Back to the world of romance we go, with mixed results.

 

Night Magic by Charlotte Vale Allen, 1989

Grade: C-

 

First of all, I had this erroneously listed as being written in 1997. It wasn't; it was written in 1989. Curse my flighty attention span!

 

Secondly... I have such mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, Allen does do a credible job of making me interested to see what happens and of reproducing some heartfelt emotion. On the other hand, the plot is a trainwreck and I wanted to throttle half the characters at least half the time. But every time I wanted to throw the book across the room in disgust or wrote a particularly savage indictment of Allen's choices, she'd come in with some impressive deviation from romance novel norms or some particularly evocative turn of phrase. The book has bipolar disorder and it frankly gave me a bit of a headache.

 

Vale Allen starts us off with two literature quotes, surprisingly enough--one from Leroux's novel, and one from the Villaneuve version of Beauty & the Beast (incidentally, while this was indeed the first officially published version of the story, the people who say that Mme. Villaneuve wrote the story herself are deranged. The folktale has roots dating back way earlier than the eighteenth century). Both quotes have to do with the Beast or the Phantom begging simply to be loved, and asserting that they can and will become docile and good once this has been achieved. This is a clue as to the already pretty obvious direction in which Allen is planning to take in the novel.

 

It's important to keep in mind that this novel is set in the late sixties up through the mid-eighties. So many things are, in fact, a little bit less than modern. It was occasionally difficult to remember, but again, Allen does a good job of keeping the time period and setting mostly consistent.

 

Chapter 1

 

My love-hate relationship with Allen's writing style and prose starts now. While I initially noted that I was impressed by her facility and enjoyed her (thankfully) clean sentence structure, I quickly got bogged down in prose that was, while still readable, nevertheless plagued by maudlin excess and a pernicious case of excessive adjective disease. It's never terrible, but by the same token it never achieves the greatness I could feel it striving for. There were a few moments of effortlessly lovely lines, but unfortunately they couldn't drag the whole thing up out of the mire of mediocrity. Also, there was a wee grammar snag on page 4, which set the standard for a book that was mostly okay, but still tripped over typos and grammatical errors about once a chapter or so.

 

Interestingly, this is the second version I've seen to give Erik a new last name; here he is "Erik D'Anton". Leroux's original version of the character had no last name at all, of course, and the 1989 Little/Englund film (which came out at roughly the same time as this novel did, though they are vastly divided in their interpretations) gave him the last name "Destler". As when I looked at that film, I wonder where the need to give the character a surname comes from; most obviously, since Allen is setting her novel in modern times, the character has to have one in order to make sense in a modern context with all the implied bureaucracy of modern society lurking at the edge of the reader's mind. Additionally, there may be a feeling that the character isn't "real" enough with only a first name; Allen is seeking to move the enigmatic Phantom from the realm of semi-mythical creature to that of a more relatable, human character.

 

Our Christine figure is named Marisa, and she is... fifteen years old. Okay, sure. This was all okay with me until we met Erik and discovered that he was thirty-one. Oh, shit, back that train up. You see, this is where modern versions of the story get into trouble with me, more often than not. In the original novel, Christine was somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty years old, while Erik was most likely in his fifties or even early sixties. This worked without too much of an icky vibe because of two factors: for one thing, twenty and fifteen are not the same, and both parties were at least adults, even if they were at wildly different levels of experience. For another thing, the social climate of the late 1800's was different from that of the last 1900's; it was more common in that time period for an older man to have a much younger wife and not be looked at askance for it. However, Allen is setting this part of the novel in 1968, when it was not only no longer quite as socially acceptable for an older man to have a much younger wife (though, of course, it still did happen and does to this day), but it was definitely quite ILLEGAL for a thirty-one-year-old to have a romantic relationship with a fifteen-year-old. We call that statutory rape nowadays, and they called it that in Connecticut in 1968, too. I'm not saying that I hate all wide age-divide romances--in fact, I really enjoy them when handled sensitively--but there have to be extremely compelling circumstances to make a romance between a fifteen-year-old and a thirty-one-year-old work in a modern context, and Allen's approach ("Well, they really, REALLY like each other!") was not even in the ballpark. I struggled all the way through the first part of the book with trying to reconcile the emotional bond Allen was trying to build between the characters and readers with the blaring ickiness sensors that she kept on tickling.

 

So, anyway. Marisa is the daughter of Cameron, who has a reclusive architect friend named Erik (Tip 1: If your first thought on meeting the object of your affection is, "Gee, my best friend didn't say his daughter was so pretty," she might be too young for you), and the two meet when Erik does some major remodeling on Cameron's house. Erik wears a cape and broad-brimmed hat at all times, apparently, which is pretty snigger-inducing (at least Marisa also thinks it's weird. The characters are on my side with this one) but is ostensibly in order to hide his hideous disfigurement from the world. He also never goes out in the daylight and only works at night unless he uses a proxy, which is unwieldy but not impossible in an architectural context, I suppose. Marisa finds all of this desperately intriguing and romantic, even though he's uglier than sin.

 

And, thank heavens, he is really, really ugly. I appreciated this; most (read: so far, all) romance versions of this story minimize or completely do away with the Phantom's deformity, because it's hard to make a reader connect with sexual desire for somebody that's physically hideous (I mean, unless you're that Leroux guy, apparently). Erik's face is described as appearing to have been "sewn from many tattered patches of flesh", and Allen gives us a great twist on the mask, which turns out to be a small affair that just covers his nose and cheeks in order to simulate that he does, in fact, have a nose (which he does not). It's not Leroux's skeleton-man, of course--his body is frequently described as muscular and powerful and sexy, despite the ruined state of his skin--but it's an appropriately hardcore disfigurement, so I'm not inclined to throw her in the same basket as all the other watered-down romance-version disfigurements (Ashe, Herter, Stuart... I'm looking right at you). A few details are pretty unrealistic--for example, if he was burned and maimed so badly that he has no eyebrows left, how is it that he still has "luxuriant" lashes?--but overall, I appreciated the serious effort to keep the element of physical challenge in the character.

