From a clay creature
Posted October 26, 2010
By fanforchrist2009,
Tosca Lee's Demon: A Memoir is a jaw-dropping novel of suspense and great intrigue. Lee's way with words is purely amazing, and the story moves at an equally remarkable rate.
Clay, a failed editor with a painful new life in the wake of his wife's divorce, meets a mysterious "man" in Boston, his hometown, at a local restaurant. This creature claims to be a fallen angel, a demon, called Lucian, who tells Clay that Clay must write down every word of what he says and publish it. Clay, not believing Lucian for a minute, challenges him, but Lucian proves to have either been planning a trick encounter for many years, or is genuinely who he claims to be. Lucian knows things about Clay's life that no one could possibly know, and his timing is laced with perfection. Clay, rather shaken up after Lucian leaves, goes home and lives in paranoia for the rest of his day, waiting to see if Lucian, this captivating yet terrifying entity, shows again as promised. Lucian is true to his word by the next day, making use of Clay's work calendar to warn him of his appearances. This time Clay meets Lucian in a large library, and a series of increasingly bizarre encounters ensue as Clay is compelled to write it all down. Soon in complete disarray, Clay is literally living his life for these tumultuous encounters. Lucian details his rather lengthy life story during the span of the meetings, always obsessed with time. The fallen angel tells of his fall from grace, his imprisonment on earth because of one wrong choice, watching humanity disregard El's sacred gift never offered to him. The fascinating story's finale is astounding, the characters are easy to identify with (particularly Clay), and as stated above, Lee's writing is magnificent. I can hardly wait until my hands hold her second novel, Havah: The Story of Eve.
Demon: A Memoir is an amazing work that I was unable to stop reading. The flow is perfect, the imagery that the novel produces with regards to many briefly covered events in Scripture is resonant with meaning, and the demon Lucian's well-painted hatred of humans seems well-motivated, about which I had always wondered. Now I see more clearly how the fallen angels are motivated to wreak havoc as they do, hating El's chosen creatures "made of clay; the dust of the ground". This novel is an imaginative, wonderful work illuminating several aspects of theology which are often overlooked.
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