“Madison Smartt Bell writes with the urgency of someone who just received a dire prognosis. And Behind the Moon will remind you that you are alive.”
—JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER, author of Here I Am
“Behind the Moon would have caught my attention simply because it was written by Madison Smartt Bell—a writer whose voice I always trust. I would have expected another precise detailed chronicle like All Souls Rising, one of my favorite novels. But this is not at all the voice I know—this is a unique and startling descent into a completely different kind of narrative. Yes, a fever dream but couched in the voice of a deft and careful writer who knows how to steer us into the lives of characters in trouble. We shift from the feverish imagination of Julie in her hospital bed to the plainly matter-of-fact accounts of the boys who chased her into the cave where she slipped and fell into a dream of cave paintings and the all too close terror of a black-headed bear. Between fever dreams and stone-hard reality, Madison Smartt Bell has crafted a powerful examination of what is and what might be. It is simply wonderful.”
—DOROTHY ALLISON, author of Bastard out of Carolina
“This new novel by Madison Smartt Bell is disarmingly good. The patience, the deliberate strokes, the understated tension and the inevitability of it all is pure Bell and yet he shows up here with a completely different voice. I love these characters. I love the writing. Behind the Moon is a brilliant work.”
—PERCIVAL EVERETT, author of Half an Inch of Water
“Bell gives us this fast-paced, spiritually inspired dream-story, full of heart and hope and danger. It’s adventure at its finest: a spiked drink, a desert cave, a gunshot, a mother looking for her child. Buckle in: you are headed for a terrific ride.”
—DEB OLIN UNFERTH, author of Wait Till You See Me Dance
“Behind the Moon is a visceral, full-body primal experience; terrifying, seductive, Madison Smart Bell at his best.”
—A.M. HOMES, author of May We Be Forgiven
“Behind the Moon is a thrilling and uncannily powerful story by one of the best living American fiction writers. I couldn’t put it down.”
—JOHN MCMANUS, author of Fox Tooth Heart
“Madison Smartt Bell is one of the great American masters. His prose scintillates with particularity and hints at divinity. I read Behind the Moon in one sitting and was moved by Julie’s inchoate spiritual longing as well as her mother Marissa’s primal drive. This book has a pre-religious power, read it and be inspired.”
—DARCEY STEINKE, author of Sister Golden Hair: A Novel
“With spare but lyrical prose, Madison Smartt Bell tells a harrowing story with propulsive drama. A haunting and hypnotic read.”
—HEIDI W. DURROW, author of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky
“Madison Smartt Bell’s Behind the Moon is a fever dream, indeed. Modern medicine has conceived no antidote for such an atmospheric, rewarding entanglement of lyrical genius. Mr. Bell writes like a scrimshaw’s angel, as he’s been doing, luckily for us, nigh four decades.”
—GEORGE SINGLETON, author of Calloustown
“In his latest work, Madison Smartt Bell secures his position as one of the country’s most innovative, inventive and accomplished writers. Part horror story, part dream, part meditation, Behind the Moon creates its own meta-Gothic category. The story turns the usual teenaged drama of sex and drugs on its head and then spins it into a four-dimensional God’s eye woven with mystical, spiritual and maternal threads. From the heart-racing opening to the eye-opening end, you won’t be able to put this book down.”
—JESSICA ANYA BLAU, author of The Trouble with Lexie
“Madison Smartt Bell is a master of structure with tremendous range, which is on full display in Behind the Moon. This cinematic novel is a rare combination of smart literary novel and compelling page-turner, at once menacing and sweeping, dark and transportive, eloquent and hallucinatory.”
—MICHAEL KIMBALL, author of Big Ray
“Taking readers to places both spiritual and shot through with adventure, Madison Smartt Bell’s new novel renders the many ways in which longing can take form, with both disastrous and redemptive consequences.”
—CHANTEL ACEVEDO, author of The Distant Marvels
BEHIND THE MOON
A fever dream by
Madison Smartt Bell
City Lights Books | San Francisco
Copyright © 2017 by Madison Smartt Bell
All rights reserved
Cover and book design by Linda Ronan
Original calligraphy by Miles Mermer
Thanks to Hillary Louise Johnson for being the first to get the point and for the germ of a design plan, to Linda Ronan for making this fantastic design happen, to Stacey Lewis for making them look, and to Elaine Katzenberger for being a wise, good, patient and insightful editor.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bell, Madison Smartt, author.
Title: Behind the moon / Madison Smartt Bell.
Description: San Francisco : City Lights Publishers, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016057672 (print) | LCCN 2017004677 (ebook) | ISBN 9780872867369 (softcover) | ISBN 9780872867444 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780872867376
Subjects: LCSH: Coma—Patients—Fiction. | Teenage girls—Fiction. | Shamanism—Fiction. | Magic realism (Literature) | Psychological fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Visionary & Metaphysical. | FICTION / Psychological. | FICTION / Occult & Supernatural. | GSAFD: Occult fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3552.E517 B44 2017 (print) | LCC PS3552.E517 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016057672
City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133
For Celia,who tried her bestto help me make it better
“The dreamer enters the unknown world. . . . The dreamer, in the course of such journeys, meets other beings and speaks with them. She may sometimes meet other dreamers, in the form of energy. She is able to make speedy departures and returns between the known world and the unknown world, which always gives the impression of being outside time.”
—Mimerose Beaubrun,
Nan Domi
“Understandably enough, they would have believed that caves led to that subterranean tier of the cosmos. The walls, ceilings, and floors of the caves were therefore little more than a thin membrane between themselves and the creatures and happenings of the underworld. The caves were awesome, liminal places in which to be.”
—Jean Clottes and David Lewis-Williams,
The Shamans of Prehistory
“The acoustics magnify every sound, and it takes the brain a few minutes to accept the totality of the darkness—your