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Media Review: The Manikin

Medium: Novel
Author: Joanna Scott
Original Publication: 1996

Scott's prose has never ceased to captivate me in the past, and The Manikin was no exception. Her writing is haunting; somehow distant and cool while at the same time intensely personal and touching. Not a tremendous amount happens in the book, but I was never bored, and didn't have any trouble turning the pages. The titular "Manikin" refers not to a store window mannequin, but the frame around which an animal's skin is mounted in taxidermy, and the house which is both the setting and the main character of the book. In this, as in her other novels, Scott employs an amazing literary device the likes of which I've not really seen anywhere else. She'll paint you a picture of the scene in tremendous detail, such that you know what the room smells like and precisely where everyone is positioned, and only once you have this incredibly clear picture of the setting does she allow the action begin. You can see her crafting a picture in your mind, and then shouting "action," and letting the various characters play their parts. Often, in these descriptions, she uses the second person to wonderful effect. Upon our meeting in 1999, she called this her "tour guide voice," and passed it off as a cheap narrative trick, but I think it's a phenomenal method of laying the scene out before the reader. Other readers might find The Manikin to be uneventful and depressing, but I relished in the slow, creeping, lavish Gothic-ness of it.

Full post as published by The Mighty Argos on May 17, 2007 (boomark / email).