Black Flame is Gretchen Felker-Martin’s third novel in as many years. This book is very different from her usual style, as an avid reader of hers I would call it experimental. But now is a good time for Felker-Martin to try something new. Manhunt and Cuckoo (not to be confused with the movie of the same name that came out around the same time) were both very successful critically and in terms of sales. Manhunt has been optioned as a movie by none other than Lily Wachowski.
Immediate Differences
I started noticing differences as soon as I held the book in my hands. Black Flame is a good deal shorter than her other books, coming in at just under 200 pages compared to Manhunt’s 300 and Cuckoo’s 350.
This served as a bit of foreshadowing as it is the first of many ways this book is very different from the author’s usual style. It seems she’s branching out from the action packed violence she made a name for herself with and is trying the slow-burn format; no opening scene monster attacks or monster children this time. We start out learning about the setting (1980s New York City), the protagonist (Ellen; a closeted gay, openly Jewish, film restoration professional), and her life (how film restoration actually works, her family, her kind-of boyfriend). Which brings me to another key difference; where Felker-Martin’s other works were about groups of people, Black Flame focuses mainly on one person. Everyone else exists in relation to Ellen, her boss, her family, her friends.
Politically Polarizing Film Restoration
The company she works for is lately infamous for restoring a Klan film so politics also plays a role in the story, which is actually what gets the ball rolling. They have now been contracted to restore a movie long thought destroyed by Nazis although rumors and fragments had persisted. A complete copy of The Baroness was found in the home of a Berliner who, after his death, was discovered to have been a Nazi living under an assumed identity. The movie itself seems to be an erotic exploitation film with a loose plot about someone called The Beautiful Boy delivering a message to The Duchess’s castle and all of the things he sees (and does, and has done to him) along the way. As Ellen works on the film, she begins seeing things, characters and settings from the film in her everyday life or lurking in the shadows of her apartment. Cue horror movie music.
It is at first unclear what is going on with the movie, we learn that the director made two versions, one which is just a movie and one which is real; the magic, the monsters, the deaths. Does this somehow translate into a The Ring haunted-movie situation, where the movie wants to kill people?
Descent into Madeness
Alternatively, there is also a feeling that we are witnessing a descent into madness; which Felker-Martin enhances by having secondary characters behave in ways that are, not unbelievable, but confusing. At a scene where she is having lunch with a journalist in Katz’s Deli, I found myself thinking, “Why is the journalist saying those things?” Just as Ellen seemingly had the same thought and got up to leave. The journalist was being kind of a jerk, but when that’s happening for no reason it can make you feel crazy, hallucinations and crazy movies notwithstanding.
Don’t worry though, you won’t be stuck with an ambiguous ending. By the end it is clear if anything supernatural is happening or she is just an overstressed person using a movie as a way and means to get rid of those who have wronged her.
I will say that it takes a surprisingly long time, a good quarter of the book, before something definitively horrific happens to Ellen. Which is to say, something real that could not be written off as a vision or hallucination which is a main part of the book. Once she gets the ball rolling however, it does not stop until the bitter end.
Felker-Martin writes what she knows.
Cotton fibers stuck to skin. The dull, insistent throbbing as she tried to push the tape and bandage off the tip of the digit. When it went, most of her thumbnail went with it, a mottled green-and-purple hunk of keratin. Pus swelling from the nail bed. The stink of it, rich and fatty. Feldman’s pastrami sandwich. She vomited into the sink.
As someone who has had the unhappy experience, I would wager no small amount of money that Gretchen Felker-Martin has at some point also nearly, but not quite, cut off a fingertip and had the resulting flap fester until it fell off.
Cultural Relevance
The book is peppered with NYC and LGBT deep cuts, besides the meeting at Katz’s, the doorman is reading Rosemary’s Baby, which takes place in the city and other landmarks are mentioned throughout. Perusing a friend’s bookcase she finds The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions, which was fairly obscure even when it was new; about living on a gay commune.
A few characters we learn are trans but they’re not immediately described that way. They are not defined by their transness the way the two female leads in Manhunt are. Eventually, transness does become so central to the story that I, as a cis man, feel awkward critiquing that part of it. I did find myself thinking that this story is kind of the opposite of I Saw the TV Glow, in that regard. In that movie, part of the horror is that the protagonist is trans but chooses to ignore it and never transition. In Black Flame, the horror is what liberates the main character to begin considering their transness. I was also reminded of The Witch, which I always think of as a heartwarming tale about a girl escaping her abusive family to join her people in the woods.
In Closing
All in all, I would say that this is a book for people who are already fans of Felker-Martin. If you’re just now hearing her name for the first time, do yourself a favor and pick up Manhunt.