The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus (reviewed by Patrick Trotti)

Ben Marcus’ newest offering, The Flame Alphabet, is, in many ways a novel struggling for a sense of identity. Dystopian and mysterious in plot and mood, literary in style, and lyrical in voice, The Flame Alphabet is an exciting book.

Having read his previous three books, two novels and a novella, I did enter this release with certain expectations. Within the first five pages it was clear this book was somehow, different. At times in a very good way and others, though fleeting, not for the better.

The Flame Alphabet is many things that long time fans of the author wouldn’t expect, most notably a linear narrative structure. It also possesses many facets that have been staples of the talented author’s previous works. His prodigious linguistic power is on full display and a subtle wit permeates even the dreariest of scenes. Marcus’ attention to detail, to leave no sentence partially fulfilled, less than perfect, is apparent throughout the text. Sometimes his gift for language can come make for laborious reading, challenging you to keep up with the intensified pace or come grinding to a halt and look inside the inner workings of the narrator’s consciousness.

As for plot, the story is in many ways a story told in parallels. The main plotline concerns the narrator, Sam and his wife Claire and their teenage daughter Esther as they try and survive a world that has been devastated by an epidemic caused by the sound of children’s speech. As this linguistic plague continues gaining momentum Sam’s family life is quickly eroding.

“The sickness washed over us when we saw it, when we heard it, when we thought of it later. We feasted on the putrid material because our daughter made it. We gorged on it and inside us it steamed, rotted, turned rank.”

Much of the first part of the novel is setting the stage for future events and yet it doesn’t feel as though Marcus is struggling with the details of back-story. By layering the beginning with such vivid imagery, Marcus manages to keep the story from staying bogged down by trying to over explain the huge leaps of belief that it takes to enjoy the story properly and continues to propel the story ahead, to darker days.

Marcus adds layers of intricate extra plotlines, most notably complex family situations and religious manipulation that turn an interesting concept into a compelling and arresting reading experience. Just when scenes of Sam conducting elaborate and convoluted experiments surrounding language and it’s effect on him and his wife seem to go on too long, or talk of how intoxicating language has become too arduous, Marcus pivots quickly and pulls the reader down the rabbit hole of another unbelievably absurd, yet equally skillfully told, situation involving anonymous huts for Jews to communicate with their leaders.

When it comes time for Sam to make a decision about his family, early on in the second part of the book, he chooses to leave his daughter alone and take his wife with him, looking for shelter. He takes to the road, destination Rochester where gossip of an answer or possible solution to the epidemic has been rumored for much of the book. Early on Sam loses Claire to outside forces, secret police that are ridding the neighborhoods of those already too sick with language. He continues on in an almost blind robotic trance. During the drive we see a man who has lost everything and is beginning to break down, at select moments, emotionally.

“In a world where speech was lethal, I could not share with anyone what happened when Claire collapsed in the grass and I failed to help her.”

And just when it’s expected that more emotions will be revealed, Sam retreats and hides in his mind letting the gorgeously rendered outside world overcome him, envelop him. He arrives in Rochester and finds that the city isn’t a possible salvation but a trap. Forced into work at a not so secret lab, where his job is to test out possible languages of the past on frighteningly eager subjects, Sam hides within his modification of ancient alphabets trying desperately to erase his past life, to rewrite it altogether.

Much of the rest of the book takes place in the lab; an odd place that brought to mind memories of a setting out of a sci-fi movie. By this point the dread created, the rotting ambivalence surrounding all the characters has begun to lose its luster and give way to Marcus’ wordplay. The power of his writing, especially during the second half, enveloped me as a reader and at same time beat me, leaving me cold and naked, shaking from fright but somehow going back for more, wanting more, needing more of the beautifully developed and gorgeously terrific sentences that seem to roll together, taking the reader on the ride of a lifetime.

The one point of contention I had, by the end, was Marcus’ choice to sacrifice some of the secondary character’s development in lieu of feeding this dystopian monster that he spent the first half of the book about. Much of this, I can assume, is due to his choice in using first person point of view. Despite it’s shortcomings, the decision generated the necessary immediacy and emotional avalanche that is needed to overcome the implausibility of the entire scenario.

A complex and highly satisfying read, The Flame Alphabet is a must read not only for fans of Marcus but also for those that question whether the terms literary and thriller can coexist. It’s a heavy book; one that proposes many questions of merit yet has no definitive answers. For me the lack of answers wasn’t a problem, the joy was in the journey.