad, Crowley-esque. A fleeting knowledge of the Golden Dawn will add seasoning to your read but it's not essential. It's a great read.

As just an aside, I was on that sccene in London in the late '60s, and Irwin has nailed it.

[Stuart Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite simply one of the scariest books I've ever read. Lose yourself in the imagination of an LSD fuelled brain that is being seduced by notions of devil worshipping ... absolutely wonderful

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's London, 1967. Peter is a hip, young sociology major into music, drugs, and wild reckless sex with his girlfriend, Sally. He also develops a taste for the esoteric, namely a local occult group called The Black Book Lodge, a secret Thelemic organization with ties to Aleister Crowley himself. Peter and Sally, along with their drug-gobbling, pseudo intellectual mate, "Mr. Cosmic," all become adepts for the lodge. Whenever the three of them are not scoring drugs and dancing all night at the psych clubs like The Middle Earth, or looking for celebrity sightings, (like Brian Jones and Syd Barrett), they are submitting themselves to the priests and priestesses of the lodge, learning how to perform black masses, and keep diaries of their forays into the dark arts. The entire story is told through Peter's diary. There is plenty of British humor, particularly in the guise of Peter's sarcastic, slightly arrogant demeanor, but it is also Peter who ultimately creeps you out. The writer does a fine job of blending humor and sarcasm in with the characters' subtle descents into madness. There are also some clever twists towards the latter end of the story. This book may not be everyone's bag, but I loved it. The Swinging London backdrop, the consistent music references, and the factual references to occult figures and occult history had me from the moment I started.

[Wreade1872 · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1967 a sociology student and acidhead gets involved with a satanic cult. Very much a love letter to the 60's and 60's occultism. If names like Crowley, Wheatley or films like Rosemary's Baby, don't mean anything to you, your probably not going to get the most out of this. Actually maybe some Kerouac, William S.Burroughs etc. wouldn't hurt either.
Some knowledge of 60's music (which i don't have) would also help. This book should really come with a playlist.

The whole thing is done as diary entries which can be a bit limiting. Still, i thought it would be an easy 4 stars, however it starts to come apart around the 3/4 mark. People change personality too abruptly, there's a big information dump at one point and some 'Story of O' type stuff which didn't do anything for me.
However it manages to pull itself together and keep the 4th star, if only just.

I don't think the story takes itself too seriously either, which is a good choice, there's a twinkle in the eye which keeps it from being too, pretentious? for want of a better term.

At times funny, interesting, sexy, disturbing, creepy and vile, but rarely boring.

[David Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Satan Wants Me" is a novel in the form of a diary. A Sociology grad student, Peter, is forced to keep the diary as he is initiated into a group occultists in 1967 London.

Lots of drugs, sex and black magic. This was an interesting period, the late '60s, when psychedelia and the occult were at their peak. People were inspired to push their minds to the furthest extremes. Immortality on the astral plane really seemed possible. This book isn't a horror novel, but an attempt to recreate that zeitgeist.

Even as Peter's rituals apparently work, he is obviously most unreliable. His drug intake is huge, and his milieu is so far removed from normal that everything he records in his diary is suspect, considering his altered mental status and his arrogance. Peter can be an asshole.

There are fantastic descriptions of rituals, the plot is interesting if a little too convoluted. I recommend this hard-to-find book. I don't know any others quite like it. The closest thing I can think of is the film Simon King of the Witches.

[Greg Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

An epistolary novel set in swinging London during the psychedelic sixties, depicting the adventures of a wayward young man as he becomes privy to the dark mysteries of the Black Lodge. It is very evocative of the time period; the reader will smell the patchouli and hear the surreal strains of Donovan, The Incredible String Band and early Pink Floyd as they follow the protagonist Peter on his journey of initiation. In addition to the diabolical tension and sense of unease in the narrative, there is an undertone of wry humour, poking fun at sixties wooly-headed idealism, the misguided notions of youth, and those who take themselves and their beliefs too seriously. This book is a must read for any devoted student of 1960's counter-culture or occult movements. Readers with knowledge of the life and works of Aleister Crowley will appreciate many of the allusions. A good follow-up read would be Irwin's non-fiction memoir Memoirs of a Derivsh: Sufis, Mystics and the Sixties, where much of the real life inspiration for the novel is documented.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Irwin's usual convoluted plotting, where the twists and turns can be as baffling to the reader as to the characters. But in a good way: the thwarting of expectation and undermining of motives is usually surprising and leaves you slightly dizzy, not quite knowing what is real, what fabricated or hallucinatory.

