The Gentling Box

by Lisa Mannetti
Dark Hart Press
$16.95 (trade paperback)

Accomplished short story writer and Tarot expert Lisa Mannetti has fashioned a debut novel that demands to be read purely because of its striking originality. The fact that its promise is more than fulfilled makes the reading a rewarding and refreshing experience, the kind serious fans of dark fantasy see all too seldom. The fact that its themes might just haunt your sleep—well, that’s just gravy. After all, isn’t that what we all want to achieve? If it's not disturbing in some way, is it worth reading? Or writing? You'll find The Gentling Box has its share of the disturbing!

Gypsies—the nomadic Romany people—have been reviled traditionally throughout Europe, even while their culture was plundered and their services and labor exploited. Treated with mistrust and often labeled as thieves for the sake of convenience, or occasionally accused of worse (witchcraft and other taboo practices), their supposedly carefree lifestyle has nevertheless garnered much interest. Their colorful horse-drawn caravans have become an image recognized anywhere, and gypsy music has always stirred the heart with its tragic-joyful blend of violin and rhythm. Mannetti’s novel is set among these people and their superstitions, many of which intersected those of regular Europeans in the 19th Century. Death was an obsession, of course, and the basis for many a bizarre belief and superstition.

When the novel opens, in the mid-1860s, Imre and his wife Mimi and daughter Lenore are heading back to Romania, where Mimi’s mother Anyeta lies dying. Hated among her fellow gypsy troupe, the sorceress Anyeta is a horrific presence even before she appears, grotesque in death and apparently murdered. Too late to make peace with her mother, Mimi is left with the duties of the survivor. But the gypsies, afraid of Anyeta’s powers, burn her caravan before Mimi can comply. Though part of the culture, Imre is only half-gypsy and therefore the perfect narrator for this tale of revenge and possession. A horse trader by profession, Imre is a devoted husband and father—but he has dark secrets: for one, he once rebuffed Anyeta when she tried to seduce him in exchange for the financial help he needed. Now, with Anyeta dead, Imre thinks all will be well as soon as he takes his family back home. But Anyeta has many tricks, and Imre many weaknesses.

Imre’s tale begins as, close to death, he relates what took place when Anyeta managed to possess her daughter’s body and prolong her own cursed life—and her search for a perfect body in which to never grow old. Enchanted to separate from Mimi and take up with the lovely Zahara, a woman he had loved as a youth, Imre is faced with the horrifying task of "gentling" his wife. Having learned horse training from his father, Imre knows—and rejects -- the technique of gentling, or training, that is basically an equine version of a lobotomy, for horses thus "gentled" lose both their spirit and their intelligence. Imre is maneuvered by old acquaintances Joseph and Constantin into agreeing to impose this most depraved punishment on his wife, but Imre cannot, for memories of his father haunt his dreams.

Unfortunately, all is not as it seems, and Imre is a pawn in a tragic game that swirls around his head too quickly for him to follow. For Anyeta is anything but helpless, and she is very motivated to lead him astray. Having caused Mimi to claim in bloody self-mutilation the "hand of the dead," a Hand of Glory talisman that bestows magical healing on its owner, Anyeta’s real agenda comes to Imre when it is too late to save everyone he loves, and when his own weaknesses have broken him and branded him with despair. Imre is a tragic figure whose love for Mimi and Lenore blind him to what his mother in law has in store, and his inability to complete the evil deed that will free them is the key to his later suffering. Meanwhile, he will watch as his beloved Mimi harbors the deranged Anyeta inside her body, running as a wolf at night and indulging in the most vile, inhuman acts imaginable.

This is but one layer in the richly complex tale of evil from beyond the grave. While Mannetti has managed to portray gypsy life convincingly and with great sympathy, the novel’s true heart lies in its universal and yet very personal theme of Choices—those we make, those we neglect, those we refuse, and those which seduce us. This is why the final scenes succeed on so truly heart-rending a level.

The dark themes Lisa Mannetti explores come crawling up your throat when you least expect them, their personal nature much more horrific than world-threatening horror precisely because the cast is small, the focus tight, and the moral quandaries so impossibly torturous. We fall headfirst into a world both abundantly detailed and bleakly hideous for its personal horrors and what man—or woman—may be driven to do for power over others. Imre's story feels stifling, buried under a mantle of sadness that can't be shaken off. It's not surprising that The Gentling Box has garnered a nomination for the Bram Stoker Award—it may be a first novel, but it's one powerful and inventive, timeless treatise on darkness of the soul.