what’s the unpublished novel by Michael McDowell, the writer of the “Blackwater” saga? | EUROtoday
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“Okayatie incorporates a few of my most grotesque murders. It is doubtless my cruelest ebook. It was numerous enjoyable to put in writing. » In this epilogue to Katierevealed in 1982, earlier than his saga Blackwater (1 million copies offered in France alone), Michael McDowell, who died in 1999, describes all of the paradoxical enjoyment there’s in writing and studying horrors.
This responsible pleasure confessed by the person who was additionally the screenwriter of Beetlejuice and of The unusual Christmas of Mr. Jackby Tim Burton, will not be model new: from the primary half of the nineteenthe century, within the Anglo-Saxon world, a literary style is dedicated to it, the dreadful penny (“penny terror”). These serials printed on low-end paper and offered on a big scale, focusing on the working class and vacationers on the primary railway traces, supply their readers tales impressed by actual information occasions. Bloody assaults, infanticides, rapes, kidnappings: all the things that makes the headlines is introduced in juicy tales.
It is from this heritage that the American author Michael McDowell drew for a number of of the books making up his prolific work, lately introduced out of oblivion by the publishing home Monsieur Toussaint Louverture. In 2022, the writer revealed the saga for the primary time in French Blackwater, a gothic story deployed as a serial in 1983. The story of this matriarchal lineage from the southern United States, stuffed with thrills and suspense, was all the trend in our bookstores. In 2023, persevering with the publication of his “McDowell library”, Monsieur Toussaint Louverture got here out The Golden Needles, devilishly sensible. This yr, place Katie.
Vice and advantage, all claws out
We are in New Jersey, in 1871. Philomena Drax and her mom are riddled with debt. A forgotten grandfather comes ahead to depart them an inheritance, however it’s stolen by the odious Slape household, made up of father, stepmother and daughter – the well-known Katie. A creature escaped from a horror novel, this younger girl with a disturbing smile has the present of understanding buried secrets and techniques and predicting the longer term. The medium will homicide Philomena's grandfather, then her mom, then dozens of girls whereas chasing the ingénue like a fox its prey.
From New York to Philadelphia and from Wall Street to Broadway, this novel with a mischievously old school fashion and a nervous breath recounts the leaping future of two younger ladies decided to earn their place on the planet, one taking part in with vices, the opposite with virtues, every with their claws out. Leaning as effectively on the facet ofGone with the windfor twists of destiny, romance and crinolines, than Stephen King, for trickery, violence and fantasy, Katie is a delight like no different.
Saga Blackwater: a monster success
The 6 volumes of the saga Blackwater, revealed between April and June 2022, have offered greater than 870,000 copies.
The Golden Needles (2023) have exceeded 80,000 copies.
Katie 70,000 copies have been printed.
Three different unreleased ones, Cold moon over Babylon, The Amulet And The Elementalswill probably be printed by 2025.
https://www.lepoint.fr/livres/katie-le-roman-inedit-de-michael-mcdowell-18-05-2024-2560508_37.php