A Choir of Ill Children
by Tom Piccirilli
(Night Shade Books, $25.00, 238 pages, hardcover; published in March
2003.)
For his novel A Choir of Ill Children,  horror
writer Tom Piccirilli has created the Southern backwater community of
Kingdom Come. Isolated both geographically and culturally from the outside
world, the town is populated by gruesome yet bizarrely charming characters
who engage in unusual rituals and demonstrate disturbing mores.
The narrator, Thomas, is the richest man in Kingdom Come and its unofficial
ruler. He lives in a mostly abandoned mansion with his three brothers,
all three of whom are conjoined at the frontal lobe. The daughter of
a local witch serves as nurse to the triplets and sexual plaything to
all four brothers. A dark secret from Thomas's childhood threatens to
destroy Kingdom Come, but he ignores the witch's warnings that he must
take seriously his role as the community's ruler and protector.
Themes of salvation run throughout the narrative, as various characters
strive to find their own peculiar brand of serenity and heaven on Earth
in the aptly named Kingdom Come. A crew of university students are visiting
to film a documentary on the conjoined triplets, but some of the filmmakers
are soon infected by the gothic strangeness of Kingdom Come and embark
on their own twisted journeys of self-discovery.
Through the fascinatingly complex perspective of the narrator, whose
worldview is peculiarly askew, Kingdom Come is brought to life with
a relentless parade of wonderfully weird details. Tom's voice flirts
with the hardboiled attitude of noir antiheroes, but his gruff manner
hides a fragile compassion.
Piccirilli gradually unveils the uncompromising harshness of life in
Kingdom Come, imbuing even the most monstrous behaviour with a strange,
almost surreal love.
A Choir of Ill Children is as poignant as it is bizarre.
Originally published in
The Montreal Gazette, Saturday, 31 July 2004.
Claude Lalumière's Fantastic Fiction
is a series of
capsule reviews first published in the Saturday Books
section of The Montreal Gazette.
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