The pack / La meute by Serge Brussolo

“Brussolo – a genius of horror, France’s own Stephen King!” – stands written in the header of the Romanian 2006^th edition of “The pack”. A strong weakness for King, the worldwide known master of horror, has always determined me to read novels and authors compared to him, along with books for which he has given thumbs up. And I was never sorry for my decision. In this case, thanks to the header I was talking about, I discovered Brussolo – four years ago.

The Science-Fiction/Horror “The Pack” is built around two characters completely different one to the other – the rich and sinister Georges Mareuil-Mondesco and Sarah, the one who passes as his nurse – united by a macabre interdependence. She is a former homeless, who is now allowed to live in the luxuriant Mondesco mansion in exchange for a complicity to the often midnight crimes of the rich man. He is a middle aged man whose psychic was deeply affected by some bloody events which took place, many years ago, in his house. Georges’ father, Werner Mareuil-Mondesco, was a hunter who used to stuff some of the animals, creating creepy scenes of interracial pairing. In the middle of the giant gallery where the animals were hosted, the eccentric Werner has put a wax version of his own body. After his father’s death, Georges decided not to enter the gallery ever again. But he always felt the house was alive, he thought that each and every stuffed creature and all the objects containing materials of animal origin needed blood in order to survive, therefore he often used to bring offerings to them. Sarah turned out to be a great help – she always found new victims, based on a careful monitoring and a set of observation files on women that hurt her sometimes in the past.

Both characters are highly sadistic, tormented by mental illnesses and having bizarre habits. The author, on the other hand, finds justifications for every gesture, act or action that the two have.  Not only Georges, but Sarah, too, have a traumatizing past; both of them are forced to carry an own cross, trying to fulfill their expectations: making sacrifices for the dead animals, respective taking revenge on the old torturers. The descriptions in the novel, along with the way the actions are presented, make all the sadistic issues to seem normal in some sort of way.

In most of his novels, Brussolo talks about sexuality from a perspective that is completely unusual for the human beings. In “The pack”, starting from the sacrifice-trophies taken from Werner’s victims, and ending with the sex lives of the two characters (Sarah has been a prisoner of a woman whose house she was trying to destroy – and the woman allowed her to be raped hundreds of times by several men – and Georges was horrified by the female body, reason why he decided to go for chastity), the intercourses are strange and hard to justify. There is no sexual interaction made for pleasure’s sake, but only for humiliating the other and for satisfying a physical need.

I admire the way Brussolo easily hangs on to details; from a scene to another, he binds actions and characters in such way that all the elements become interconnected and have a certain logic. And this time, the story is lacked of the clichés and of predictability.