 

By the way, Marisa has a best friend named Meggie, who is another signpost on the road to confirming that Webber has plenty of influence on this version, even if Allen is clearly drawing from the original source material as well (Meggie is also completely superfluous aside from providing this clue, since she appears in only one early-on flashback scene and contributes little to either the plot or Marisa's character). The cape and hat are yet another clue, as well; they resemble the Phantom's stage costume from the Webber musical quite closely.

 

It's only chapter one, and Erik has already fallen head over heels for Marisa. This is not kosher for a few reasons, which are as follows:

1) They have met only once, for about three to four hours tops. That is not enough time for OMGTRULUV. I don't care what you think, romance industry.

2) She's fifteen and his best friend's daughter. Eww.

3) She acts fifteen, right up to staring at him and asking where his disfigurement comes from. This is not usually conducive to love at first sight, and in fact he reacts violently any time anyone else does this in the entire novel.

4) She's FIFTEEN. (Tip 2: If you are thinking of her as "the child" even in your internal monologue, she might be too young for you.)

 

Unfortunately, while I know that Allen's intent with all this was to establish that Erik and Marisa (who has also conceived an unholy and totally inexplicable fascination with the ugly scarred contractor her dad hired) have an instant connection and are destined to be together through true love, etc., what it really makes it seem like to me is that Erik has a boner for his friend's daughter because she looks good. This is not a good way to set up a romance.

 

Chapter 2

 

Marisa is very impulse-motivated and selfishly-oriented. This is pretty much par for the course for a fifteen-year-old girl, so I tried not to get bent out of shape about it. Which worked all right... for now. I still don't see a good reason for an adult male to be seriously romantically interested in her, however; sexually, sure, creepy though that might be, but there doesn't seem to be any foundation for the deep soul-clicking that Allen's trying to pull off.

 

Interestingly, this version of Erik has a dedicated assistant named Raskin. Raskin is a Vietnam veteran who apparently has at least some form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and is thus suited to life with Erik since he doesn't get along with the rest of the world very well, either. His inclusion seems to be a direct throwback to the henchman sidekicks of the earlier movies (Ivan in the 1962 Fisher/Lom production and Lajos in the 1983 Markowitz/Schell film), which featured side characters to aid the Phantom, usually in pulling off his more elaborate plans and in taking the blame away from him when especially dirty work needed to be done. Raskin is set up to be Erik's opposite; that is, he is physically whole and very attractive, but extremely emotionally damaged, almost to the point of psychosis. While it's obvious that Allen is setting up an opposite number to complement Erik, the reasoning behind it is flawed; Leroux's Erik was just as damaged and emotionally/socially stunted on the inside as he was disfigured on the outside (since society's reaction to the one naturally caused the other). This version of Erik is, like so many others, really a nice guy underneath, goddammit, because we shouldn't judge him by his face because that would make us mean people. However, as I've whined about before, removing the serious psychological problems (Allen replaces them with a lot of self-worth issues and angst, which do not pacify me in the slightest since they were present in the original character ALONG WITH a host of other problems) totally alters the point of the story and obfuscates Leroux's original idea. It's now a story about looking beneath appearances, instead of a story about social responsibility and the damage an irresponsible society can do to its members, which is, of course, ironic (since Allen is failing to look beneath the surface of the original story herself).

 

The dynamic Allen sets up here for the relationship between Marisa and Erik is pretty much the only reason I didn't throw the book in the recycle bin marked TENTACLE RAPE/UNCONVINCING VILLAINS/PEDOPHILIA and go about my day. Erik, as a function of having been hideously disfigured and consequently mostly shunned or abused since the tender age of seven, is a virgin. And not only is he a virgin, he is emotionally about at the same teenage level as Marisa; certainly, he's never had any opportunity to have a real romantic relationship with anyone, nor even as much as held hands with a girl in his life. The idea she's trying to establish is that Erik is as much a child when it comes to relationships as Marisa is, and that therefore it's not a thirty-one-year-old taking advantage of a fifteen-year-old, it's two fifteen-year-olds learning about love together (one of whom just happens to be trapped in a really ugly thirty-one-year-old body). This idea is pretty good in theory, actually, and it works... eh, some of the time. Unfortunately, even though Erik has never managed to get it on with anyone, that doesn't change the fact that he is vastly more mature than Marisa and much better equipped to understand things like consequences and social morals, which means that even though there were moments that his interest in Marisa almost seemed slightly justified by the fact that he's no Lothario, there were many, many more moments where I was incensed by his irresponsible and reprehensible behavior. STATUTORY RAPE. I don't care if you're a child in the ways of love. Go learn from an adult woman. At no point should the line from "My friend's daughter is pretty" have been crossed to "My friend's daughter is pretty and it's okay to therefore enter into a romantic relationship with her". I tried to run with Allen, really I did, but for every instance in which I successfully rationalized his behavior, there were three more that I wanted to kick him in the nuts.

 

On the positive side, Marisa displays a very accurate portrayal of a first teenage crush, though she's a bit of a late bloomer at sixteen (just had a birthday). On the negative side of the positive side, why on earth does she have a powerful crush on that one older, really fugly dude who is friends with her dad and who came over once to look at the house and refused to talk to her? Seriously.

