First Things First…
I’ve never heard of this story. But my track record with Clive Barker is really good, so as usual, I’m excited to read something of his that I’ve never read before.
3 Things I Like
3. The Mighty Kneels
Titus Pettifer, one of the half-dozen or so richest men in the Western Hemisphere, never saw it coming. What starts as an intriguing and illicit encounter slowly turns shame-inducing and, ultimately, deadly.
Thanks to his fortune and business acumen, he’s one of the world’s most powerful men. Jacqueline seeks him out to learn at his feet, to learn how to wield power.
But it’s clear from the start he’s not everything she thought he was. Jacqueline’s first impression is…
“My God… can this really be the most influential man in the country? He looked so unprepossessing, so very unspectacular. His chin wasn’t even strong.”
Conversely, he’s taken with her immediately. He likes her directness and fearlessness when talking to him, and her lack of inhibition. She even dares him to take her, right there and then in his office, making him think…
“How long was it since anyone had dared him to do anything… he hadn’t been so excited in a dozen years.”
But Jacqueline is soon disappointed in the relationship. The more time they spend together, the less he measures up. He’s a tentative, insecure, timid lover. She literally has to use her power to force him to touch her with the aggressiveness she desires.
The change in the power dynamic destroys Titus, and he becomes useless to Jacqueline. How can she learn to wield power from a man who’s in awe of her, and who knows he has no power over her?
2. What’s in a Name?
Apparently three syllables is too much for most men.
The first thing Titus asks Jacqueline is if he can call her “J,” which seems a little weird. Her husband, Ben, called her Jackie, or sometimes even Ju-ju. But she says…
“Only Vassi had called her Jacqueline, plain and simple, accepting, in his formal way, the completeness of her, the totality of her.”
I’ll get to my problems with Vassi as a character—mainly how pathetic he is, since he’s the closest thing to a good guy in the story. But this detail about him isn’t pathetic. It’s considerate.
1. The Evolution of Power
In the beginning, Jacqueline doesn’t have power over her own life—or death. She’s depressed enough to attempt suicide, but she can’t even make that work, and her life is saved.
She first discovers her powers and uses them, however crudely, to kill the patronizing doctor. It’s an accident—she’s not in control yet—but she suddenly has power over a man in a traditionally powerful role over women, who is telling her how she should feel.
From there, she takes some agency and wants to use her powers again. This time, she kills her cheating husband, the man who made her miserable.
Then, she wields her power—and her sexuality, which goes hand in hand with it—like a scalpel as she gains complete power over Titus. She reduces him to a sniveling mess while constantly taking note of his inadequacy in the bedroom. But she has no interest in killing him.
However, she commits her most brazen murder yet in slaughtering the man blackmailing Titus because of her. So now, it’s not just power over people who passive-aggressively abuse her, like her husband, but over those who target her.
Her power crescendos when she has the self-control to not harm Titus’ people who come for her, because she considers them innocent. She lets herself be kept prisoner, knowing she doesn’t have to hurt them. And she also refuses to kill Titus, as he begs her to do, because it’s just another form of a man trying to use her for his own ends. (But she does hideously mutilate him once she’s had enough of his shit. But that’s for her.)
Sadly, the final stage of her power is when it turns against her. She begins to harm herself in her sleep. She turns to prostitution and allows herself to be taken advantage of by Koos, although everyone he brings to her dies at her hands during their encounter.
It’s fascinating to watch Jacqueline run the gamut here, from victim of the men around her, to powerful but out of control, to powerful and in total control, back to victim, this time of her own power.
0 Things I’m Mixed On
2 Things I Don’t Like
2. Somehow, He Finds Her
When we return to Vassi’s testimony, he starts with…
“Of course I searched for her. It’s only when you’ve lost someone, you realize the nonsense of that phrase ‘it’s a small world.’ It isn’t. It’s a vast, devouring world, especially if you’re alone.”
He then expands on that idea for the next six paragraphs—only for the seventh paragraph to begin…
“Then one day, entirely by chance, I saw her.”
After harping on that point about how it’s so hard to find the person you’re looking for in the vast sea of humanity in our world, this is nonsensical. At least give the guy some agency and have him find her through detective work, even if it takes a long time. But that lack of agency for Vassi leads to my least favorite aspect of the story…
1. Even the Good Guy Is Pathetic
Jacqueline has felt mistreated, unseen, and used by men her entire life prior to gaining her power. And once she has this power, she sees how pathetic these men really are. Whether it’s her husband, the doctor, Lyndon, Koos, or even Titus, with all his financial success and power. They’re all nothing compared to her.
But why does Vassi also have to be such a loser?
Jacqueline realizes he’s the only man who was good to her and treated her well. Yet he, too, is utterly broken by her. He loses everything, becomes a drunk, and sacrifices what little he has left in the way of money, possessions, and dignity, just to be with her one last time.
They even die in one another’s arms.
But I don’t find anything romantic or insightful about this.
Just the opposite…
The most flattering reading of Jacqueline goes back to her relationship with Titus. She realizes what an underwhelming loser he is almost immediately. And the more time she spends with him, the more she realizes how weak and insecure he is, beneath his fortune and his bravado.
Most importantly, these discoveries occur long before she ever uses her power against Titus to try to gain something from him. Which tells me her power, confidence, and conviction to shape the world to her favor never had to come from something supernatural.
They’re in her all along.
Isn’t that a much more powerful message about her strength? And, if so, wouldn’t it be more flattering toward her if the one man she truly loved, and who she allowed to love her, was more of an equal, not someone who pedestalized her so completely that he threw his whole life away?
Tim Matassa
