Undoubtedly beautiful and thoughtful -- but I feel that the conceit at the heart of it is a bit of a cheat.
For me, the ones that work best, and seem most honest, are the individuals who are decapitated accidentally and unexpectedly: the stone age man decapitated by a sabre-tooth tiger, two individuals killed in elevator accidents, another one killed in an accident on the Staten Island Ferry, the actress Jayne Mansfield, her head severed in an automobile accident. Each one of those feels like natural streams of thought, interrupted, like minds trying to cope with and rationalize the unimaginable, unexpected horror. They work, I think.
The majority of the ... what? vignettes? prose poems? ... are, however, individuals who have been executed and, to be honest, however beautifully written and lyrical the stream of thoughts are, I don't buy it. The pieces don't feel like continuations of what the individual would have been thinking at the moment of their execution. I would imagine something very different for the individuals who knew that they were facing the axe-man (or, in the case of Anne Boleyn, swordsman), or guillotine. And for those who were killed by murder or mob violence, I would imagine something like "nononononononoOUCHnononoWhat just happened?nononon ...."
The most successful of these, for me, is Mary Queen of Scots, whose execution was a notorious and horrific bungle: Butler captures the horror of that, and the little touches, like Mary's lap dog, which was discovered cowering under her skirts, after her death.
No question that this is beautifully written, and interesting (and a beautiful book -- Butler's publishers have done him proud) -- I'm just a little dubious that he's really achieved what he was after.
For me, the ones that work best, and seem most honest, are the individuals who are decapitated accidentally and unexpectedly: the stone age man decapitated by a sabre-tooth tiger, two individuals killed in elevator accidents, another one killed in an accident on the Staten Island Ferry, the actress Jayne Mansfield, her head severed in an automobile accident. Each one of those feels like natural streams of thought, interrupted, like minds trying to cope with and rationalize the unimaginable, unexpected horror. They work, I think.
The majority of the ... what? vignettes? prose poems? ... are, however, individuals who have been executed and, to be honest, however beautifully written and lyrical the stream of thoughts are, I don't buy it. The pieces don't feel like continuations of what the individual would have been thinking at the moment of their execution. I would imagine something very different for the individuals who knew that they were facing the axe-man (or, in the case of Anne Boleyn, swordsman), or guillotine. And for those who were killed by murder or mob violence, I would imagine something like "nononononononoOUCHnononoWhat just happened?nononon ...."
The most successful of these, for me, is Mary Queen of Scots, whose execution was a notorious and horrific bungle: Butler captures the horror of that, and the little touches, like Mary's lap dog, which was discovered cowering under her skirts, after her death.
No question that this is beautifully written, and interesting (and a beautiful book -- Butler's publishers have done him proud) -- I'm just a little dubious that he's really achieved what he was after.
