Birth-Rite

This was my first introduction to Anthony Steven???s writing and I was very impressed.

The story itself is a familiar tale of good vs evil, The Powers of Light vs The Powers of Darkness etc, etc.

However, I felt that this was the framework that Anthony Stevens hung the story on to bring something much more prescient to the tale of good vs evil.

We initially get the prologue which recounts an ancient text of Uriel, the Archangel coming before God to allow several of his brethren to enter the world of man. However, whilst several of them remained true to the Lord, most of them turned away and instead worshipped the Prince of Hell, Beelzebub, and thus becoming fallen ones.

The story then moves time and setting to the bedroom of a disabled girl who is being kept in abhorrent conditions by her fundamentalist Christian parents in the early part of the 20th Century. Obviously, the girl does not see the way of the Lord as being one that is particularly a nice one to follow and upon being visited by one of the fallen instead turns to the dark side. She is ???saved??? from her meagre and cruel existence by one of the Fallen and subsequently a child is born, Gabriel Hernshaw.

Gabriel is then brought up by his aunt and his uncle, a reverend in the church, after his mother dies in childbirth. Similarly, Gabriel???s upbringing is not one that you would call a happy childhood, and we follow his descent into evil.

Meanwhile, interlaced with the tale of Gabriel, is the tale of David Ryan, a ten year old boy that is brought up in the early 1970???s with his abusive father, and a catholic mother who misguidedly believes that she must remain in this abusive relationship due to the ???social and traditional??? rules.

In the first part of the book, the story flits between points of view and different times, highlighting the stories of the three main protagonists; Gabriel, David and a priest named Jean who???s story is an off shoot of his contact with the evil Gabriel in World War Two.

The story isn???t an easy read as it contains themes of abuse, sexual assault, racism, sexism and does use some derogatory language associated with certain time periods. However, I felt that these were not done in an exploitative manner and encapsulated the themes that the author was highlighting.

As I have said, the story moves between these timelines and doesn???t really settle on a linear progression of the story until the final act. Initially, this can seem a little disorientating as there does not seem give the reader that comfort of a lateral progression. However, what it does do is give a good background to the convergence of the storylines in the final act and the reason why things happen they way they do.

Now, I want to go back to my earlier point of the fact that it is a familiar story, but that I felt that this was a formula to hang something much more prescient to the tale. For me, I felt that there was a much deeper aspect of social commentary running underneath this story of good and evil. Horror is a particularly good genre for this, and whilst it can seem that in the surface of the story there is the tale of the fantastical, underneath horror can be used to scrutinise society as a whole, and with Birth Rite, I felt that this was very much at play here.

How many times have you heard the saying that things were better in my day etc, etc. What Birth Rite does is that whilst at times it does give a nostalgic look to the seventies in general, and growing up in a northern town in that period, it also focuses its lens on the not so good aspects of the time period as well.

It highlights the casual racism and violence of the period, the toxic attitudes towards women, and that there was a lack of support for victims of domestic abuse. In this it highlights the fact that really ???it wasn???t much better in my day??? and these things existed despite what every one says.

In addition to this, it can shine a light up to where are we now in all these things, and I will leave you to draw your own conclusions from that one!

In terms of the book itself, when it comes to the final act of the book, it becomes a typical good vs evil scenario, which I must say that I enjoyed, it was fun.

Now, as I have said, the first part of the story is a little disorientating, and I did tend to wonder where the story is going, but found that it did start to bring the story together in the second part and reached a satisfying conclusion in the final part of the book.

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