The Servants
by Michael Marshall Smith
(Earthling Publications, $ 30, 209 pages, trade hardcover.)
Review by Mario Guslandi
 Always
torn between dark fantasy and SF, Michael Marshall Smith is an extraordinary
writer, author of award-winning novels such as Only Forward,
Spares and One of Us, as well as of a number of excellent
short stories, collected in the outstanding volume More tomorrow
and other stories published by Earthling Publications.
More recently, he has produced the Straw Men thrillers, using, by order
of an idiotic American publishing marketing, the pen name of Michael
Marshall.
After almost a decade Smith is back with a dark novel, much to the
delight of his countless fans.
Eleven-year old Mark has to leave London to settle down in Brighton,
with his mother and her new husband. The mother is very sick and Mark's
stepfather appears to be a heartless, distant man unable to create a
bond with the kid. Trying to escape the dullness and the difficulties
of his new household Mark makes friends with an elderly lady living
in the house basement. Which, in turn is the door to another section
of rooms inhabited by a group of servants whose task is to provide any
kind of service for the proper functioning and maintenance of the house.
Are the servants real or only ghosts from a distant past? Is Mark's
father a victim or a culprit?
How severe is Mark's mother's disease? Is her new husband a kind of
tyrant or just a man devastated by sorrow ? And, more importantly, is
there a link between the servants' underworld and his mother's health?
In due time the reader will find an answer to every question and discover
that the truth is not always easy to accept.
Those already familiar with Smith's previous work are fully aware that
he's a terrific storyteller, able to handle with great skill both short
and long fiction, to produce beautiful prose, realistic dialogues and
unsettling atmospheres, to portray people's feelings with an elegant,
sympathetic touch.
In other words, Smith provides a great, captivating work which will
make you wonder about life's true meaning and essence. Not a small accomplishment
compared with too much shallow fiction sitting on the shelves of our
bookstores.
|
