A not-quite-vampire villain whom you can’t quite hate

The hunt for immortality might be as previous as humanity’s improvement of self-consciousness, and so it’s no shock that artwork continues to have interaction in a method or one other with the long-lived and the undead. The vampire style appears to by no means exit of favor.

Whereas such tales’ tropes might be helpful, in fact, they will additionally overwhelm a story and switch it bland, as in my lately disappointing expertise with the latest iteration of “Nosferatu,” which took its silent movie supply materials — which manages to convey the unhappy, pathetic, deeply lonely nature of its bloodthirsty villain — and added completely nothing of curiosity, as an alternative relying solely on excessive cheekbones, menacing music, a foolish accent and a lady who (gasp!) enjoys intercourse typically.

It was with particular pleasure, then, that on the heels of that movie I learn “Outdated Soul” by Susan Barker. The novel isn’t a few vampire, precisely, however it does heart on one girl’s quest for immortality and the lives she takes with a view to hold her personal. It’s as a lot about her victims and the ripples of loss they go away behind within the type of grief-stricken family and friends. Jake is considered one of these, and alternating chapters take the type of testimonies he’s accumulating as he makes an attempt to unravel the thriller of who this girl is and what she’s been doing and why.

After a quick prologue set in 1982 (which turns into significant later within the guide), the primary chapter, “Testimony 1—Mariko,” opens with Jake, the narrator, assembly Mariko by likelihood after they’re each late for a flight leaving Osaka. They stumble upon one another once more later, each staying close to the airport to take the following flight out within the morning, and Mariko invitations Jake to share a meal together with her. A really managed, buttoned-up type of individual, Mariko is aware of she’s typically seen as chilly, and but one thing about Jake, or possibly the circumstances (lacking a flight isn’t the type of factor that occurs to her) permits her to loosen up and she or he has a drink for the primary time in years. After which one other, and one other.

When Jake helps her to her lodge room, Mariko, drunk and confessional, begins to inform him about her twin brother, Hiroji, who died in 2011. Though they stopped talking as youngsters, their psychic bond remained, and within the weeks main as much as his dying, she started to have nightmares about working in a bamboo forest, one thing evil chasing her. She knew that one thing unhealthy was taking place to Hiroji.

And, certainly, he referred to as her the night time earlier than he died, instructed her he’d “entered the thoughts of a higher-dimensional god” and warned her to not open the door for anybody that night time. The following morning, he was lifeless. Jake is shaken by Mariko’s confession and asks whether or not Hiroji’s post-mortem revealed something odd. “Had been his inside organs the unsuitable approach round? Reversed?” Mariko confirms this, surprised and disturbed. That is how Jake discovers that the dying of his greatest pal rising up, Lena, was not a singular, remoted thriller. Right here was one other one that misplaced somebody who not solely appeared to go mad earlier than dying however who additionally skilled this bizarre bodily distortion.

So begins Jake’s not-so-wild goose chase, attempting to trace down different individuals whose family members had been left reversed after their deaths, discovering clues in every individual’s story that lead him to seek out the following. What he learns in these fascinating testimonies — every introducing a complete solid of characters and circumstances and studying in some methods like self-contained quick tales — is that every of the individuals who had been reversed after they died met a lady within the weeks beforehand, though she by no means appeared to provide the identical identify twice. She was at all times a stranger to the world, often a foreigner, who was charismatic and interesting and who took a deep, private curiosity in them and shared intimacies — emotional or sexual, typically each — with them. And each time, after their encounters together with her had been over, these individuals modified in methods neither they nor these round them might perceive. The main points are greatest left for the reader to find and relish, as they’re splendidly unsettling but one way or the other scrumptious as nicely.

The chapters that alternate with the testimonies are titled “Badlands” and observe that unusual girl — it’s clear early on that it’s her — as she drives Rosa, a 17-year-old would-be non secular influencer, to the Bisti Badlands in New Mexico with the promise of serving to her shoot a video and a few pictures within the eerie panorama. On the best way, the lady activates the attraction, regardless of her rising bodily discomfort, which incorporates E. coli in her urinary tract, hair loss and a burning scalp, and “tooth loosening as micro organism work below the gums — microbial time bombs ticking deep in periodontal sockets.”

Barker ups the strain one bit at a time, unspooling the horrors slowly whereas sustaining a agency grasp on the emotional stakes inside every sufferer’s narrative. Whereas the novel finally questions how free the lady actually is, all its different characters are additionally confined in myriad methods. Maybe that’s the human situation, no matter how lengthy an individual lives. And though the many-named girl is, in a approach, the villain of the piece, it’s onerous to not like her; she’s a compelling character who has, as she places it, made residing into an artwork type — how she does it’s refreshingly particular, unusual and unique. “Outdated Soul” is a totally pleasurable learn.

Ilana Masad, a books and tradition critic, is the writer of the novel “All My Mom’s Lovers” and the forthcoming “Beings.”