Stefan Brijs

Haunting. Thrilling. This book will, no joke, keep you turning pages long into the night. What starts out as a seemingly innocent story quickly takes a turn for the dark and doesn't come back out.

Dr. Victor Hoppe--a disfigured geneticist with a haunting past--suddenly shows up in the suspcious village of Wolfheim after a twenty year absence. With him, he brings his three 'sons', along with their strange medical conditions and an uncanny resemblence to himself. As the triplets' health begins show more to deteriorate, so does Dr. Hoppe's sanity, until you begin to see that, under the good intentions, Dr. Hoppe is really a very confused man with a very twisted sense of right and wrong. A man who will act on those intentions.

The Angel Maker is a spellbinding tale that questions the ethics and morality of cloning and genetic testing. The prose is exceptionally well written (and I read a translation, something I usually find clunky and difficult to speed read), simple but very descriptive. I could vividly visualize everything that happened in the book (which I sometimes regretted). Quick. Sharp. It reminded me of Stephen King's writing, but without the (sometimes excessive) description. The Angel Maker may not be for the faint of heart, but it will delight science fiction/horror fans, and people with a penchant for the disturbing.

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A haunting fable for the modern age. A parable with a vivisected heart. And above all a threat, a warning—not just about the intersection of science and faith but about the very foundations in which we place our trust; justice, family, death. The Angel Maker isn’t marketed as a horror novel but it shook me more than any book I’ve read that purposefully tries to elicit terror, perhaps because it takes place entirely in the domain of the real.

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Global Challenge: Belgium

1. I do not like books about the first world war.
2. I do not like books about cowardice (mostly because I am a coward).

But I loved this one! It is so well written! Stefan Brijs is a genius.

The tiny Belgian village of Wolfheim is galvanised when Victor Hoppe, son of the late GP, returns home from his medical studies in Bonn. Why has the prodigal suddenly returned to his father’s old house? Does he mean to take up his father’s mantle as the local doctor? Why is he so standoffish with the locals? And, most curious of all, what is the story behind the three motherless infant children he brings with him, each with an identical severe cleft palate? In this disturbing modern show more morality tale, Stefan Brijs tells the story of a modern Prometheus: a brilliant man fatally undermined by his own lack of empathy. By chance, I came to this soon after reading John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids, which gave it an even stranger flavour: it felt, at times, like a cross between Frankenstein and The Midwich Cuckoos. But Stefan Brijs’s novel is more disturbing than either of these because it is so plausible, and because there is such an ironic contrast between the godlike dreams of its protagonist and the sheltered world in which he tries to bring them about...

For the full review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2021/05/08/the-angel-maker-2005-stefan-brijs/ show less