Review: Base Spirits: history, horror, fabulous
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 27, 2012
Let me say from the outset: I adore `period pieces', aka historicals--romance, semi-bios, fictionalized history... whatever. If it's history, I'm on board.Base Spirits is in that category of fictionalized history--a story based on true events--but it's something more, much more. It's a play in four acts. Act one sets the stage in York, England, in 1604 and a dramatic tease to the finale of a horrific event. Act two brings us to modern times: Clara and Scott have rented a guest house, a wing of a larger estate, while Scott attends a literary conference and Clara plans to write and contemplate the state of her psyche ... and her marriage. Their friends, Emma and Martin, are dimly aware of the undercurrents--Emma in particular.  This first act established the dysfunctional relationship between Clara and Scott. Scott is controlling, obsessive and passive-aggressive abusive. Clara has self-esteem issues and a tendency toward substance abuse in response to her husband's increasing demands to submit to his needs.When finally alone to tackle her play, Clara must deal with nightmares that morph into apparitions and finally into a reality she cannot blame on her inebriated state ... and thus Act three begins. Clara experiences the terrors of being trapped, inexplicable sensory overload, and the re-enactment of a bloodbath that she views voyeuristically at first ... until Phillipa, her Dream Woman, absorbs her being ... possession in reverse.The re-enactment, the `witnessing', of a man's descent into madness and Phillipa's attempts to shield her children from the cruel reality of her family's dissolution into penury are exquisitely presented. The characters of `the Wife', Phillipa, and her husband, Sir Walter Calverley, are skillfully drawn. The time, Elizabethan England, is splendidly portrayed with careful historical accuracy: the language, mode of dress, the social structure, the powerlessness of women, the hegemony of a legal system that spoke more to controlling assets than to justice.We view through Phillipa's eyes and heart the horrific path to destruction, the murders, and the absolution. It is relentless, the urge to turn away strong but the story is too compelling to allow us, at a convenient remove, to set aside the inexorable march toward an outcome we already know but simply cannot avoid. And at the end of this act, you might have an obsessive need to wash away the blood that surely coats your hands.A long-winded way of saying ... this is a page-turner.Act four has Clara awakening in her own body, yet still trapped in a house that refuses to free her, either mentally or physically. We then join Scott, soon to enjoy his anticipated (and `well-deserved') triumph at the conference, only to follow him into a brutal mindset where he blames Clara for his failure when the talk does not go as planned. He returns to the estate, and we, the readers, prepare to witness another round of co-dependence ... but in true horror genre fashion, not this.If you want to find out what happens, you simply have to read it yourself: no spoilers.Here's what you get with Base Spirits: authentic historical detail, a re-enactment of a true event, characters and situations you can sink your teeth into, bone-chilling horror and a finale that will have you gripping the arms of your chair (unless you have a Kindle in which case your thumbs will have trouble keeping up).The historical notes and background information are also a must read.Is Base Spirits horror, is it history? Is it both?For me it was just fabulous. Five stars.