Oddly enough, "Quiver" makes two books in a row that mention Elizabeth
Bathory. Or, as she's known in her native Hungarian and in Holly
Luhning's book, Erzsébet Báthory.
Bathory, for those who haven't
heard of her, is a 16th-century countess who is infamous for having
tortured and killed hundreds of girls before she was arrested and
bricked up in her castle, where she later died. "Quiver" is the story of
a young woman who is fascinated — really, you could say obsessed — with
Bathory. Danica is completing the last of her training as a clinical
psychologist, a field she entered because of her interest in psychotics.
She's managed to get herself a job a mental hospital in England, where
she's assigned to work with a convicted murderer who claims to have
killed his victim for Bathory. Danica's work there attracts the
attention of an old acquaintance, Maria, who tempts Danica with what she
says are pages from Bathory's diary. What Maria really wants is a more
complicated question, and it's one that Danica will have no choice but
to answer.
I was more than a little put off by Danica's interest in Bathory. The
story doesn't work unless she's borderline obsessed, but it's still
disconcerting how little the extent of the countess' cruelty and
monstrosity bother her. She blames her interest on a supremely safe
childhood:
I've
never had an experience like that, something that gnawed at me in every
pause and that changed the taste of things. I know I should be
grateful, but I'm curious, envious to see what it's like to pass through
a version of reality and to see your world differently than you are
able to understand right now. Reading about Bathory didn't completely
change me, but it spurred me, dug in just enough to encourage my
curiosity of what it might be like to experience the horrific.
"Technically, I was fixated," she says later. For sure. When she reads
scenes Maria sends her from Bathory's diary — scenes of unbelievable
torture, total dismissal of the value of countless human lives — her
reaction borders on aroused. (And, yes, there is a subtext of sexual
tension between Danica and Maria, who resembles the countess in many
ways.)
Without those diary scenes, this book would fall in line with the
characters it describes, glorifying a woman who destroyed hundreds of
lives and families simply because she could. With them, the reader is
kept from buying into the warped adoration of Danica or, more so, Maria.
(After I finished "Quiver," one of my first reactions was that no one
would think of Bathory as Danica, Maria, and others in the book do. When
I headed online to research some of the details of her story, however, I
was shocked to find multiple sites whose authors defend her without
denying her crimes. How sad.)
This isn't a book I'll be rushing to re-read, despite solid writing and
editing. It certainly isn't uplifting, and the main character is both
frustratingly obtuse and difficult to root for. If you enjoy horror and
are a fan of movies such as "Hostel" or the "Saw" series (which I am
not), you'll enjoy this book more than I did.