The problem with this one, though, is that I had no emotional attachment to any of the characters, none of whom I particularly liked, and consequently I didn't really care what happened to them. However, still worth a read because Irwin is a good writer.

[Irina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and hypnotising words decorated with punchy straightforwardness made me read greedily through this story full of sinister and even disgusting details and situations. The book leaves a feeling of author's mocking everything on its pages, yet it does also leave an undeniable fear of our own cold hearts which despite the modern view have very little to do with cold minds.

[B · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been so long since I read this I don't think any review I could write would do it justice. It's one of those books that I still recommend people read even though I barely remember the book myself!

Weird and culty. It was a random&well timed find half a life time ago&it will always be a favourite.

[Randy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Satan worshipping in Swinging London in the Sixties. How cool is that?

[Alex Sarll]

Straight on from The World Is Not Enough to another novel with associated turn of the century indie earworm. When Robert Irwin died earlier this year, it reminded me I should read more of his stuff, and yes, the Haines association helped push this to the front of the queue, but it's my kind of thing anyway, a novel presented as the diary of a hapless sociology student in sixties London, who joins an occult society in a spirit of enquiry and inevitably finds himself in too deep. The blurbs on this edition* make much of its comic side, and at times it is a hoot (especially the bit where the narrator has taken what he suspects is some dud acid and is just keeping himself occupied while he waits for the trip to start). More than that, there's the gentle bathos any British fictional diary can easily borrow from Mr Pooter and Adrian Mole. But, if it's not on a par with Irwin's gruesome Arabian Nightmare, there are still some truly horrific stretches too. I don't just mean the dark visions, cult brainwashing, or stoner attempts at trepanation, but the digging into the very idea of keeping a diary, the way that the more comprehensive it is, the more it consumes the life it's intended to record – and that's before the automatic writing kicks in, or the complications of one's superiors in the Black Book Lodge being entitled to read one's diary, including one's record of the previous times they read one's diary... The combined result is one of those awkward books where I feel I should have liked it more for how good I think it is, if that makes sense, though it doesn't help that the one real misstep comes right at the end, a death of the sixties dream moment that was already old hat on first publication, a decade after Withnail, and which feels doubly so when I've not long since read Robyn Hitchcock's memoir, with its much stranger and more nuanced reckoning with the nearly as much time again now elapsed since the heady year of 1967.

*An edition which is part of Dedalus' classics imprint, but still looks worse than any of its predecessors, suggesting more than anything that the Prince of Darkness has a passion for graphic design. Still, at least the photo establishes Irwin's own 1967 credentials.

[Maggie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gripping, though uneven at times, this is the story of a young man who spends the summer of 1967 mixed up in a Crowley-based cult. The main character's voice is perfect-the right blend of bravado and uncertainty.

[Michael D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really strong at first then trailing into fantastical realms a bit too much, 'Satan Wants Me' is still a lot of fun and it does make one want to experience the 'obscene kiss' first hand.

[James Newman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recall this being a fun read. Only flaw being that strange plot twist toward the end.

[Jannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the trigger warnings while still being uproarious

[Daniel Gower · Rating 4 out of 5]

60s pop culture, satanism, and loads of dark humour. I really enjoyed this one.

[Adrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to really like this, and loved the setting, the references, and the swinging 60s vibe. But I did think it could have been wrapped up a little sooner maybe?

Definitely helps if (like me) you have read too many Dennis Wheatley novels

[Juan Fuentes · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,5 en realidad.

Algún fragmento bueno tiene pero en general es bastante tedioso.

https://liblit.com/robert-irwin-satan...

[Signor Mambrino · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me ages to read, but it was pretty good.

[Bea De · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally loved this book!Great fun and such wildly interesting subject matterWill do my best to get my hands on his other books as well.Beautifully written.Not a boring page to find anywhere at all.

[Haloperidol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me ha encantado el prota es un tolai total que va de listillo y enrollado. Un tio guai hippie ingles que se mete en un asociacion ocultista.Todo en el libro es surrealista a mas no poder, incluso es gracioso de verdad ,me he llegado a reir en voz alta.

[Kenneth · Rating 1 out of 5]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13025723