This was a very difficult read. The prose was strong and lyrical and the setting well defined. The characters flawed and real and developed very well. What was lacking for me was a true story or plot. Bellman and Black seemed more to be an exercise in the act of writing itself.
“…For a moment he thought one of his friends had returned to the oak. A boy, standing where he had stood in the shadow of the oak. But the figure was too short to be Charles, too slim to be Fred, and had not Luke’s red hair. Besides, unless it was an effect of light and shade, the boy was clad in black.
With the next blink, the boy was gone…”
As a young boy, William Bellman slings a stone into the oak tree and kills a rook. The single act of killing the bird impacts his life forever. As he grows he is charmed. Blessed with insight and good looks he eventually works in his Uncle’s mill and turns it into a very successful business. But as William becomes more and more successful, the price of his success is enacted as friends and family begins to die one after the other.
As death begins to consume William Bellman he comes upon an idea, given to him in a conversation with a man who he meets at every funeral he attends. The man known only as Mr. Black. A new business venture.
…”And what is it to be, in the future, this site of yours?”
“It will be Bellman & Black’s. An emporium of mourning goods.”
“You are Mr. Black?”
Bellman felt a lurch in his chest. “I am Mr. Bellman.”
“Well, Mr. Bellman, you should do nicely with your mourning goods. Death comes to us all…”
Bellman builds his great emporium and with death surrounding him he opens. Soon he also falls to the death that has taken all around him.
It is never clear if there is a Mr. Black. Is he a figment of Bellman’s imagination? Is he somehow the dead rook taken human form? Is he another side of Bellman himself? The tale is very cloudy on this aspect and is too cloudy on so many others. There is not haunting here. No supernatural forces and if handled differently could have been at the very least a story of man’s slow descent into madness.
But it isn’t even that.
Books and Lesser Evils 