Purified But Devoid of All: Reviewing Missouri Williams' "The Doloriad"

We are getting closer to the middle of the year and in my experience that is the time when the good books start trickling in. Within the last month I have read three books that will definitely make it into my best-of list for 2022 and one of them is a really interesting philosophical post-apocalypse/body horror mesh-up, a debut from a young author I think has enormous potential and talent: I am talking about The Doloriad by Missouri Williams.

... and so the age of man was over and the age of rocks had begun.

Running through the reviews for The Doloriad, I was flabbergasted by the comments for one of the most anticipated horror books of the year; fat phobic, ableist, too pretentious, too hardcore... I was seriously surprised because this is, after all, the horror community we're talking about - a community that can take and even actively seeks in various forms the artistic representation of violence and humiliation. Having finished the book, especially with scenes bordering on torture porn I see how it is a lot to take for a generic dystopia/SFF reader, but too heavy on the metaphysical side for the generic horror reader who seeks the thrill of gore and mayhem. Not that there isn't mayhem to be found here, on the contrary, Williams takes a very close, pessimistic and some may say realistic shot at what a world post-cataclysm may be like but doesn't do so philosophically unfounded.

But let's take a step back and first contemplate this world, this universe Williams is presenting to us. The apocalypse has come and gone, some sort of natural or man-made catastrophe, and has left behind a group of people: the woman called the Matriarch, who, having survived this catastrophe in a country foreign to her (there are clues that we are in Czechia, somewhere near Prague, but the survivors are not from here) puts her mind to re-populate earth, her brother called "uncle", the children they produce in their incestuous relationship and a single individual outside of this family, the Schoolmaster. Let's first take a look at these two sentences which capture the reality, Zeitgeist and dynamics of this post-apocalyptic universe perfectly:

The fire that had purified the earth had taken them too, though there had been no evil in them, only beauty; and although his sister maintained that the disaster had been a purge, their uncle could not be so certain when faced with the pitiful mess of the survivors, who -it could not be argued otherwise- lived in a kind of torpid sin, a lethargy and lust that corroded any claim to a higher moral purpose, the necessity of survival, or the particular worthiness of their species, and so over time he had come to see them as simply forgotten. The departed gods had left their task incomplete; they had neglected to wipe away these last remnants of their great error, and in the vacuum of their intention these things had bred and clung on to a meager existence in a world more inhospitable than ever simply because "nature hateth emptiness."

Not only is this extract a perfect example of Williams' writing, as mentioned above, it also precisely describes the oppressive nature and meaninglessness of this hostile world we are looking at in Doloriad that it renders any attempt at finding the trace of something good, something comforting futile. This world is heavily characterized by solitude, a feeling of contra-solidarity between siblings, a lack of morals, of humanity, of history and identity. We are in fact witnessing the instability of a time that marks the passage between the first and second to third generation post cataclysm; the death of every remnant from our world as the last people who remember disappear or die and a new generation with a different understanding and different morals emerges and takes over.

I guess most readers find The Doloriad tastelessly shocking and defiant because of the descriptions of people with handicaps, disabilities and vulnerabilities and the scenes of them being physically and psychologically abused. And indeed, there are scenes in this book that would make Lord of the Flies seem lighthearted. It is uncomfortable to read and some things are hard to swallow. It is unclear to what the high number of people with handicaps and afflictions in the story is due, - the incest, the cataclysm, just natural or accidents - but there are many people with missing limbs, people who have to various degrees mental afflictions and health problems. All these are subject to abuse, mockery and malice - especially the quasi titular Dolores, who has no lower legs and needs to crawl on the floor in order to move, who is obese and seems to be mentally not fully developed. She is the butt of every joke, the main target of beatings, harassment, sexual assaults from her siblings - she is the sufferer, the reason for this book of pain. But it is not just her, generally everyone is in a kind of pain here and somewhat aware of it - the Matriarch in her ambitions of saving humanity, the schoolmaster in his quest of building his perfect mound for the moth gods, older brother Jan who, after the cataclysm re-built most the infrastructure and attempts to take over the leadership from his mother, Agathe, the other sibling with an affliction that gravely affects her life. The question of nature or nurture is answered with a big, black eye-roll here.

Luckily not everything is as grim and dark here, though. In a more lighthearted interlude, a fictional sitcom called "Get Aquinas in Here" from before the cataclysm features the medieval saint Thomas Aquinas solving morally dilemmatic situations and will put a smile on your face. It reminds us that, if not now, there once was a moral system, a reconciliation of belief and reason for which Aquinas stands. I wish someone would get Aquinas into my life sometimes!

The history of the world was the history of God trying to kill it off.

This is by no means a perfect book. You will by no means feel remotely satisfied when you finish it. Despite its brilliance and intricate prose, there are sentences which may seem paltry. It is kind of hard to keep track of the siblings and some may feel interchangeable due to lack of stronger characteristics. It is impossible to read more than one chapter at a time because of the gloomy subject matter. But it is a book that is deeply interesting and full of ideas that you may want to explore now and then. I felt the immediate need to re-read it after having finished. I'll also be following Missouri Williams' work as I think she has lots of potential to even more greatness than The Doloriad already contains. Another one added to my favorites!