Hide Me Among the Graves -- Tim Powers (a review)

Tim Powers once explained that, in writing his novels, he looks at history and tries to come up with explanations behind the strange events.  Why, for example, did Blackbeard act the way he did?  Why did Henry Ford capture Edison’s last breath? Why did some of the events of the cold war turn out the way they did? 

But in some of his novels, it’s more than history: he looks at the works of the poets -- the great British romantic poets in particular -- and explores what’s revealed there. What if some of what Byron, Keats, and Shelly eluded to in the poetry was actually a refection of events?  That’s the subject of his earlier novel The Stress of Her Regard, and he returns to that in his latest novel, Hide Me Among the Graves.  The new novel is a set in the world of the earlier one, though I hesitate to use the word “sequel.”  It is, but you don’t have to read the earlier book, since  it was compete in itself, as is the latest one, and you can in fact read the new one without even really knowing that a couple of the characters were the focus of the first novel. 

The poets this time are lesser ones:  the Rossetti’s. Christina, as a girl, had inadvertently reanimated one of the Nephilim -- a vampire -- setting events in motion that seriously impact the lives of those around her. This vampire, her “uncle” ohn Polidori (once a physician to Lord Byron), like all of its kind, is possessive, killing anyone who any in his “family” love. Even a prostitute who her brother Gabriel visits garners Polidori’s attention. At the same time, the vampire who was -- or who had inhabited -- Boudica is also stirring, tied to Edward John Trelawny, friend of Shelley (and possessor of his jawbone) Byron. Polidori and Boudica aim to have their “children” conceive a child, the birth of which will cause an earthquake and destroy London. 

Powers skillfully weaves in the events in the lives of the poets -- the Rossettis as Algernon Swinburne -- as well as echoes of their poetry (such as Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”) into a compelling, thrilling, and sometimes downright scary narrative. It’s rich in the sort of detail that makes Powers’ novels feel so real, in ways that most similar fantasy/horror novels don’t.  As you read, you find yourself wondering if there were “Hail Mary Men” (sellers of birds, named for a play on the word “ave”) in Victorian London, selling birds for supernatural reasons.  Or pubs under bridges where people tried to connect with vampires.  Or young children, “mud larks,” who searched for ghosts in the river. It all feels compelling real as you read, in large part because Powers has worked it all out with such detailed logic.

It all comes to a satisfying and exciting confusion, effectively pulling together all the characters and plot points. It feels like, at this point, it’s all come to a close, but who knows. Perhaps in a couple of years, Powers will decide it’s time to explore what was really going on in the work of Yeats. 

Powers is one of my favorite writers, and a certainly recommend his latest.