![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
BLACKWOOD FARM CHAPTER 40
Jan. 27th, 2018 08:35 pmThis one is so short that I almost considered just mushing it together with the next chapter's spork, then I remember how long that would actually take me these days. So just have this tiny tidbit I guess!
CHAPTER 40
Quinn is at the wedding. There's a lot of cigarette smoke, and the smell of food and booze is repulsive to him, I guess because he's a vampire now. Everyone is "beautiful" but "imperfect". He sees the bride. She is "pretty" but "wraith-thin" with black hair and olive skin. She's smoking a cigarette, and "beckoned urgently" to him. Quinn can see "invitation" clearly in her mind and wonders what she want. Turns out, she wants to fuck Quinn. She's complaining about her new husband for some indistinct reason and decides she wants to have sex with Quinn in hopes said husband break the door down.
This is on the first page.
You know, it's not that I doubt this is something someone might do, but it just seems so ridiculous and contrived. Then again, it's Anne Rice, of course it is.
She drags him into the bedroom, and surprise, Quinn drinks her to death. To my actual surprise, she's not demonized when he tastes her life. Although I did find it kinda...dehumanizing? It sounds like he's talking about a dumb animal: "She was limp, in a brand of ecstasy, a litany of banal innocence thudding out of her, no evil, no design, no malice, no knowledge, no pain."
Of course, I might just be nitpicking at this point cuz I hate Quinn so much.
Too late, Petronia arrives to grab him by the hair and slam him into the wall so that he's blind and senseless for a moment, then berate him for having killed her when there was "a wilderness of killers" while the bride was "nothing but a tart, and for that you killed her!"
I appreciate that Petronia at least has her priorities straight about who 'deserves' to die. Also what kind of wedding party was this that like apparently everybody was a murderer there? I guess it was a Mafia family or something? It's never stated at all, but given it's in Italy that's my best guess.
The fact she was a bride prompts an interesting reflection from Quinn:
"The bride, the poor bride, she was dead, and I had left her covered in her own blood, all the brides of Blackwood Farm betrayed, Ophelia Immortal never to be my bride betrayed, blood on her white dress, Rebecca never to be Manfred's bride laughing."
So, in this moment, the beloved Mona, the "wicked" Rebecca, and the nameless "tart" are all equivalent to Quinn. I don't know if this is meant to be a flash of recognition that Rebecca and this nameless bride are human beings just like his beloved Mona, or if there's another meaning to this, or if there's no meaning at all beyond Rice wanting to seem deep and going "well they all never got married I guess that's a good enough theme"
Up to you, I guess.
Anyway, they're back at the palazzo and Petronia just keeps hitting Quinn, Manfred is begging for Arion to make her stop, Arion pulls Petronia off Quinn. Arion says it's their fault, that Quinn is too young and they shouldn't have left him alone. Petronia starts crying in Arion's arms. Manfred, whom Quinn only refers to as "the Old Man" in the narration of this chapter, is crying too.
I'm glad they're having some emotional reaction, because I'm not. This book has burnt me out. I'm almost disappointed that the bride wasn't demonized, at least then I could be ANGRY.
As for Quinn: "I lay there and dreamt of death." He then gives us a paragraph of angst, then thinks about how back home they must be searching for him, and thinking that the gators got him, and that he is dead.
"And I was."
Fucking if only.
CHAPTER 40
Quinn is at the wedding. There's a lot of cigarette smoke, and the smell of food and booze is repulsive to him, I guess because he's a vampire now. Everyone is "beautiful" but "imperfect". He sees the bride. She is "pretty" but "wraith-thin" with black hair and olive skin. She's smoking a cigarette, and "beckoned urgently" to him. Quinn can see "invitation" clearly in her mind and wonders what she want. Turns out, she wants to fuck Quinn. She's complaining about her new husband for some indistinct reason and decides she wants to have sex with Quinn in hopes said husband break the door down.
This is on the first page.
You know, it's not that I doubt this is something someone might do, but it just seems so ridiculous and contrived. Then again, it's Anne Rice, of course it is.
She drags him into the bedroom, and surprise, Quinn drinks her to death. To my actual surprise, she's not demonized when he tastes her life. Although I did find it kinda...dehumanizing? It sounds like he's talking about a dumb animal: "She was limp, in a brand of ecstasy, a litany of banal innocence thudding out of her, no evil, no design, no malice, no knowledge, no pain."
Of course, I might just be nitpicking at this point cuz I hate Quinn so much.
Too late, Petronia arrives to grab him by the hair and slam him into the wall so that he's blind and senseless for a moment, then berate him for having killed her when there was "a wilderness of killers" while the bride was "nothing but a tart, and for that you killed her!"
I appreciate that Petronia at least has her priorities straight about who 'deserves' to die. Also what kind of wedding party was this that like apparently everybody was a murderer there? I guess it was a Mafia family or something? It's never stated at all, but given it's in Italy that's my best guess.
The fact she was a bride prompts an interesting reflection from Quinn:
"The bride, the poor bride, she was dead, and I had left her covered in her own blood, all the brides of Blackwood Farm betrayed, Ophelia Immortal never to be my bride betrayed, blood on her white dress, Rebecca never to be Manfred's bride laughing."
So, in this moment, the beloved Mona, the "wicked" Rebecca, and the nameless "tart" are all equivalent to Quinn. I don't know if this is meant to be a flash of recognition that Rebecca and this nameless bride are human beings just like his beloved Mona, or if there's another meaning to this, or if there's no meaning at all beyond Rice wanting to seem deep and going "well they all never got married I guess that's a good enough theme"
Up to you, I guess.
Anyway, they're back at the palazzo and Petronia just keeps hitting Quinn, Manfred is begging for Arion to make her stop, Arion pulls Petronia off Quinn. Arion says it's their fault, that Quinn is too young and they shouldn't have left him alone. Petronia starts crying in Arion's arms. Manfred, whom Quinn only refers to as "the Old Man" in the narration of this chapter, is crying too.
I'm glad they're having some emotional reaction, because I'm not. This book has burnt me out. I'm almost disappointed that the bride wasn't demonized, at least then I could be ANGRY.
As for Quinn: "I lay there and dreamt of death." He then gives us a paragraph of angst, then thinks about how back home they must be searching for him, and thinking that the gators got him, and that he is dead.
"And I was."
Fucking if only.
