Orpheus Builds a Girl by Heather Parry

I took professional pleasure in seeing my work achieve results that had never been recorded. While it is undeniably egotistical to wallow in one’s own achievements, I ask the reader’s mercy for just a moment. Having been frustrated in my professional development because of political upheaval in my youth, I had for most of my adult life felt a sense of lost progress, of wasted potential. I had never regained the heralded position for which I had been primed and trained. My ability to create a home laboratory had been hampered by various challenges; in short, I had never achieved the success that I felt I should have. And yet here was my beautiful young wife, whom I had raised from the dead. Here was living, or almost living, proof that first death is but an obstacle to the continuance of our lives. Here was proof that with the correct care, bodies can be regained, and revitalised; that the soul does indeed exist on another plane and can communicate with the human realm, and can, under the correct circumstances, return to the body if first lived in. Here, with me, was a miracle. What greater happiness can a scientist have?

The above quote is taken from the account of Wilhelm von Tore, a German expat living in Key West Florida as he looks back on his life in his final days. He remembers fondly the memories of lying with his dead grandmother for days before being found, of carrying out scientific experiments on behalf of Josef Mengele, and most of all remembers the Cuban girl he fell in love with - Luciana del Carmen Herrera Madrigal. A girl who died of tuberculosis and was taken away from him, who he dedicated the rest of his life to resurrecting. Luciana’s family are poor Cuban migrants, at first grateful that a medical professional was offering free care. But as von Tore moves into their house, denies them access to Luci, even denies them access to her grave, Luci’s family find themselves emotionally manipulated and tricked by a particularly cruel man.

Wilhelm wants the reader to think this is a gothic romance book, something full of tragedy and longing. But Luciana’s sister Gabriela is the other narrator in the book, and she wants the reader to know that really this is a horror book, plain and simple, a story about manipulation and control. By the end of the novel there should be no doubt in the reader’s mind that the story very much sits in the latter camp, irrespective of what von Tore wants us to think. Parry’s novel is very good at getting under your skin, evoking a visceral reaction and anger at the events unfolding. As von Tore experiments with a series of unguents, sculpts protective layers, soaks Luci’s rotting corpse in bleach and solvents, he reduces her into a plaything for his romantic imagination.

The horror in Orpheus Builds a Girl is compounded by the indifference of society. At almost every turn von Tore is helped, supported, financed by others around him; from escaping Nazi Germany at the fall of the third reich, to being given the benefit of the doubt when his ‘Polish nationality’ is questioned. Even when the true extent of von Tore’s horrors emerge, rather than being handed pariah status and a prison sentence, he receives a reluctant admonishment from the judge and wave of sympathetic support from the local community. Meanwhile, those who are supposed to stand up for the vulnerable are annoyed by Gabriela and her family causing a fuss. The way the expected moral response is turned on its head feels like a bad dream at times.

The perspectives are told in alternating chapters, a simple technique which very effectively brings the lives of the Carmen family into collision with von Tore with inevitable dread. Below is an excellent example of why this juxtaposition is so effective, taken from each narrator describing the same moment:

Gabriela - He was a snake from the start. He was wearing all white, a linen suit and a hat made from straw, and he took it off as he came inside. He moved like a small guilty child; he fidgeted at his cuffs and tried not to make eye contact with anybody. He shook Papa’s hand but didn’t speak to the rest of us. He sat down and placed his hands carefully on the arm rests. This settled him. He felt the place was his, and to anyone else he would have looked like the master of the house - a small old man with his chin raised and the air of someone who had been responsible for many ills. A taste burned in my throat, like when you eat something band and your body rejects it.

Wilhelm - The house was large but unfit for the family. It was clear that the purchase of the place was intended to project a level of wealth that they did not have, or at least no longer had. The walls of the living area were adorned excessively (and tastelessly) with gilt-framed paintings and fabric pieces of art, all of which clearly had some value, and there were large vases everywhere, though none of them contained flowers… It was clear to me that I would have to take Luciana’s care into my own hands, for these people could not be trusted to make the correct decision for their children.

Gabriela’s chapters are straightforward, clear, factual, almost like reading witness statements, peppered with disappointment that she could have been so naive, or so desperately hopeful that there was something she could do for her sister. Wilhelm’s chapters on the other hand are filled with florid, overwrought language, affectatious but betraying his prejudice and arrogance. He mentioned Goethe a few times, and I had the impression that in his accounts he was trying to achieve a sort of romantic hopelessness. Having to get through a passage where he considered the possibility of Luci’s corpse still being able to conceive his child was among the most sickening accounts I’ve ever read, the formal, poetic prose almost making the decay smell stronger.

The novel is rendered all the more shocking because it is based on a small collection of true stories of men who captured and stole womens’ bodies to keep for themselves. Orpheus Builds a Girl is a story of possession and obsession, a literal interpretation of the idea that men see women only as objects. In the afterword, the author Heather Parry talks about the repealment of Roe vs Wade, and a long litany of other forms of oppression still happening to women across the world. Parry states that the central question of the novel is who owns a woman’s body?

Our femininity is conditional, depending on what others believe about our race, our gender presentation, our sexuality, our disabilities, our age. Words are placed in our mouth even after we’re dead; we’re said to have consented, vocally, to the desecration of our graves, the removal of our rights. We’re said to have contributed to the causes of our own murders, to have seeded reasons for violence against us.

Orpheus Builds a Girl is a difficult read, equal parts grotesque and rage inducing. But the book is important because of its ability to render such an emotional response to a question that remains as important as ever.

This was a free review copy of Orpheus Builds a Girl. Thanks to ONE, an imprint of Pushkin Press, via NetGalley for providing the opportunity to read this. It’s available to buy on paperback from Pushkin Press.