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Newsletter
Purity
reviewed by
How far would a boy go to possess the girl he's desired since he was four?
Owen Crites, the beautiful blue-eyed Outerbridge Island boy full of darkness inside tells you how far he would go to own Jenna, the rich girl who summers on the island and who has just returned with her tennis-playing preppie boyfriend, Jimmy McTeague.
Just how far would a poor boy go to be with the rich girl of his dreams? It turns out Owen, who swims like a fish and has been known to dribble blood - sometimes his own, sometimes not - on a scaly hidden statue, would go pretty far.
In this tightly-focused novella, Douglas Clegg (author of YOU COME WHEN I CALL YOU, NAOMI, THE NIGHTMARE CHRONICLES, and two e-serials) strips the plot down to its essential elements but still explores Owen's skewed point of view, Jenna's, her mother's, and even Jimmy's, tightening the strings that bind them all together in an explosive powder keg of sexual tension. There is no excess here, only the sleekness of a story as elemental as the sea itself, and the late summer storm that comes calling.
Owen may be beautiful, but under his easy-going jock persona he cultivates a highly developed anger - and a cold knowledge of psychology. Jimmy condescendingly dubs Owen "Mooncalf," but then he confides in Owen, unaware that he's cocked the gun for dangerous games of manipulation, jealousy, and repressed lust.
Doug Clegg writes gut-wrenchingly beautiful horror, in which the grotesque acquires a sheen of attractiveness rendered in lush descriptive brush strokes. Dialogue both rings true and resonates with layers of deeper meaning. Clegg's favorite themes - painful adolescence, abuse, sociopathic alienation, and coming home - are all at play here, as are characters who play each other and themselves ... for keeps.
Whether or not Owen has truly aroused Dagon, the scaly fish-god in the koi pond, it's his belief that counts, and what Dagon wants Owen is all too eager to provide. We are left with the unexpected consequences of Owen's lust, and his shattering declaration: "Love is purity."
Surf to www.douglasclegg.com for a free copy of PURITY, and sign up for his upcoming e-serial (a novel in e-mail installments). If you've never read Doug Clegg, now is the time to experience one of today's most captivating, literary and literate voices in psychological terror.
Note: A version of this review was previously published at BookPage.com. This version appears here by permission of ProMotion, Inc.