 

By the end of the chapter, we'd had a run-on sentence and a big barrel of navel-gazing on Erik's part, and I was ready to move on.

 

Chapter 3

 

After some clumsy exposition regarding Marisa's father that felt more like a bulleted list than actual dialogue, he finally sat down with his daughter and had a little talk with her about how most of her fascination with the disfigured architect was probably due to a combination of curiosity and raging teenage hormones. I was glad he took a moment to do this, because after he just sat there and observed as she asked insatiably about Erik, bothered him incessantly when he was at their house, and then demanded to be allowed to invite him over for a dinner she cooked herself, I was starting to seriously question Cameron's dad-cred. Unfortunately, immediately after having said talk, he went right back to letting her do whatever she wanted and not seeming to care about the unhealthy obsession she was developing for his much-too-old-for-her friend, which left me frustrated all over again. You'd think a father whose wife had died and left him with only his single beautiful daughter would be a little more protective.

 

The prose so often sneaks close to amazing; it has a poetic, lyrical quality about it sometimes that I really enjoy, but it never quite makes it up to snuff. It's like Allen knows what she's trying to do, but just hasn't quite mastered doing it yet. It's not bad, per se, but if it were just a little bit better, a little more careful attention paid, it could have been spectacular. It makes me sad that it isn't spectacular. Also, there are more typos on page 31.

 

Erik hits upon the brilliant idea of having Marisa sing for him (he's hoping she'll suck, so he can get over his crush on her and go home, which entertains me quite a lot), but unfortunately, of course, she's amazing and it makes him go all wibbly inside. Of course, I'd like to point out, as a singer, that nobody sounds that nice un-warmed-up, after a large meal of heavy food, at the end of the day, but what do I know? I only have a degree in this stuff. Like more than a few interpretations of this story, however, this appears to be light on the side of musical knowledge; Marisa sings Bing Crosby's "Sweet and Lovely", which, despite being a perfectly lovely song, does not include the suggested "E above high C", which is a note typically reserved for Mozart and Donizetti and others of their ilk. I can only assume that she actually meant the E above C2, which is a fairly common note in female literature, though it certainly isn't something you could term "high" unless you happen to be a contralto.

 

And then Marisa goes and kisses Erik on his way out the door, and you know what? Daddy dearest STILL DOESN'T CARE. Someone revoke this man's parenting license immediately. It's okay to let your daughter learn things on her own, even in the thorny world of romance; it is not okay to tacitly approve of her making blatant romantic advances toward your friend, a man who is literally twice her age.

 

Erik, in a welter of sexual frustration, goes home and demands that Raskin tell him about his sexual encounters so he can experience them vicariously. Apparently this happens fairly often, since Raskin doesn't bat an eye (and why should he? He's all dead inside from being in the 'Nam anyway). While it's an interesting psychological moment for Erik--he is literally unable to imagine contact with Marisa on his own and requires a "human" intermediary, possibly because of his belief that he is unworthy of human contact in its most basic form--it is totally ruined for me because of the uncomfortable American Beauty vibe of the man blatantly sexually fantasizing about a minor. Guh. It's couched in very cushy emotional terms, but I still want to slap him.

 

Chapter 4

 

In the first move I have appreciated on his part, Erik decides that his affection for Marisa is wrong and that he must avoid her from here on out (I would have appreciated it more if he had thought it was wrong because she was half his age, instead of thinking it was wrong because he is so ugly and angsty that he can never have human contact, but I'll take what I can get). He spends a lot of time cooped up in his room listening to music, which is usually described in blatantly sexual terms in case we had forgotten that he has a big old hard-on for Marisa (discussion of how there are "speakers throbbing from the powerful thrust of Corelli and Vivaldi, Mozart and Handel, Beethoven and Chopin" never failed to elicit a combination groan and snigger from me). More interesting, however, is Allen's copious use of jazz and easy-listening standards as well as classical music. It shouldn't be a surprise, but as this is the only "modern" version of the Phantom story I've read yet that actually included the musical angle, it's the only one that's yet addressed the idea of that aspect being "modernized". Leroux's original Erik was, after all, something of a musical maverick far ahead of his time in terms of theory and composition, so it makes sense that a more modern version of the character should be interested in the later musical forms instead of remaining stagnant. Not that he's entirely current considering the musical movements of the fifties through the seventies, but at least Allen is making an effort here.

 

Erik, interestingly enough, sees himself as an interloper in Raskin's sexual encounters (which are apparently both frequent and remarkably passionless, but again, Raskin is damaged goods, emotionally speaking). He refers to himself as "the uninvited third party", putting the two men in a sort of strange symbiosis. I wonder what Raskin thinks about his employer always wanting to know about his sex life, but alas, no one ever tells us.

 

The first chapter went to great lengths to convince us that Marisa wasn't spoiled and that she and her father had a great relationship, but based on how easily Daddy seems to fold on everything (except buying her a dog, which is apparently a greater evil than letting her boink a man twice her age), I'm totally unconvinced in very short order. Marisa's obvious lack of maturity--which is really okay, because she JUST TURNED SIXTEEN and I don't expect her to think or act like an adult yet--is also quite pronounced. In short, I think Cameron needs to grow a spine when it comes to his daughter, and I think Marisa has no visible sign of the kind of maturity she'd need to display for me to be okay with this romantic relationship.

 

Then, another run-on sentence. Learn to love the comma, people. It's such a versatile punctuation mark, and so worthy of your affection!

