Silk

The author clearly loves language, and loves descriptions and every reader who loves those too will enjoy Silk immensely. It is a first novel, so there is some tendency to overindulge herself – there is hardly a sentence here that does not contain at least one metaphor or two similes, but Caitlín Kiernan’s prose is so luscious and sensuous that complaining about this in the face of so much too enjoy would seem rather petty.

Kiernan is usually classified as an author of horror fiction, and for good reasons, I am sure; but in this particular novel the horror seems almost incidental and marginal, while the main focus of the story rests on the lives of a group of people in a small town in the United States, all of them young, all of show more them mentally scarred in some way and existing on the fringes of society. For most of Silk, it is not even quite sure whether the horrors they experience have any external source besides drugs; but while the visions they live through might not be real, their tragic consequences very much are. Interestingly, even though all of the novel’s main characters are misfits and outsiders, the narrative’s conflicts are not about them versus the mainstream of the society whose margins they live on (although Kiernan does not leave any doubt that they are being marginalized) but rather about the characters either battling with or surrendering to their own inner demons, whether it is by taking drugs, by repeatedly falling in love with the wrong kind of person or any of the countless other possibilities of hurting oneself.

While the novel’s catastrophe is initialized by a group of town bullies, that enounter is entirely random, and in the end it are the characters themselves who bring about their downfall – there is not a single character in Silk who is not in way or another bent on self-destruction, and while some manage to escape that urge, it proves fatal for others. Even when events take a turn from psychological and drug-induced horror towards the distinctly supernatural at the end the demons still remain largely internalized, or appear as the external expression of a damaged interior (that might be a disturbed psyche as well as a conflicted community).

But – and this, I think, is where Silk gets really interesting – if it appears that all the novel’s characters are severely damaged and can relate to their own self only by self-destructing, it becomes clear (for some characters soon, for others later in the novel) that all of them have been traumatized in some way, that the original damage was done to them by outside forces, and the deformations of their psyche are the scars of that damage; the misfits and outcasts were made not born, and born by the structures (mostly familial) of the very society that stigmatizes them. This might not be the most original of insights, but it is no less true for that, and what makes Silk so good a novel is that it never needs to make any of this explicit to get it across, but keeps it implied in the story, in the characters, and in the imagery woven through the novel. And of course above all in Caitlín Kiernan’s superbly evocative writing that conjures up an atmosphere of slowly thickening claustrophobia, gradually closing in on the characters like a spider-spun cocoon. She is already such a skilled and accomplished writer in her debut novel that it is easy to forgive her the occasional swerve into overly purple prose, and I am very keen on reading more of her works. show less

I loved down-spiraling into this storyline. There was never a dull moment, and it was packed to the brim with awesome music references that I insisted upon playing in the background as a soundtrack.
I was immediately thrown headfirst into 90's, when I was a mere juvenile delinquent- a Guinea pig of antidepressants and adhd meds, surrounded by misfits. The scent of body odor and stale smoke and dirt surrounded me as I continued on along this “journey”. This is more than a story for me, it was a journey of memorable derelicts moving along in a blended blur of either reality or drug induced distorted fantasy horror.
I’ve known people like Niki, Keith and Spyder in the 90s, rarely do their futures turn out well.
This was a fascinating show more plunge into the depths of hell comingled with mental disorders and drug addiction coupled with just a slight paranormal touch.
I enjoyed so much I will re-approach it again someday! show less

Kiernan is one of those writers who, like Gene Wolfe or CJ Cherryh, affects my thinking process. The syntax structure and delivery of words is just... off... kilter... enough that I have to stop myself and review just what the heck is going on. I love it when a writer can make me do that.

This is the first published Kiernan novel but not the first one I have read. As an early work, it's not quite up to the weirdness of The Tindalos Asset trilogy or the brilliance of The Drowning Girl. Thematically, it is not really much like those works either. I would say it falls closer to The Red Tree in that respect. Regardless, there is more here than merely a glimmer of what is to come later in Kiernan's career. They are a writer that deserves show more every accolade, in my opinion. show less

Much clunkier than later Kiernan novels, but still potent and affecting. The themes that run throughout the Kiernan corpus - madness, nods to Lovecraft, the unseen world that touches this one, the thin line between what is real and what isn't, etc. - all begin here. In terms of style, this may be her most accessible work, having none of the strange literary affectations adopted in 'Threshold,' (and later abandoned), or the heady dreaminess of her later books en todo. If you've never read a Kiernan novel, 'Silk' might be the best place to start. Overall, this book is highly recommended for fans of dark fantasy. The story is strong, unique, and effortlessly compelling - the writing tight, if not yet fully developed in voice - and the end show more is satisfying, which is unusual for a Kiernan novel. Along the way, questions are raised and never quite answered, but with this author, that's just par for the course. show less

Caitlin Kiernan is your typical, run-of-the-mill Irish-expatriate-Southern-lesbian-punk-rock-guitarist-horror-writer-vertebrate-paleontologist. I haven’t read all of her books; just Silk, Murder of Angels (sequel to Silk), Threshold, and Low Red Moon (sequel to Threshold). The novels are Lovecraftian, and although they have the requisite amount of splattered gore they are really more gloomy than horrifying, with a cast of depressing characters that are a little difficult to relate to. Nevertheless, I find it difficult to resist books where Carboniferous temnospondyl amphibians are an important plot element. I’ll have to track down Kiernan’s papers on Cretaceous mosasaurs sometime and see if there’s any discernable relationship show more to her horror novels. Kiernan has attracted some attention from Hollywood; she collaborated with Neil Gaiman to do the novelization of the recent Beowulf movie. show less

A dark fantasy spiced with Lovecraft-inspiration, the novel Silk is done up like a spiderweb; various characters---all punks, Goths, the artists, the musicians, the outsiders, the freaks---are all the connected to each other through the madness (or is it real?) of Spyder Baxter, and her house just clustered full of deadly family secrets.

Kiernan loves words. It's evident in every sentence; it can be rich, beautiful, with gritty romanticism, but also be warned that this was her first novel so there is a certain occasional clunkiness to it.

It's the perfect dark tale nonetheless, horrific, and lovely all the same.

Some people think 'Silk' is incredibly good. Caitlin Kiernan is one of my favorite authors, but I didn't think Silk was as good a read as some others of her works - my opinion, of course. Silk is very full of feelings and dark moodiness, the latter perfect for a horror story. The plot took long enough to develop that I lost interest and didn't finish it. The listed LC classification of "psychological fiction" is actually a very good description, though it is a horror book. My personal rating of the book isn't that high, but if meaty language, introspective characters and a slow-building sense of evil is your kind of horror story, this is just the ticket for you.