C J Leede
Titan Books, 19 September 2023
Available as: PB, 304pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803367149
I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Maeve Fly to consider for review.
Well.
This one was A Read. I will say at the start that it won't suit all tastes. Be warned that there are explicit themes of sex, drugs, violence and torture here. It may not be for you. I'm not sure it was for me.
The story is told through the eyes - indeed the gaze - of Maeve Fly, a young woman (twentysomething, I think) working at a Los Angeles studio-owned theme park where she performs daily as one of the studio's popular princess characters, a Nordic ice princess known worldwide for her iconic song. She and her colleague Kate are very popular with the children, more so than the "classic" characters associated with the studio. (You may think you know Maeve's film and the studio, but I can't possibly comment, nor does Leede even once mention them, even among the references to mouse ears and to some, presumably public domain, characters like Snow White, Pocahontas and Cinderella.)
Maeve has three loves.
First, the connection she has with her grandmother, Talullah, an actress (and Playboy model) from the Golden Age who has taken her in. Maeve feels an affinity with Talullah, very possibly the first time this has ever happened.
Secondly, her friend Kate, who plays her character's sister. Kate is an aspiring actress who wants to make it and is prepared to do whatever it takes for that (again, it's pretty clear what that is).
Finally, Maeve just loves her job, despite the long hours, the oppressive working conditions and the corporate nonsense.
She is though at risk of losing the first two, as her grandmother is in a coma and seemingly only with months to live and Kate has - finally, finally - got the prospect of a big part, albeit she has had to humiliate and abase herself to achieve that.
Faced with the prospect of her life changing, Maeve engages in denial, haunting LA's bars, brothels and strip clubs (a fourth love of Maeve's is Hollywood/ LA) where she certainly doesn't present as an ice princess. However it's not till she encounters Kate's brother Gideon (who, ironically, is an ice hockey star) that things start to change in Maeve's world - and to get dangerous.
I found this a compelling book: the sort you have to keep reading, but also, that you are desperate to look away from. Did he really say that? Did she really do that? Maeve's outlook-as-narrator is all bound up with the idea of the woman who can be a villain without the need for a justification from her circumstances - she analyses her theme park character's iced over film and its dynamics from that point of view. But it's far from clear whether this is theoretical, or whether she would cross that line herself.
Until one particular scene involving Maeve, Gideon and unfortunate bartender, Claire...
For all the horror and gore, I found this in some ways very much a book of ideas. Behind the relationship between Maeve and Gideon - which is drawn very subtly and which is continually changing and evolving - there are ideas about how people ought to be, what they should do, and how far they might go. It's not a story where one can see a neat or happy end, and indeed, I soon stopped trying to work out where things were going at all, as that seemed to be missing the point. A degree of mystery is I think needed and I don't want to comment in too much further detail. I'll just say, I strongly recommend this book as a wildly different take on horror, but if my warnings above suggest it may disturb you, leave it alone.
For more information about Maeve Fly, see the publisher's website here.
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