Black Flame: When Suffering Is Inevitable, Suffer The Right Way

I know, I know: I'm late to the party in loving the work of horror author Gretchen Felker-Martin. But now that I've discovered her work, and have read the second of her three available novels, I'm very excited to see what else she comes up with. I'm not sure how far into it I'll go, but this is your obligatory spoiler warning.

Black Flame is my latest foray into her work, and I was even more engrossed in the story than I was with Cuckoo. In that work, things get pretty gory and cosmic right away. Black Flame, on the other hand, reads very much like a ghost story that takes a hard ride turn into gore in the third act. That can be tricky to achieve, but Felker-Martin peppers in enough smaller bloody moments throughout the narrative that the final bloodbath feels not only appropriate to the larger narrative, but also cathartic and transformative.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Set in the mid-80s, Black Flame follows Ellen Kramer, former lesbian and non-practicing Jew, who restores films reels and negatives for a foundation that has found itself in some public relations drama after restoring a notorious Klan film. To try to save face (and win back grants and donors) the foundation takes on a Nazi-era exploitation film called The Baroness. Featuring crossdressing, orgies, seduction of the innocent, and a heapin' helpin' of good old-fashioned murder, the film pushes against all of Ellen's upbringing, all of the boundaries and expectations she got from her mother, Janet, including all of the pretenses she's erected since her college days affair with the electric Freddie, a lesbian film student.

In some ways the book tries to weave together a little too much: there is the decadence of the film juxtaposed with the horrors of the Holocaust, Ellen finding out that her father is a closeted gay man who loved a man named Benjamin in his youth (and potentially kept taking male lovers throughout his marriage), and then later learning that her grandmother, her Bubbe, from whom the family inherited their money and property, was a collaborator with and an informant to the Nazis. Ellen's desires for other women aren't just stewing beneath the surface, but include a sprinkling of S&M and gender play, all leading up to the final revelation: Ellen has been suppressing more than just a desire for women, but also his own true gender identity. As the film brings about a fiery conflagration that destroys the white, male, misogynist board of the foundation (as well as a barely veiled representation of Strom Thurmond, who we should have been so lucky - Google him if you're too young to know!), Ellen is finally united with the Baroness herself, pulled into the world of the film and revealing their true name and identity: Benjamin, named for their father's long lost love. It's all a lot to take in, and while it feels a bit too much sometimes, Ellen/Benajmin's journey was interesting enough on its own to keep me going until the end.

Something that I noticed in Cuckoo, was also present here to a lesser extent. I imagine that it's hard to write about any time period that you haven't lived through, but I think it can be even more challenging when it's a time period that you haven't lived through but a large chunk of your potential audience has. Cuckoo was set in the 90s, but the way the characters thought about and talked sexuality and gender was absolutely rooted in today's context. This might be a way to try to bring in younger readers who want a story to feel accurate to their experience now, but it's challenging for those of us who lived through the time; it's a little too slick, a little too "unproblematic" to see people not have to struggle through their identity not only personally, but in the context of their time. Black Flame has a little of this as well, especially in how it handles Ellen's lesbian relationship from the 70s. Some of the discussions of sexuality and gender, some of the reactions of characters ring a little hollow. It's not enough to ruin the story, and it feels more authentic than it did in Cuckoo (perhaps because there are fewer characters who get a deep dive into their queer identities), but it is an issue.

This was a fun read, and the gonzo conflagration in the final pages was worth the read, even if I'm still a little hazy on some of the symbolism. The use of the Holocaust and the character from that era who made the film don't entirely gel for me, and there are times where it feels somewhat inconsistent in what the film and the themes are meant to represent, but it's still a fun read.

One theme that emerged for me has to do with Ellen's repression and her conflicted feelings about it. In some ways, the book seems to suggest a dark reading of queerness, that in some way queerness will always lead to suffering. But it also illuminates that we have a choice in our suffering: the suffering that Ellen is living with is different than the suffering of Freddie and Rachel, who live their lives openly and embrace their queer identities; and it's different from her father's suffering, living an open secret and barely keeping up appearances in his shell of a marriage. That is a choice that destroys him, as he self-destructs in spectacular fashion at his own retirement party.

When Ellen finally embraces their true nature and surrenders to the film, there is still suffering. But this time, the suffering leads to liberation, to true freedom. In that moment, the facade of Ellen disappears, and Benjamin emerges, finally free.