Book Review : Lucas Mangum - Saint Sadist (2019)
If you don't like horror stories that deal with abuse, you should stop reading right there. Lucas Mangum's 2019 novella Saint Sadist is an uncompromising piece of fiction that deals with family abuse so intense, it could've been featured in a PSA from the 90s. It is, at times, vile and unflinching. It's definitely not a story you're ever meant to feel comfortable reading, but it's a good story that offers insight on the way American folks think about religion. Because they don't think about it like you or me. Oh no, they don't.
Saint Sadist is told from the point of view of Courtney, a young girl suffering from rather extreme abuse at the hands of her father. Violence at first. Sexual once she hit puberty. When he finally impregnates her, Courtney decides to run away from home and ends up in the clutches of brother Ambrose, a climate scientist turned cult leader. A religious vision brought her to his community for an obscure purpose at first, but the more she discovers about Ambrose and her followers, the clearer it gets.
How to write vile stuff
There are really intense depictions of incest and sexual abuse at the start of Saint Sadist. If you have been around abuse in your life, it's going to make you grind your teeth. I'm usually against the idea of a male writer doing a female character living through a situation of abuse, but Courtney’s predicament in Saint Sadist is so extreme, it has an apocalyptic quality to it. The sensory details are realistic, but the narrative itself feels apocryphal, like a long lost bible story.
There's also a point to Lucas Mangum's gruelling vision. Through suffering and enduring such violence, Courtney leads to separate her body and her mind. She gains total control over the former, even in the most dire circumstances. She's a martyr who rejects her condition as such and therefore shuffles the chapters of a story that was already written. This is what brother Ambrose recognizes in her and this is what sends her on a path to a higher purpose. The traumatic violence serves a narrative purpose. It's not free.
Because the story of Saint Sadist is one of transformation and transcendence. It's also one of ambiguity as many religious characters tend to interpret reality for their own agenda, while Courtney has these intense cryptic visions that feel like she's mainlining the secret truth of the universe. The heart of Saint Sadist can be found right there: while it isn’t a religious novel per se (quite the contrary), it tells the story of a victory of mind over matter. Of a young woman willing herself into survival.
… and that is kind of cool.
American Jesus
But there's also religious subtext to Saint Sadist, which is ever cooler. By refusing her role as a martyr, Courtney becomes a prophet with bona fide visions telling her what to do and whatnot. She's also put in the way of a false prophet, which mirrors the events of the Book of Revelation, also known as the coolest fucking book in the Bible. Courtney is tasked with facing the proverbial "ravenous wolf in sheep's clothing" and freeing herself (and her entire county) from the burden of undue suffering.
What makes Saint Sadist so clever is that it works as a double entendre where it both works as a religious reading of American living and an indictment of how people let their reality be shaped by religious thinking. It invalidates contemporary religious America, yet validates the values they claim to project. I mean, you need to be a little bit of a nerd for apocryphal stories in order to get all that (I had help from Bray Wyatt), but it adds a fun and purposeful layer to a story that… well, it needed that to stand out.
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The key operating word to describe Saint Sadist is : engaging. Using cerebral and kinetic elements in order to lure you in, it offers shock value and puzzles in equal quantity. I was uncomfortable with the more extreme elements of domestic abuse portrayed in the book, but Lucas Magnum offered enough of a contextualization and a rich enough narrative to make it fine by the end. Definitely a 201 kind of book. Lucas Mangum is probably your favourite author's favourite author.
