By R. PATRICK GATES (Onyx; 1990)
A surprise: amid all the novels that appeared during the splatterpunk era, which included some good books (THE NIGHTRUNNERS, THE KILL RIFF) and many not-too-good ones (THE ROOM, RAW PAIN MAX), GRIMM MEMORIALS, a paperback original, has become one of the most enduring. It’s by no means good; matter of fact, it’s downright ridiculous, attempting a modern-day inversion of classic fairy tale tropes (THE USES OF ENCHAMENT: THE MEANING AND IMPORTANCE OF FAIRY TALES by Bruno Bettelheim is mentioned in an author’s note) with all the subtlety of an Oliver Stone movie, and none of the sophistication.
“Icky” was the term given GRIMM MEMORIALS by publisher/bookseller Mark V. Zeising, and that’s a good summation. It’s a book that flaunts its splatterpunk credentials quite proudly, within a child-centered, New England set narrative that presents yet another variant on the tried-and-true Stephen King model.
“Icky” was the term given GRIMM MEMORIALS by publisher/bookseller Mark V. Zeising, and that’s a good summation.
It begins a month before Halloween. Eleanor Grimm is a mind-reading witch descended, apparently, from a certain pair of famous siblings bearing her last name. She operates the Massachusetts-based Grimm Memorials crematorium, to which she lures children by inducing hallucinatory fairy tale scenarios that involve all the iconic Brothers Grimm characters. She uses the kids (or at least their corpses) in various unholy rituals, and also as meat for the stew she feeds her captives.
Opposing Eleanor are Steve, a middle school teacher and frustrated poet, and his pregnant wife Diane. They’ve just moved in next door to the crematorium with Diane’s children Jennifer and Jackie. It’s the latter who becomes the book’s unlikely hero, as Steve’s sanity is compromised rather severely after he allows himself to be seduced by a “psychic blow job” Eleanor administers. Yes, sex is very much a component of GRIMM MEMORIALS’ universe and, given that children are involved, the likely reason for the “icky” designation by the abovementioned Mr. Ziesing.
…amid all the novels that appeared during the splatterpunk era …GRIMM MEMORIALS, a paperback original, has become one of the most enduring.
Anyhoo: Eleanor’s antics, performed in conjunction with her long-dead sibling Edmund (who she continues PSYCHO-like to consult), are leading up to a final ritual on Samhain (a.k.a. Halloween) involving severed penises, the ashes of incinerated children and Diane’s unborn child. Further outrages include a bartender getting his testicles ruptured by a spectral hand; a turkey that’s revealed to be “a headless child’s torso cooked to a golden brown, hands and feet cut off, arms and legs trussed, with stuffing popping out of its neck and rectum”; and some canine abuse in which “Jackie’s forearm hit the bottom of the letter opener, ramming it into the dog’s head where the point pushed out of its left eye with a gush of blood and white pulpy tissue as it pierced the eyeball.” For good measure we also get a whiff of the satanic panic that suffused the late eighties and early nineties (“He had seen the TV talk shows—GERALDO, DONAHUE, MORTON DOWNEY JR.—do programs on Satan worshippers. They killed people”).
… “the boy was squished to a bloody pulp, his head popping like a squeezed grape.”
Well written this book isn’t. It’s bloated and, in the manner of most splatterpunk fiction both good and bad, far too eager to shock (restraint being a bad word among the splat pack). I will, however, credit the author’s inspired use of similes in descriptions like “flecks of his brain pattered across the glass of the mirror and up to the ceiling, leaving tracks that looked like some small animal had walked up the wall,” “blood sprayed in all directions like water from a punctured garden hose” and “the boy was squished to a bloody pulp, his head popping like a squeezed grape.” If there’s one thing to be said in this book’s favor, it’s that it definitely won’t leave you wanting more.