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Synopsis:
A widowed writer begins to work on a biography of a novelist and artist—and soon uncovers bizarre parallels between her life and her subject’s—in this chilling and singularly strange novella by a contemporary master of horror and fantasy.
The narrator of Lisa Tuttle’s uncanny novella is a recent widow, a writer adrift. Not only has she lost her husband, but her muse seems to have deserted her altogether. Her agent summons her to Edinburgh to discuss her next book. What will she tell him? At once the answer comes to she will write the biography of Helen Ralston, best known, if at all, as the subject of W.E. Logan’s much-reproduced painting Circe , and the inspiration for his classic children’s book.
But Ralston was a novelist and artist in her own right, though her writing is no longer in print and her most storied painting too shocking, too powerful—malevolent even—to be shown in public. Over the months that follow, Ralston proves a reluctantly cooperative subject, even as her biographer uncovers eerie resonances between the older woman’s life and her own. Whose biography is she writing, really?
Review:
I see a great deal of Tik Toks and Instagram Reels about “top strange books”, “five weird novellas you should read”, “WTF books”, and videos of this ilk. Most of the time, I am not influenced much by them. I did read and enjoy Bear by Marian Engel because of one of these videos, so I cannot say I am completely above the influence of these videos, but most of the time I have enough to read. When My Death by Lisa Tuttle started to come up in these “weird lit” videos, I knew I could give it a chance because I already owned a copy.
My Death is about a writer who has lost a husband a year and a half earlier and had not written anything since. Suddenly she inspired by a painting by W.E. Logan, to write a biography about the model of the painting Helen Ralston. Helen, a novelist in her own right, and Willy Logan had a passionate, tumultuous affair that included Helen falling (being pushed? jumping?) out of a window. After the narrator decides to write the biography, she is surprised to learn that Helen is still alive, at 94, lucid, and waiting for her to visit. The novella is engaging and near perfect. I do not want to really say anything other than it needs to be read by as many people as possible.
I skipped the introduction when reading My Death because I am a reader that wants to know as little as possible about any book I read. Going back afterward, Amy Gentry starts her introduction with the fact that readers love to know about lives of writers, and we are always fascinated with meeting our literary heroes. She then starts to talk about the life of Lisa Tuttle. Being friends with Harlan Ellison, dating and writing her first novel with George R.R. Martin, having a short marriage to Christopher Priest, Lisa Tuttle’s works stand out, and she is considered one of the best writers you have never heard of. The wild thing about this biography of Tuttle is that I am doing the same thing that the narrator in My Death did for Helen Ralston. Yes I want to know about the body of work, but I am much more interested in the relationship that Tuttle had with these men. I could say that someone should write a biography about Tuttle, but I am like the narrator in My Death. I do not want to know about the art as much as the relationships that she has had. This desire to know what is behind the curtains of the art is the driving force behind the novella, and My Death plays perfectly into this voyeuristic tendency.
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