 

My continuing impatience with the lack of realism regarding Erik's and Marisa's instant, abiding attraction toward one another is building up a head of steam here. They've met TWICE. In that time they have not even had a decent conversation. They just stare at each other. She's sixteen. He's thirty-one. He thinks she's mighty pretty and she surely wants to know what's under the ugly mask, but that is not enough to establish True Love. I'm having a seriously hard time trying to accept this as making any kind of sense in the real world. Of course, I understand the crush part completely--it's probably equal parts maternal instinct and a desire to "save" the poor man, spiced with just enough hormonal activity to keep her teenage circuits humming, but "morbid interest/desire to nurture + hormones" does not actually equal "true love" in my book.

 

Vale's been better than most of the other authors thus far, but there's some pretty blatant paraphrasing of the lyrics to Webber's "All I Ask of You" on page 44. I guess she just couldn't resist the wizardry of Harold Prince.

 

Chapter 5

 

At first, I was glad that it was readily apparent that Allen had some carpentry knowledge; she gives us a very detailed account of Erik's busywork as he remodels and rebuilds an old house (which just happens to be right across the street from Marisa's. Way to "avoid" her, buddy). However, after FIVE PAGES of exhaustive descriptions of exactly what the house looked like in every room, I was no longer excited. By the time it finished, I was testy, and ready to excuse this indulgence only if it turned out that this exhaustive description of the house was entirely necessary to the plot. Surprise: it wasn't. A few elements come up later, but the majority of it could have been cut and bored far fewer readers. Almost six pages of carpentry and decoration! That's half the Battle of the Hornburg, lady! Also, Erik apparently needs a little help with his interior decorating. If navy sheets are the "darkest he could find", he's not trying very hard.

 

Allen throws in various details in an attempt to more closely tie this Erik to his illustrious forebears; for example, he turns out to be a boating enthusiast, though he never goes boating and only seems to own the boat when it's convenient to be ferrying Marisa around like a particularly heinous-looking gondolier. For another example, he has "books on magic" in his library, though these are never explained and are instantly forgotten. I'm not really impressed by these attempts to add the trappings of the original Phantom, mostly because they show all the forethought and deep character development ties of a commercial jingle. Still, they are present, which is more than we get in a lot of versions.

 

Marisa proceeds to spend most of the next two YEARS pining and moping over Erik, despite the fact that she met him TWICE and he has no discernable redeeming traits at this early stage, since she has yet to peel his layers off and expose the delicate specialness of his onion-like interior. No, this doesn't make any sense to me, either. The only positive side effect of this is that she is now about to turn seventeen, which is... only slightly less creepy when we note that he is still thirty-two, and has been thinking naughty thoughts about her since she was fifteen. After all this time moping over a guy for no good reason whatsoever, she finally manages to steal his number from her father and call him, at which point Erik laughs dementedly at her instead of saying something nice to let her down (because she's his friend's SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER) and she hangs up and runs off a-teary-eyed to plan her suicide instead of realizing that she's been behaving ridiculously. Everyone fails at life.

 

My note, that I wished she WOULD commit suicide so we could all go home early, was a bit unfair. Allen does do a good job of making me feel for the character; it's not that she's personally stupid, just that she's dumb like every other teenage girl on the planet is dumb. Unfortunately, this still does not give me much hope for the possibility of an adult romance blossoming between Ugly McJackassPants and Weepy O'Childish here.

 

And what's up with Erik magically getting hold of her unlisted private number at the drop of a hat? Creepy.

 

Chapter 6

 

So, shortly before Erik repents for laughing at her and goes to pick her up in his gondola motorboat, there's a very lovely internal monologue that he goes into while thinking about her. It's a bit much in the navel-gazing department for me--this Erik is quite capable of going on for many pages without the slightest bit of forward-moving action--but it's very true to the spirit of Leroux's original character, who was intensely inclined toward an almost worshipful adoration where Christine was concerned and whose self-hatred was usually only exacerbated by her proximity. In fact, here, I'll reproduce a bit of it for you:

 

"Do I hate you, Marisa? Hate? I adore you, revere you. I would drop my life down at your feet and allow you to dance on it, if the fancy took you. I want you as I've wanted nothing else, nor ever will again. You're in my mouth, my ears and eyes and throat. My hands crave your hair, the bends of your elbows, the acquaintanceship of your flesh and the bones it conceals. Just your name, the sound of your voice in my ear, and control is lost. I am rendered deaf and blind, dumb and senseless with the pleasure your very voice gives to me. You're the living embodiment of every lovely thing ever created... I could never hate you, dearest child. It's me... This face, this grim joke of fate, is what I hate. But you? Not ever, never you. If I die as a result of loving you, I will never be capable of bearing you the least malice." (p. 58)

 

See what I mean about the prose? There are moments up there that are just lovely, but others that are clumsy enough to drown it out and annoy the piss out of me for damaging something that could have been so pretty. And as I said, that's very poetic, but it's a bit much to all be during a long session of internal monologue (which continues before and after that paragraph for quite a bit, let me tell you). Nevertheless, it does establish Marisa as the person with the position of power in the relationship, which was very much the case in Leroux's novel (crashing chandeliers and torture chambers notwithstanding).

 

By the time Erik finally shows up in his gondola motorboat, Marisa has already determined that she will, and I quote, "let him do anything" that he wants. Not only that, but her running internal monologue (which is not yet as impressive in scope and angst as Erik's, but give her time, ladies and gents, give her time) makes it pretty clear that she totally wants to have sex with the creepy messed-up-looking guy who is her dad's twice-her-age friend who she only met socially once and who recently blew her off in a fairly cruel manner. The logic! Where is the logic?

