And the ass saw the angel. (And the Ass Saw the Angel - Nick Cave)

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Product:	And the Ass Saw the Angel - Nick Cave
Date:	14/03/01 (491 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautifully and mythically written.

Disadvantages: Graphic and gruesome depictions.

Three greasy brother crows wheel, beak to heel, cutting a circle into the bruised and troubled sky...
And so begins the murky, downtrodden tale of Euchrid, a muted, inbred son of a drunk, and his virginal antagonist, Beth.

This is the first novel from antipodean Nick Cave (better known as a singer/songwriter with The Birthday Party, and The Bad Seeds), published in 1989, and proving that lyric writing, poetry and prose are indubitably linked.

*The Book.

Euchrid acquaints us with his birth; an unglamorous event by all accounts, as his alcoholic mother, high on her own moonshine, White Jesus, brings him into the world in the back of a Chevy. So drunk that she passes out, Euchrid's father acts as midwife and opens her with the shards of a broken bottle. Euchrid is one of twins, but the other baby is quick to die, buried in a shoe box and marked only by #1.

In the neighboring Ukulore Valley, the god fearing population are celebrating the holy day of the 'Martyrdom of the Prophet and the Saint, Jonas Ukulore', the founder of their township, naive of the undistinguished entrance of Euchrid into the world.

Cave informs us of Euchrid's rather sordid ancestry: His father, Ezra, a member of the notorious Morton family, who had found fame via their oldest brother, Toad: He had, at his pleasure, disposed of various travelers through the hills, looting, murdering and occasionally feeding his cannibalistic tendencies. Ezra, meanwhile, was a god fearing child and able to recite endless scriptures. In 1925 he came down from the hills into the valley when his family were killed by the sheriff. Here he met with Jane Crowley (crow Jane), Euchrid's mother: Previously a bride of a shotgun wedding, whose husband had never returned since their wedding day (twelve years previously), she proceeded to brew her own moonshine and supped from it often to numb her emotional pain.

Cave sets the lyrical scene of a bac
kwards southern community, some god fearing, others not, with the dulcet words of a songwriter, echoing his musical works:

Euchrid: And ah sat back down on the slimy log in the tiny clearing and put mah head back in mah hands feeling weary, aching, drugged.Looking up again, the clearing was like it had been before - dark and murky - and what looked like a falling knife, spinning down from above, came toward mah heart. A silver feather pierced the damp fabric of mah shirt.

Papa won't leave you Henry, Henry's Dream:
I went out walking the other day
The wind hung wet around my neck
My head it rung with screams and groans
From the night I spent amongst her bones
I passed beside the mission house
Where that mad old buzzard the Reverend
Shrieked and flapped about life after you're dead.

The tale continues as Euchrid grows, forever alone, a battered and abused child; his interests becoming evermore depraved and sinister. He watches a local whore ply her trade, and is present when she is beaten and ousted from the town. The prostitute is then found laying in the gutter by the doctor, and the good womenfolk aid the birth of a female child before the harlot dies. Euchrid the mute is accidentally passed the child and as the town's people praise a miracle (there has been continues rain for years, and all has ceased with the birth of the baby), Euchrid begins to understand his twisted destiny.

The child, Beth, is raised as a gift from God, and as Euchrid proceeds to become more introverted and squalid, so she becomes beloved and worshipped. Euchrid fashions a 'hideaway', here he keeps his greatest treasures:

The whore's hair. Her nightdress...The painting of Beth - of her - fastened to the walls and ceiling of the grotto, angled so that it hovered above me as ah lay in mah shell.

Meanwhile Beth is being adorned with violets and the townspeople fall at her feet to kiss
where she walks:

"This child is surely made of more saintly stuff than me or thee."

From an early age she is prepared by the local women to become the bride of Christ; she is confused by what this alludes to, and obsesses in her prayers and in her dreams about 'HIM'.

Euchrid's home life continues to deteriorate; the father eventually murdering his wife by shoving one of her many bottles of White Jesus down her throat. The two men now collude in their wicked and sinful ways, barricading their home and gathering together a motley crew of disheveled dogs to protect themselves.

Euchrid watches Beth from afar, obsessing about her evilness:

Beth of stone.
Spawn of sin.
Spawn of sin.

And recalling the words of the prophet Isaiah:

But draw near hither, ye child of the sorceress,
the seed of the adulterer and the whore.

Occasionally she notices Euchrid's presence and becomes preoccupied with the idea that he is, in fact, 'HIM'.

Beth: "I think I heard God last night, at my window. Kind of breathing and whistling when he breathed. And he...I mean...His shadow, it was there. I s-saw it, just waiting and whistle-breathing...and then it floated past."

No matter how hard the townsfolk try to protect Beth from the peeping mute, her fate is inevitable, as is Euchrid's. Cave leaves us with a twist on this sad tale of irrevocably distorted folk and inbred religious mentalities.

*My Opinion.

Definitely not a story for the faint hearted; this book contains some gruesome depictions and a filthy tongue. It has a mythology all of its own; that of the pseudo religious deep south and the backwards, white-trash hillbilly. It draws on modern myths while basking in
biblical language; it reads with a rhythm, a depraved tempo that leads you to the inevitable end. Euchrid's writings reflect Cave's songs and titles:
The Lamentations of Euchrid the Mute, No. 4 sounds like it should have been a duet with P.J.Harvey (definitely not Kylie).

When the book was first published it received rave reviews, and I can understand why. The imagery created by Cave is as sullen and surly as his songs, taking the reader into a depressing dimension of depravity that keeps you reading until the final page. He finds just the right amount of hideousness to make us squirm but keep us there. The way one feels towards Euchrid is reminiscent of the way one feels about Iain Banks' despicable anti-hero in 'The Wasp Factory'; you hate him for his immoral behavior, yet you understand the place from whence he comes... and you keep reading so that you can witness his downfall.

This book is a must for any Nick Cave fans out there - it continues and grows where his lyric writing has to end. It is beautifully and passionately written, but, as I said before, this novel is graphic in the extreme.

Published by Penguin.

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