Violent Faculties - Coming February 27th, 2024!
I received an ARC of this novella from Charlene Elsby and am eager for it to be released to all on February 27th, 2024. I truly enjoyed the discomfort in the eyes of the people who spotted the cover from between my twitching hands. For the past nine nights, I made a point to read a chapter or two in bed. Each night, I'd lay on a silken pillow while Elsby's mercurial words flooded my mind and tampered with my morals.
To summarize, this book is about a Philosophy Professor being removed from her job due to greedy university administrators. With palpable rage, she conducts experiments on former students and staff to test philosophical theories about the soul and what makes up humanity. In principle, I can completely understand the need for vengeance, especially watching budget cuts in the education realm come at the cost of empowering new people with knowledge. But in practice, the main character has gone off the deep end and her methods rival that of Josef Mengele (without bringing race into the picture).
Imagine pulling people apart, adding to them with objects and other people's fluids, all in the interest of reducing humanity to something physical and real, so that that too can be pulled apart and ultimately destroyed. Elsby's got a book here that basically shows a loss of faith in humanity and a requirement to stamp it out at all costs.
Among all of this wickedness is, as is Elsby's pattern, a splattering of black humor to be enjoyed with a cynical smirk. The real comedy to me is that Elsby herself is a former Philosophy Professor. I imagined her sharing this work with former students and coworkers, then later attempting to invite them over for coffee and a chat, only to be violently rejected due to what the character in this novel did to the people who accepted such an offer.
Intelligent, dehumanizing, and furious, this book will leave you wondering who is worthy of the fabled human spirit.