 

Then, of course, they go to his underground bachelor-pad-cum-music-room, and he plays piano and they sing, and she puts her head on his shoulder, and he sings her a lullaby that he refers to as his "night music" which should totally NOT be confused with Webber's "Music of the Night" which is totally DIFFERENT, and then he takes her home and she is now convinced that she LOVES him, man, LOVES him SO MUCH. She's still not even 17. He's still 32. Allen still hasn't shown me a good reason for any of this to be happening.

 

Chapter 7

 

Marisa proceeds to sneak out via motorboat every night to spend time in Erik's singy-room, and she does this for several months. And yet neither her father nor her housekeeper manages to notice anything other than, "Gee, Marisa, you look kind of tired," or, "Maybe you should eat more, you look worn out." They are all panicked and full of consternation when she collapses of exhaustion and has to be taken to the hospital; I have little sympathy and award them both medals of Epic Parenting Fail. Entertainingly, the doctors diagnose the problem as anemia and malnutrition, the solution to which is to... get a lot of sleep? Look, people, anemia and malnutrition are eating problems, not sleep disorders. Even I know that, and most of my medical knowledge comes from watching the first season of Scrubs. What is wrong with this hospital's staff?

 

Erik, in the first in a long series of dumb moves, immediately blames himself for her collapse (which has some merit, since he was the guy dragging her out all night every night like a dumbass) and descends into a truly epic angst-funk, which includes running away to Europe so he can't "destroy her" anymore (this is the first instance in this book of someone fleeing to a different country amid a rain of tears, but it won't be the last. In fact, they do this pretty often). I loved Raskin probably a little more than was intended when he finally got tired of his employer acting like an ass and ordered him to go home. The scene in which Erik flies into an angst-fueled rage, rips his mask off, and screams at Raskin about the torture that is his life is priceless; Raskin just calmly reminds him that he was in Vietnam and has seen people in much worse shape, and suggests that he suck it up and grow some balls. Thank god. Alas, Raskin will go back to being an enabler in short order, but I cheered for him here. The fact that I didn't have the same reaction to Leroux's version of Erik suggests that Allen's reworking of the character is not really working for me.

 

Chapter 8

 

Allen clearly does "get" Erik's emotional state; he isn't exactly all glued together all the time, and the fact that he was injured at a very young age helps make that "shunned his entire life" angle work a lot better than the usual burn-scars-from-two-years-ago plan that a lot of modern interpretations use.

 

And now, it's time for the first sex scene. Oh, goody. To her credit, Allen does a great job of accurately portraying sex between two virgins; Erik is utterly shocked that it's even happening, and totally worshipful of Marisa and the things she's allowing, while poor Marisa is a strange combination of determined and "Ouch, OUCH, oh man that hurt more than I thought it would." The major erotic part of the scene is in the foreplay (which is written quite spicily, in fact--Allen certainly knows how to make it compelling), which is the ultimate for Erik; just being allowed to touch Marisa is more than he could have hoped for, so it's like an exceptionally realistic dream.

 

Chapter 9

 

As the next chapter heads off toward the culmination of the sex scene, I'd just like to note that Marisa is still seventeen (seriously, Allen, how hard would it have been to wait one year? At least I couldn't have been offended by the illegality of it then, though it would still have been vastly ooky) and take a moment to say, very loudly:

 

STATUTORY. RAPE.

 

Hard to enjoy a sex scene with that hovering over my head. Allen tried very hard to keep anyone from getting upset by that--Erik realizes that he's too old for Marisa and it gives him some pause, and Allen does a very credible job of making sure that Erik's mental pretty much resembles any teenage boy's when losing his virginity--but that still leaves me with a guy who is having sex with a minor even though he knows it's wrong because he really wants to, which is less than sympathy-inducing. As written, there's nothing in particular to complain about with the sex scene; it's realistic and romantic in its own way, and I deeply appreciated the fact that Marisa had a fairly unpleasant experience and no orgasm (seriously, based on romance novels, you would think that all virgins had a spectacular ride with multiple orgasms their first time out, which is about exactly opposite of the truth). And then we were done and I was back to trying very hard not to hate the protagonist who was insisting on deflowering a girl half his age (but they really, REALLY like each other! Really!).

 

After he's already missed the months of nightly shenanigans and the deflowering of his only daughter (and after a typo on page 94), Cameron finally decides to have a chat with Erik about appropriate behavior in regards to his daughter after she tells him that she's been having nightly "music lessons" with him. Huzzah, Dad! Thanks for taking things seriously! Too bad you're, like, two years too late! No parenting awards for you. Marisa's adolescent rantings about how unfair he's being and how he doesn't trust her to be an adult further place her as stunningly not at an adult level of maturity.

 

Chapter 10

 

The chat goes by without incident, since apparently, despite Erik and Marisa being two of the worst liars in Christendom, Cameron is dumb enough to believe that they're just having music lessons at eleven o'clock at night. Apparently he is dumb enough to believe this even though they're making out at the end of his driveway afterward. Maybe he's nearsighted.

 

Seriously. The only reason you're getting away with this is because your FRIEND, Cameron, thinks you'd never be enough of a dick to sleep with his UNDERAGE DAUGHTER, Erik. Way to fail to live up to expectations of decency.

 

Chapter 11

 

Then it's sex, round two. My only comment on this is that Marisa had better get pregnant; she had no protection for sex round one, and she just started on birth control pills yesterday for sex round two. Birth control pills don't work that way, honey; they have to build up in your body. You aren't going to be baby-proofed for another week, maybe even two. But who cares what the medical community thinks? Shit, you can treat malnutrition by sleeping a lot. Who knew?

