Lying with the Dead

by Michael Mewshaw

Book Overview

In this novel, Greek tragedy meets a dysfunctional family from Maryland, revealing how time and place matter little when it comes to the implacable logic of the darkest human emotions. A family... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590513185
• ISBN13: 9781590513187
• Release Date: October 2009
• Publisher: Other Press (NY)
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Darkly Fascinating and Moving

"Lying with the Dead" is a dark tale that finds its redemption in unexpected places, telling the tale of a wretchedly dysfunctional Catholic family and the ties of blood, hatred, and love that hold them together no matter how hard they struggle to break free. Drawing inspiration from classic Greek tragedies such as "Electra" and "Medea" as well as the dark metaphorical thoughts of more contemporary authors such as Glen Duncan or Nick Hornby. Michael Mewshaw tells the story of the family matriarch who refuses to die before she can gather her three children together and confront their dark family secrets. Keeping the novel briskly moving with black Irish humor, Mewshaw grants his cast of characters a rich life: Candy, the eldest daughter, who despises her mother as much as she loves her; Maury, the poor, bumbling child with Asperger's Syndrome who murdered their father; and Quinn, the famous actor now living in Britain who hates his family yet can't escape their claws. Held together through lush imagery and rich metaphor, "Lying with the Dead" is a darkly fascinating story about a family held together as much by hatred as by blood, by the secrets they keep from each other and the prejudices that hold each other apart. When their mother reveals a dark secret, then the grace of truth can be used to draw them together at the worst of times. Mewshaw allows us to recognize pieces of ourselves in each of the characters, lending the book power and strength. Though the subject matter can be disturbing at times, it is an important book that keeps the reader intrigued at the questions that it raises and answers. Packing punch, verve, humor, sadness, horror and intrigue all at once, "Lying with the Dead" is a solid philosophical knockout from the ever-talented Michael Mewshaw. Five out of five stars.

A Matriarch Who is half Medea and half Clytemnestra

Lying with the Dead by Michael Mewshaw is a novel about a dysfunctional family but it is also much more than that. It is a Greek tragedy, a morality tale, a story about the conflicting and diametrically opposed emotions that grip us all, and a novel about sibling love. The novel unfolds in chapters told from the points of view of each of the children - - Quinn, Maury and Candy. Quinn is the youngest child in the family, born as an afterthought or mistake. He has managed to escape his mother's tendrils by moving from Maryland to London where he works as a successful actor. He is a good son in that he sends money every month to support his mother, and he calls home weekly. He does like to dip into the booze more than is good for him, but then again, liquor can assuage pain and keep some of his demons at bay. Currently, he has been court-ordered to see a therapist due to anger issues. Maury has Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism. He lives in California where he helps out in a trailer park. He has been released from prison after serving twelve years for his father's murder. As the family story goes, he saw his parents fighting (again) and he couldn't take it anymore. He picked up a knife and his father just walked into it. The knife pierced his belly and killed him. Maury keeps "track of my memories in the box in my head. This box in my head is big, with dozens of drawers." He never opens the drawer that has memories of his father's murder. Candy is the parental child, the caretaker. She is a survivor of childhood polio and walks with a limp due to one shriveled leg. Forever, she has put everyone's needs ahead of her own and she is now the primary caretaker for their elderly mother. Candy has a lover now and is waiting for her mother to die, or go into assisted living, so that she and Lawrence can retire in North Carolina. The children know that they must obey the family rules of shame, secrecy, and silence. "Dad's murder, Mom's mood swings, Maury's crime - - there were so many things I was compelled to stay mum about". "Maury and I had been raised as close-mouthed as a Mafia clan". The family is laden with secrets, and one after the other get divulged as the novel progresses. As secrets come out, Mom plays one child against the other, asking each child not to tell the other about what she's told them. What she says is often toxic and Candy states, "I don't want to hear. I clap my palms over my ears". Mom also has trouble with boundary issues. One minute she may be discussing issues of mundane daily life, and the next minute she is telling her children about her sex life with their father. "Alternately an Irish Catholic prude and an outspoken bawd, Mom has always had this cringe-making habit of sharing more information than anybody, especially her children, care to hear." What is the best way to describe mom? A piece of work, a she-devil, a monster, an evil and manipulative bitch, a cruel and heartless woman, a s

Memorable

Lying With the Dead grabbed me from page one and didn't let me go. Even now that I've finished reading the book, I find myself thinking about the characters and the terrible dysfunction of their family. The mother, a frail and completely unreasonable woman in her eighties, has managed to become the central figure in the lives of her three children. Candy, the daughter, has remained nearby and still takes care of her mother, though she wants desperately to leave and finally get married. Maury, the middle child who has Asperger's syndrome, escapes his mother's brutality and his past to live out west. Quinn, the youngest, thinks he has made a clean break when he moves to London, even though his long buried anger begins to surface and cause him problems. But Candy talks Quinn into returning one more time to help her deal with their mother and try to get her into a home. Maury also returns at his mother's request. As soon as the mother has them all once again within her grasp, she tries to regain control. She starts by revealing secrets to Candy and Quinn and then she orders Maury to kill her. I'd already guessed what secrets their mother would reveal before she spoke to her children, but still felt chilled over her revelations and the lengths to which she would go to have things her way. Even so, given the nature of her personality disorder, it was inevitable that she would make horrible demands right up until her final minutes. In the end she got her wish, and, once again, one of her children paid a horrible price. The characters all seem very real and the author has done a masterful job with the writing. This story will stay with me.

Leave a Mark

Lying with the Dead is another very good novel by an author I have missed along the way. Michael Mewshaw has a wonderfully engaging style of writing that makes the reader look forward to every page. The story is as fascinating and timeless as Aeschylus' trilogy, The Oresteia. Themes of love and hate, envy and compassion, dominance and submissiveness, humor and pathos, and death and endurance unfold in lyrical sentences not unlike those of the author quoted in the novel, William Faulkner. Three sibling narrators with very different points of view alternate describing with unique insight the action centered on their mother. My favorite was Maury, the ultimate survivor in his own world of self-protective rituals and limited understanding of the motives of others. Though he lacks the worldly sophistication of his brother and the religious confidence of his sister, Maury's understanding of life is more natural and existential than his siblings. This is another fortunate selection of a novel (5 stars) that allows me to add the other 10 novels by this author to my reading list. Similar to Maury, I just need a palm-size house where I can look into the window and see where I sit in my chair to read. If you can just see clearly and concretely inside something, especially yourself, the lies of others can't defeat you or give you a legacy of poison in your blood.