Book Of The Month June, 2007
FanglandJohn Marks
Robert, my love, there isn t much time. This will be my last communication, unless by some chance I survive… I have tried to report everything as it happened, so there can be no doubt about my veracity. I have to hurry or the sun will go down, and I will have to deal with this menace in the dark He has some plan in New York, that s clear. He is a form of terrorist; but his terror is strange. It s like a virus, and I have it He has put something terrible inside of me. Evangeline Harker, Associate Producer on television news magazine The Hour , is sent to Transylvania to scout out a possible story on a notorious Eastern European crime boss named Ion Torgu. But she finds the true nature of Torgu s activities to be far more monstrous than she could have imagined. In the New York office that once stood in the shadow of the Twin Towers, Evangeline s disappearance causes uproar and a wave of guilt and recrimination. Then suddenly, months after her disappearance, she s found convalescing in a Transylvanian monastery, her memory seemingly scrubbed. But then who was sending e-mails in her name? And what do those crates delivered to the office contain? And why does the show s sound system appear to be infected with some strange aural virus? As a very dark Old-World atmosphere deepens in the halls of one of America s most trusted television programmes, its employees are forced to confront a threat beyond their wildest imaginings. Written in the form of diary entries, e-mails and therapy journals, FANG LAND manages both to be a genuinely frightening vampire novel in the grand tradition and a biting commentary on the way we live and work now.
What We Think
Jenny Rowley, Ebury Publicity, on Fang Land:
Picking up Fang Land by John Marks, I noticed the phrase ‘be fiendishly original’ on the back cover. My initial question, ‘original…a Dracula story?’ was fast answered. This novel is not just original, but breathtakingly so. Fang Land is a virtuoso adaptation of the Dracula story, cleverly using key elements of the Gothic tradition but also providing a biting analysis of contemporary culture. Written as a compelling series of diaries, emails and reports, Fang Land gained an insidious hold on my mind.
The frenetic and often cut-throat context of the busy offices of national news programme The Hour provides a stark contrast to the novel’s other major setting, in the bleak mountains of Transylvania. Fang Land tells the tale of Evangeline Harker’s mysterious disappearance while scouting a story on the notorious Romanian criminal mastermind, Ion Torgu. As Evangeline leaves behind the brightly-lit ‘twentieth floor’ she is sucked into the vortex of a dark and indefinably sad history.
Throughout the book, the dual realities of New York and Transylvania are kept alive through emails and journals. The real problems occur when, virus-like, elements of Evangeline’s Transylvanian ‘nightmare’ begin to infiltrate the life of the New York Offices. As part of the malaise, increasing numbers fall under the spell of an eerily catchy sequence of names which repeats in their minds ‘Thessalonika, Treblinka, Golgotha, Solferino, Lepanto…’. Events spiral out of control, leading to a denouement that is both thrilling and terrifying.
John Marks’ impressive knowledge of the original Dracula is evident in minutiae such as Evangeline’s fierce brand of professional pedantry ‘For me, victory begins with a polite and professional phone call’, which has a direct precursor in Mina Harker’s efficient stenography: ‘I shall try to record it verbatim’. What is better still is the way he harnesses the Gothic themes of infection and the unknown to produce a sharp and apposite commentary on the Terrorist threat post 9-11. One of the great things about Fang Land is that it reaches us on so many levels. As Audrey Niffenegger says: ‘It’s about the abyss, and the big hole in Lower Manhattan, and the strange, dark, funny stuff in each of us’.