Review: Human Desire
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 28, 2012
"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it."Chapter 3 of The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. SalingerWell, The Girl on the Mountain is that kind of book, and Carol Ervin is that kind of author.Lately, I've been reading books taking place in dystopian settings, and / or involving zombies, vampires, spaceships and superheroes. I decided to take a break for a while, to slow down on what's become the ordinary for me and try something more "down to earth". Little did I know I was in for another great ride.Before I fell down into the dark side, I read my fair share of classics. And I was reminded of these with The Girl on the Mountain: Carol Ervin's writing made me think of Twain, Steinbeck and Woolf. There's something of Charles Portis's "True Grit" as well. Of course I mean that in a good way: not everyone can be compared with such greats; not everyone either can thrill you with a subject you have no interest in at first sight.  I must confess: you don't have to press me very long into getting me to read about the living dead. But It's quite another matter to make me feel something for loggers and their wives in the middle of the mountains...The reason it works is that The Girl on the Mountain is not only a historical book trying to recapture a certain past period: it's much more universal and essential. The logging community allows the author to place her characters in a very male context. The main character, May Rose, epitomizes the fight of the individual trying to break free of their chains, struggling against clichés and day-to-day violence. Phallic  symbols abound throughout the novel (the mountain, cigars, knives, church steeples, trees, trains, fingers - occasionally chopped off with an ax, ...), overpowering the feminine side, and offering an omnipresent, violent sexual background. May Rose is constantly preyed on by males, who behave like pigs and represent an endless threat for her.The allusions to sex can be direct or subtle: when travelling with the doctor, the choice of words can be misleading: "... the seat was hard and the ride bumpy (...) her rear was numb and her hands damp...". This quasi-subliminal use of words reminded me of Emile Zola's "La Bte Humaine", or Kate Chopins's "The Awakening", in which female characters also undergo male domination, and where sexual innuendoes intersperse the narrative too. At first, you might think that you're imagining things, that you're "reading too much" into the words, but there's a quite metafictional conversation at the end allowing us to do so: "Inference depends on what's in the reader's mind. Some always find more than the writer planted." "Planted, no. Left open ,Herr Professor".That's why I was so enthralled by The Girl On The Mountain: it is extremely well-written,  heartfelt and moving, but more than that, it's real Literature with a capital L, full of double-entendre, subtle symbols and clever metaphors. No word is used at random; even a seemingly casual reference to books recently published can be tied to the overall meaning of the novel, and is not only there to give us an idea of the date when the events take place... (Bram Stoker's Dracula ironically mirrors May's seclusion, loneliness and possibly mortal sin, but with a terrifying "man" on the mountain instead of a defenceless woman; while H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds can indirectly echo the conflicting worlds of men and women...). Deceptively simple and simply delightful. A modern-day classic.