 

Chapter 12

 

Allen presents us with some concrete reasons for Erik's appearance, which I really appreciated; at the time of his horrible accident (which killed both of his parents, too, by the way), the art of skin grafting was in its infancy, and while the surgeons did the best they could with what they had, it was only the 40's, after all. The "patchwork" appearance of his face is due in part to the fact that the surgeons were forced to use skin from several different parts of his body, most of which didn't match the skin on his face, and the result was a face with a vast number of different skin textures on it. The same idea applies to the many scars and burns on his body (he does have them, yes... we usually just don't hear about them because he has clothes on a good portion of the time). Exacerbating the mess is the fact that he refused to complete the treatment... apparently even an eight-year-old will put his foot down after twenty-odd painful surgeries or so. He elected not to allow a prosthetic nose, fearing that it would make him look even more like a freak, and went for the mask option instead. It's not perfect, but it's not a bad explanation for a modern context.

 

There's a bit of a hint of class friction hanging around, too: Erik's family, the D'Antons, are apparently very well-to-do and upper-crust English people, so we have another instance of Erik being a part of the nobility (we just saw this in Ashe's novel, actually). In this case, it just means he's emo because he wasn't allowed to fraternize with the lower class as a kid, or something. It doesn't really come into play with Marisa, since her family's richer than god, and anyway the dynamic is totally wrong for a character who was originally the very embodiment of the lowest social caste.

 

Chapter 13

 

Erik has a pervasive, rock-solid certain belief that Marisa's eventually going to leave him. This is both another expression of his self-loathing (which I support in character context) and another excuse for him to mope at the drop of a hat (which I do not support, at all). In other news that I don't support, Marisa is still painfully young and immature. The scene in which Erik helps her with her high school English homework is particularly squirm-inducing, especially when they wander off and have more sex afterward.

 

As a side note, though, said homework has to do with Jane Austen, and I think Allen is making a subtle comment on Leroux's original novel and it's only-a-little-bit-subtle mockery of society (something Austen also excelled at). Or maybe she isn't and I'm making that up, but either way, his interpretation of Austen--"She's painting you a portrait, then laughing and saying, 'Can you believe how ridiculous these people are?'"--is spot on for the old man, too.

 

Chapter 14

 

More ickiness, and more of me fighting with Marisa's student (and hence, child) status. It was creepy and very difficult to get around, which frankly is the biggest thing that ruined this book for me. There was just no reconciling it.

 

In a move that should surprise no one (my notes say I called it back in chapter 6), Cameron has a heart attack and dies, leaving Marisa devastated and Kitty, the housekeeper, in charge of everything. Kitty is not any closer to being in my good books when she has no kind of objection to Marisa (still seventeen!) running immediately to this much older guy who is obviously sleeping with her, despite her self-professed role as Marisa's surrogate mother. The only thing I can hope is that she doesn't realize he's so much older under all the ugly, but seriously, he's obviously not a youth.

 

Also, I'd like to know how Erik's face is trashed and his body is fucked up, but his hands are perfect and gorgeous. Peoples' hands get diced up in car accidents more than most other parts of their bodies, due to the instinctive reaction of using them as a shield or a stop. I call shenanigans.

 

Chapter 15

 

I'd never before heard of the Salvation Army being referred to as the "Sally Ann". You learn something new every day.

 

Erik takes Marisa to her father's funeral, and there's some highly unrealistic staring and gossiping and whispering from all the people who are ostensibly there to attend the funeral of their dear friend and colleague. Personally, I don't care how ugly some guy that came is, I'd be more focused on the dead guy, but maybe that's just me. But the fun doesn't stop with the OMGSOMEAN people at the funeral (Marisa conceives an impressive hatred of her family, by the way, for being mean to Erik); Cameron left a letter for Erik along with his will, which reveals that he totally knew about Erik and Marisa all along and gives them his blessing. So it's not that he was dumber than an anvil and didn't notice that Erik was banging his underage daughter; it's that he didn't care. Oh, well, that makes it so much better. This is completely preposterous. Every single male I've polled (which includes every creature with a penis to come within my irate shouting radius) has professed a marked inclination toward beheading any friend of his that might theoretically put the moves on his daughter. No one was particularly interested in giving their blessings, no matter how much they liked their friend as an individual. Cameron is therefore either stunningly enlightened, or an example of parenting fail on a titanic scale.

 

Chapter 16

 

Raskin's bloody background, which includes a lot of childhood abuse and the murder of his father, is a little confusing and disconcerting, since it doesn't seem to serve much purpose. But, on the other hand, I like that he's getting developed a bit, and his nasty background supports the hypothesis that he's an outgrowth of the earlier Ivan/Lajos character. I wrote wistful notes about how awesome it would be if he went off the deep end and killed everyone in a flashback sequence, and I was seriously about halfway convinced that he was going to, probably out of a forlorn hope that we would at some point see an antagonist that wasn't Erik's Yawning Angst or Marisa's Stupid Ovaries.

 

Readers of the original book will be entertained to find that Erik's father was apparently named Philippe. Hey, look! Erik's a de Chagny!

 

Chapter 17

 

And bam, Erik marries her on her eighteenth birthday, so I can no longer complain about the fact that she's illegal (though I will continue to complain, at length, about all the inappropriateness of the last THREE YEARS of their relationship). More pertinent to my concern, however, is the fact that Raskin and Kitty have struck up a romantic relationship. It's confusing. When did Raskin get so goddamn happy? I thought he was an emotionally crippled war veteran with the relationship range of a dildo. I'm not sorry to discover he has unplumbed depths, per se. I just want to know where the hell they came from. The character she's set up makes no sense now.

