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The Elementals

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The Elementals

Written by: Michael McDowell
Narrated by: R. C. Bray
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About this listen

After a bizarre and disturbing incident at the funeral of matriarch Marian Savage, the McCray and Savage families look forward to a restful and relaxing summer at Beldame, on Alabama's Gulf Coast, where three Victorian houses loom over the shimmering beach. Two of the houses are habitable, while the third is slowly and mysteriously being buried beneath an enormous dune of blindingly white sand. But though long uninhabited, the third house is not empty. Inside, something deadly lies in wait. Something that has terrified Dauphin Savage and Luker McCray since they were boys, and which still haunts their nightmares. Something horrific that may be responsible for several terrible and unexplained deaths years earlier–and is now ready to kill again....

A haunted house story unlike any other, Michael McDowell's The Elementals (1981) was one of the finest novels to come out of the horror publishing explosion of the 1970s and '80s. Though best known for his screenplays for Tim Burton's Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas, McDowell is now being rediscovered as one of the best modern horror writers and a master of Southern Gothic literature.

©1981, 2016 Estate of Michael McDowell (P)2016 Valancourt Books LLC
Classics Horror Haunted Scary Fiction Fantasy
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I love Michael McDowell novels but I can't stand something he does. If there is a Black character, he has to mention their race several times when that person is mentioned in the story. It's like...
"Odessa entered the kitchen. The Black woman bent over to take biscuits from the oven. "Oh lawdy lawd! I done burnt da biscuits," the Black women exclaimed. Luker runs in to ask what was wrong. The Black woman looked sheepishly at the floor with her black eyes. She apologized and retrieved the mop. The Black woman sighed. She wiped flour off the black hands."
She's Black... WE GET IT! There is absolutely no character development other than the fact that she's a Magical Negro archetype who is a Black woman!!! He never mentions the race of any other character. Fine, I'll assume they're all White but that doesn't mean I forget Odessa is Black moments after she's mentioned. If a book mentioned a single character is White five or six times in each paragraph, wouldn't you find that weird?

Captivating Story but...

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It was such a good story. Interesting characters. Excellent descriptions. But I don’t understand the author’s fixation with the insistence that Odessa is Black. Saying it once is enough. He says it so often that one wonders what’s the point of it. What kind of bizarre racism is this?

Great story. One big problem

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