Bluebeard's Castle by Anna Biller (Verso, 2023)

ISBN: 9781804291856

There are certain artists that once you enter their world, the outside landscape doesn’t exist anymore. Logic, taste, behavioral patterns, and perception is challenged, and at times, it is best to leave your sanity at the entrance before entering these dark waters of an artist’s mind and soul. The artist usually supplies the viewer/reader with a complete version of a world, and you, as the observer, must digest things you may not normally do unless you become part of that environment. So, once I have seen the numerous films by Anna Biller and read her debut novel Bluebeard’s Castle, I’m now a passenger in her vehicle, and she’s the driver. Biller will surely expose me to new horizons and make me face the duality of Romance with the Lady of the Castle, and her dream lover, with a capital “R.” A poisoned “R,” but nevertheless, a Romance.

Without a doubt, Bluebeard’s Castle is a ‘Romance Gothic’ tale in its truest sense of that definition, but it is also a provocative work that adds layers of meaning as one becomes addicted to this page-turner of a book. The two main characters in the tale are Judith, a successful Romance novelist who seems to live in that genre mentally and, therefore, sexually, and Gavin, the object of her passion, who seems to be a Baron and the ultimate fantasy of a male lover. The Eros in the book are heightened to a cliché status, but that is also what makes it so inviting and seductive. Melodrama is a work where one can reflect through its characters in extreme behavior. It is written in the style and language of books that one can purchase at a drug store or airport terminal, especially in the 1950s/1960s. Still, Biller uses the ‘classic’ narration to explore the culture around this type of literature. It reads like a Situationist text, but Biller is also a wonderful and detailed writer who says that one can enjoy this ride of a marriage that is horrific but also questions, ‘Is this the life one should strive for?

Anyone who loves Anna Biller’s films, such as Viva and The Love Witch, will find this novel in their favor. In many ways, she can become the 21st-century version of Jean Cocteau, who, like that artist/filmmaker, all mediums can and will express Biller’s particular aesthetic and how she sees the world. For someone who some consider Camp, she can’t be outdone by others because she is pure in what she does and how she conceives her talented approach to the visual and literary arts.

Anna’s art is extreme. There is nothing subtle, and as a reader, I’m thinking Don’t do that, Judith! After finishing the novel, I find myself reflecting on my and other people’s relationships, and now it all seems like a theater piece. Art exposes a diagram in the works, and although it is always there, we often miss it because we’re so focused on the singular tree instead of the entire forest. Bluebeard’s Castle is a bit of Alfred Hitchcock mixed in with Andre Breton’s Nadja, all under the framework of classic literature but filtered through the classification of the gothic romance story.