 

Chapter 18

 

Erik and Raskin conspire to teach Marisa drafting so she can help them out with their little architecture firm. I was trying to look at this as maybe an extension of Erik's desire to train Christine in music in the original story--i.e., Erik is more of an architect here, ergo he is teaching her architecture instead--but I kept getting too distracted by this Kitty and Raskin business. Seriously. What the hell is going on?

 

Also, like fifteen years go by. Most of the rest of this book will take place with Marisa now being somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-eight to thirty-five years old. For those keeping score, that makes Erik somewhere from forty-four to fifty-two years old. This fast-forward in time does not have any appreciable effect on Marisa's impenetrable mental shield, which allows her to keep a teenage mindset and maturity level no matter how old she gets.

 

Chapter 19

 

Allen seems to catch on one of the fundamental concepts of Erik's character in the original novel when she mentions in the narration that Erik is "the living embodiment of [society's] every secret fear." However, she never expands upon the idea, so it seems like it might be a sort of accidental meeting with one of Leroux's themes, like two literary ships bumping in the night.

 

Perspective shifts without warning and typos in the neighborhood of page 201 are not improving my mood any.

 

Chapter 20

 

Snort. Erik throws a stool through a stained glass window and roars like a beast upon discovering that a gentleman looked at Marisa with appreciation. I suppose he doesn't have as many social skills as your average guy, but most of the time he seems perfectly cultured and classy. I was, however, very entertained that when Erik tried to reassure Marisa by insisting that nothing she could ever do would make him so angry, she thought, I can. Ha ha, yeah, I can, too. Do I sense some foreshadowing toward a Raoul character?

 

Hey. Where the hell is Raoul, anyway? We're halfway through the book and our Christine character is already married to Erik, and... dammit, I'm confused.

 

Chapter 21

 

This chapter involves a lot of frank discussion of various methods of birth control (IUDs, diaphragms, side effects of pills, etc.). This is mostly because Erik is madly paranoid that Marisa will get pregnant and give birth to a child that will hate him because he's fugly. I really only noticed because romance novels so seldom address birth control at all that I was glad to see that Allen was being nicely realistic.

 

Chapter 22

 

Chapter 22 mostly exists to let everyone know what mean, horrible bastards the Establishment (and by extension, the rest of society) is; Raskin gets pulled over for speeding, and subsequently arrested when the officer pulling him over discovers that he has a prison record (which he definitely does. He kills and/or assaults people sometimes, apparently), and Erik gets quite a bit of attitude from the local police force when he attempts to muscle his way into the station and demand Raskin's immediate release or else. While the police are harassing Raskin and Kitty, which is uncool, Erik is threatening police officers and I do sort of have to feel like maybe they have a point in not liking him. Marisa is also highly offended by everyone's treatment of her angry, punitive-financial-measures-threatening husband.

 

Chapter 23

 

After that little mess gets sorted out, with the police yipping away from Erik's wrath with their tails between their legs, we are treated to the revelation that Raskin was totally making up all those sexual encounters he shared with Erik and he has in fact been celibate since returning from Vietnam (except for Kitty, naturally). This certainly has Allen's intended effect and makes Raskin's character much more human and sympathetic, but it also confuses and disappoints me. What happened to Raskin being mentally damaged from the war in which he saw lots of terribly maimed and killed people? What happened to him being the perfect companion for Erik because he was also ill-equipped to deal with the rest of society? What happened to the dude who killed his father? I may not like Kitty's failure to care about the exploitation of her young charge, but at least she retained her characterization enough to kick Marisa's sad, whiny little ass in this chapter. Raskin was not so lucky. Apparently, Allen got tired of him about two-thirds of the way through the book and replaced him with a character that looked the same but was secretly an entirely new creature and possibly a space alien with lots of squishy feelings.

 

Someone should tell this new Raskin that the phrase "spayed" refers to females only, and is thus not particularly appropriate for Marisa's male dog. Just putting that out there. I think you want "neutered", Hal.

 

Chapter 25

 

Marisa, who has heretofore been annoying and insipid but has not motivated me to real hatred, achieves entirely unprecedented levels of frothing dislike out of me here. You see, the fact that she wants children and Erik is adamantly opposed to the idea has been a major bone of contention in their marriage. Marisa has whined, tantrumed, moped, bitched to Kitty, and generally been insufferable over the whole thing, while Erik has castigated himself on a regular basis for making her unhappy. Frankly, the whole thing is very tiring to watch, especially after it has dragged on for a few chapters. Anyway, Marisa is monkeying around with different kinds of birth control, and eventually she decides to hell with it and she'll just get a tubal ligation. However, she goes home, forgets that she removed her IUD, and has sex with Erik. Twice. And then when she remembers, she feels SO BAD for betraying his trust that she just CAN'T TELL HIM... and proceeds to have sex with him SEVERAL MORE TIMES over the next few days.

 

Woman. I will punch you in the mouth. Trapping men into having children with you is one of the slimiest things you can do to a man, especially a man who trusts you, especially a man who trusts you and who you know has a terrible pathological fear of ever being put in that situation. I am so not at all interested in or convinced by all the inner monologue remorse and sadness she keeps trying to push down my throat. No amount of "But I felt really bad after I did it!" is going to mollify me... especially when she keeps DOING IT AGAIN AND STILL NOT TELLING HIM.

