Knock Knock, Open Wide
Knock Knock, Open Wide by Neil Sharpson is set in Ireland. A beguiling backdrop, to be sure. ‘Tis a place filled with folklore galore and accents that melt the heart. Though author Sharpson reminds the reader that the brogue may not always be appealing: “The voice had a Dublin accent as thick as tar, deep as a well filled with old plastic bags and empty cans. It sounded like cigarette smoke and varnish and stout the color of old rivers. Phlegm and gravel.” With a narrative that features an abundance of such evocative descriptions, I thought at the outset that this novel would rank as one of the best I’ve recently read. And two-thirds of it does. A muddled last third detracts from the earlier excellence, resulting in the equivalent of bungled dismount marring an otherwise superb balance beam performance in gymnastics.
There’s a maze of mysteries in the tale that immediately draws attention. One of the enigmas concerns a long-running children’s television program. Surreal and austere in presentation, the show centers on a box that holds the young viewers in a thrall. Within the narrative there are folkloric references that are germane as well as arcane, slowly infusing the plot with hints of magical menace which insidiously work their way into the reader’s consciousness. Shifts in timeframes and in the focus on characters coalesce beautifully. The various characters are drawn with such precision that it is easy to visualize them: “His beard was long and scraggly, the color of wet ash. His face was gaunt to the point of emaciation, and his eyes had the mad look of a man who has been touched by God or the bottle.”
In terms of ambience, author Sharpson again displays tremendous literary skill. Within the splendidly rendered setting of a Dublin university, a romance unfolds. Two women fall for one another while working in the drama society, and the theatre milieu is lovingly detailed. One can almost smell the greasepaint. But beneath the promise of a harmonious relationship, discord lurks. One of the lovers is working through a dark family history and the subsequent peeling away of the layers will reveal horrors.
The murkiness of it all is complemented by a wee bit of Gaelic black humor inserted in just the right places. For example, there’s a sequence in which a quietly creepy priest is chauffeuring unholy entities and gets stopped by a roadside police officer. The seemingly soulless man of the cloth turns on the charm, in the literal sense. In what could be construed as an ode to “These aren’t the droids you are looking for” from Star Wars, the priest pulls off an Obi-Wan Kenobi. But not nearly so benign for the officer: “As he stood trembling by the side of the road, and tried to re-build in his mind what had just happened, he found only jagged edges and blankness. He felt like his mind had been cut open, and left to bleed to death by the side of the road.”
In the last section of the novel, the priest behaves in a manner that doesn’t gel with how his persona was previously presented. This inconsistent character contradiction is part of the overall jumble of the novel’s disappointing denouement. The huge scope of a conspiracy is messy in description and some of the personages who wind up as part of the body count seem to be there just to serve a yen for more murderousness. It is frustrating to read a book that has so much going for it yet does not finish strong. On the other hand, Knock Knock, Open Wide did introduce me to the considerable writing ability of Neil Sharpson, and I thank Nightfire for sending me a copy to review.
