The Art of being Human

For those of you who somehow missed reading Hannah Moore's article Shameless? in the Writers community posted prior to Christmas, I would like to encourage all of you who have not purchased The Ancient Ones story anthology by the writer's group W.A. Gruppe to do so. This is not a paid endorsement.

I plan to read the entire anthology soon, but I skipped straight away to Hannah's novella The Pyramid. The genre is dark fiction. Although there is an element of fantasy built into Hannah's premise, the story is rooted in a world that we know all too well.

The Pyramid is a Faustian allegory. Traditional Faustian stories explore themes of knowledge, power and redemption. In the most common telling of these tales is a successful and brilliant man who is dissatisfied with his life. This leads him to trade his soul for unlimited knowledge and the power to woo a beautiful and virtuous young woman.

Happily for the reader, Hannah turns the Faustian allegory on its head. Her protagonist, Carla, is dying. A single mother to an unhealthy teenage daughter, Massie, she fears what will happen to Massie when her mother is not there to protect her.

Carla's not successful and dissatisfied like Faust. She's not hungry for power or knowledge. Nor does she desire a lover half of her age. She is simply a mother who loves her daughter and wants her to be happy.

The devil she bargains with can give her a long life. But not without asking for something in return. And he is not interested in souls. In his bargains the bargainee has everything to lose and he has everything to gain.

Telling you the why behind the title of the novella would give too much away. Suffice it to say that it is the device that drives the plot and what an amazing plot it is.

Anybody who has read Hannah's stories knows what a wonderful prose stylist she is. She open's the story in the palatial home of the metaphorical devil. Her setting of the scene for the reader hooks us from the first sentence:

The room was a shrine to wealth, and not the kind of wealth that you're scared to touch in case you leave fingerprints.

But in the beginning of the second paragraph, the scene comes to life in the reader's mind:

Carla had walked. Now the soft dripping of her anorak shedding raindrops onto the silk rug was the only sound in the room, save for the clock, steadily marking time, its insistence dampened by walls padded with books and windows draped in luxuriance.

Hannah makes this look easy. But it's not. Envisioning a scene and making it come to life is a true artform every bit as much as painting a picture.

And in this scene Hannah has already began to flesh out Carla's character without a word or a thought from her. Carla had walked. We quickly learn from this subtle foreshadowing what will shape her decisions as the story progresses.

As readers, we connect with Carla. Of course we want to care for our children, especially if they are beset with illness, injury or anything else that might make their lives needlessly difficult.

But is loving Massie our heroine's only reason for the bargain she makes? Without giving anything away, the narrator pokes and prods at Carla's motivation, leaving the reader to wonder if her desire to live for her daughter's sake is more nuanced than it seems. It is natural as breathing to deceive ourselves, and in so doing deceive others.

Speaking more generally, Hannah's story unravels the onion of Carla's life over the course of the narrative. We see frustration, failure and setbacks that are recognizable to most of us. Carla means well. She loves. She's one of us. But she's desperate.

This begs the question, what would you be willing to do to protect your child? Full confession, probably more than I should. What would you do?

For me, this is what makes reading this novella important. Hannah understands the pitfalls of being human and in consequent writes about her protagonists with a level of compassion that is rare. Even if they make mistakes. Even if they let themselves down and the ones they love.

In the age of cancel culture, Hannah understands how difficult threading our way through life's twists and turns can be. Her character's are fully developed and human in consequence. Because they have souls, The Pyramid is character driven. This is the crux of the novelist's art.

I heartily recommend The Pyramid and give it a five-star rating for fully developed and compelling characters, scene setting that brings it to life, sparkling prose, breathing new life into the Faustian bargain and a smashing plot.

I for one, look forward to reading more of Hannah's stories and hopefully one day her first of many novels.