 

And right on cue... hey, is that...? Raoul! His name is Stefan and he is an extremely good-looking young man that Marisa meets on the train shortly after seeing a man commit suicide by leaping in front of it; he comforts her and gives her a ride home. While the idea that Christine might have departed with Raoul partially out of a sense of remorse at her "betrayal" of Erik in Leroux's novel is a valid interpretation and an interesting avenue to pursue, I already sense an unfortunate tendency toward villainizing, and I fear poor this poor Raoul-stand-in is about to become a bad guy through virtue of Not Being Erik. Alas. I just don't understand this trend in modern Phantom literature (okay, I understand it, but I think it's stupid).

 

Chapter 26

 

But oh noes! Erik went to the train station to pick Marisa up and saw her get out of another man's car! THE DRAMAZ! Like any other intelligent adult, he hides in a secret room under his house and mopes until she gets tired of looking for him and leaves again.

 

Chapter 27

 

Not to be outdone in the realm of stupidity, Marisa decides that if her husband's going to be so mean and ignore her, well, she's just going to go have dinner with that pretty young man. But not out of a desire for revenge; no, no, she just wants to talk about the train accident with the only other person she knows who was there. The fact that she gets all dressed up and goes to another man's house while pissed off at her husband has nothing to do with anything. Marisa never really stopped being a self-centered brat, and it shows, which doesn't invest me in her happy ending very much. And it's entirely possible that, on some level, that's not what Allen was trying for anyway. It occurs to me that Marisa's happiness is by far secondary in this story; what's important is that Erik is happy, that the Phantom be "rewarded" or "compensated" for all the misery in his life with a perfect young wife to love him. This is a shame, as far as I'm concerned; it was Christine that had the most personal growth and maturity by the end of Leroux's original novel, and her frequent relegation to the role of a mere female accessory for Erik's obsessions or emotional closure is pretty darn depressing.

 

Unsurprisingly (at least, if you read my note about how I knew it was going to happen), Stefan is turning out to be a bit of a jerkass. She sticks around for dinner anyway.

 

Chapter 28

 

This I can say: at least there's suspense. I'm honestly not sure if Marisa's dumb enough to sleep with Stefan, so there is an element of the unknown at play here.

 

Oh, look. Rape. Sigh. Allen doesn't stop at just making Stefan unappealing in contrast to Erik, or making him generally unpleasant or flawed in some way in order to make her point; no, he has to be a rapist, and Marisa has to stab him in the arm with a broken wine glass in order to escape (not before being punched in the face and partially violated, of course. There wouldn't be enough angst or unnecessary vilifying of Stefan if we left too early). I'd just like to point out that there can be times--in fact, most times fall into this category--in which both men are perfectly acceptable or likable or worthy, and it turns out that the woman only loves one of them and that settles the matter. We do not need a choice between a noble, self-sacrificing dark hero and a slimy rapist woman-abuser in order to know who to root for (well, in this case, maybe we do, since Allen has cheerfully switched the original hero and villain around). Sometimes, boys and girls, life isn't fair, and good people can get the shaft, too, for a variety of reasons, and that's necessary. Ugh. I needed some more cocoa before I could even think about finishing at this point.

 

Marisa, clearly a master of rational response to stressors, calls Erik, weeps out some kind of half-assed confession that includes a lot of apologies but no actual explanation of what she did, and then runs away to the south of France. Erik, also clearly a master of rational response, responds to this by attempting to shoot himself in the head, and has to be wrestled into submission by Raskin. I'm not sure where Kitty (who, it occurs to me, is really the Madame Giry analogue in this story; the case could be made that Raskin is a sort of Persian analogue, which would make this the first ever version in which the Persian and the Madame get it on) is during all of this, but who cares? Raskin and Erik are going to get on a plane and goddamn FIND Marisa wherever she is. Not, confusingly, with divorce papers, but because Erik needs to beg her to come home to him. Sigh.

 

Chapter 29

 

There is a typo on page 309 and several grammatical errors on page 311. People, come on.

 

Chapter 30

 

Aside from a lot more navel-gazing (Erik and Raskin have found Marisa, but instead of talking to her they have elected to just stalk her from French town to French town, on the theory that she might bolt if they popped out of the bushes unexpectedly), the only remarkable thing here was Marisa's self-inflicted head wound, which she acquires after banging her head repeatedly on the wall in an attempt to kill herself. This was defiant and almost somewhat admirable in the original Christine, who was tied up in Erik's basement listening to her lover be murdered; it's just kind of snicker-inducing with Marisa.

 

Chapter 31

 

Everyone is finally reunited; Erik and Marisa go off and have a second honeymoon or something, Raskin goes back to Connecticut and proposes to Kitty (again, I say, wtf), Stefan probably needs at least five stitches but nobody cares, and we can all go home. About goddamn time. Allen closes things off with another quote from Leroux's novel, and we are finally free to go our merry way and read something without any rapists or teen-molesters in it.

 

Despite all my vermilective, I don't think this was a complete waste of time. There are places with really nice writing in them, and spots that I didn't hate. But there's so much miserableness and confusion and just plain unacceptable choices on the parts of the characters that there was no way I could enjoy the book. And considering the way it mangled all of the original novel's points and themes, there's no way it could be considered a successful adaptation, either.

 

So my question is: did Allen set out by sitting down at her desk and saying, "I'm going to write a book where a semi-pedophiliac villain and his ridiculously stupid, selfish little bitch of a wife triumph over all odds, while also turning the original hero into a self-obsessed rapist and throwing in some random characters for no particular reason at all"? Because... well, Occam's Razor.