cardulelia carduelis's Reviews > The Erl-King

This is the weirdest WWII book I've read yet.

The Erl-King deals with the question of what happens to the sinister in times of war: people who likely, and in this case definitely, would have ended up in the penal system - what happens when they slip through the net and into a society of upheaval.
At least, I think that's what it was mostly about?

Over the Erl King's six uneven sections we follow the life of Abel Tiffaugues, switching sporadically between his whimsical narrative and the third person. Abel's a bemusing character: all at once gentle giant and a self-declared, unyielding predator.

And he preys, for the most part, on young children.

Much of the novel is about Abel justifying his pedophilia: from disturbing episodes of power-play in his catholic school to bizarre analogies to the ‘Euphoric’ tales of St. Christopher. Although there is never any explicit sexual abuse, the devoted attention he bestows on children is oftentimes incredibly disturbing:

The honey secreted in their ears is as golden as bees’, but tastes so quintessentially bitter it would repel anyone but me.

And the means to which he acquires said children (view spoiler)[,eventually working as a recruiter or ‘child-snatcher’ for the Hitler Youth, (hide spoiler)] only highlights his blinkered devotion.

Offsetting the dramatic themes of Abel’s predatory nature and his interactions with the Nazis are splendid naturalist passages set in Reichsjägerhof Rominten, a gorgeous hunting lodge in Prussia surrounded by forests and deer.
Tournier’s eye and ear for the outdoors infuses the book and, alongside Tiffauger’s musings, the narrative often feels like it's wallowing in hedonism. .
Abel’s perversions extend to animals too: I’ve honestly never read so much praise about pigeons. There’s also some really great moments with his horse BlueBeard. He goes into some detail about horses defecating and how they're really elegant about it and so they're basically Anal Angels.
ANAL ANGELS.
Abel is riding one through town and it takes a poo and he vividly describes the back arching, the bum clenching, the sound of it plooping into the street and imagines that it is him doing it. And is proud.
The blurb doesn’t prepare you for THAT, does it?

The Erl-King is a solid 3-stars despite the intrigue. For one it was a chore to read, never being quite beautiful or odd enough that I could forgive the meandering plot. It’s a very long book in which only a few key events happen. The language is flowery and full of hidden meaning, I imagine much of it lost in translation. For example the first section of the book is penned by Abel’s left hand, his right being injured, and is called ‘Sinister Writings of Tiffauges’, at least my rudimentary French allowed me to catch that one but how many others were missed?
I’m also not really sure what this book is meant to be and who it’s for. It’s not necessarily a war story, if anything the war allows Abel to prey on his desires unbounded. If it had stayed with Abel’s narrative for the entire book one could argue that it is a character study but of course it does not.
Like Abel himself, the book doesn’t quite fall into any bin.

I’m not sure if it’s worth reading, but if you can try it in the original French.