Mother Howl by Craig Clevenger Review

SPOILERS

Lyle’s dad turns out to be a serial killer and the revelation unsurprisingly transforms his life. After enduring all the beatings and horrors of being a social pariah, he leaves home before graduating high school, gets a fake identity and starts fresh in a new town. Years later, Lyle’s married with a newborn and encounters Icarus, a seemingly crazy homeless man who claims to be an immortal celestial - and who knows who Lyle really is.

Craig Clevenger’s Mother Howl is a well-written, accessible, and occasionally entertaining novel that didn’t quite do it for me partly because I found the narrative meandering and largely pointless, and partly because the main character’s decisions were so bafflingly stupid and contrived that there wouldn’t be a novel without him behaving the way he did.

Lyle Edison is a man who makes more bad decisions than the CEO of OceanGate. Let’s start with the premise: Lyle’s a year shy of graduating high school, meaning he could officially change his name in a year. But life is just too intolerable for him, so he goes through backchannels and gets a new identity illegally now. I don’t know how legal matters work in the US but, considering the massive problems his fake identity causes him down the line, wouldn’t he be better off just adopting the fake identity for a year only and THEN changing it legally as his birth name/identity? Maybe he couldn’t, maybe he could.

Lyle is also unnecessarily reckless towards law enforcement. He’s already on probation for a weird drugs charge but he also goes out of his way to be antagonistic towards them whenever he crosses paths with them, which happens frequently. It is addressed in the novel, and might be explained as part of his damaged psyche, or something. He also jeopardises his marriage for no reason by not telling his wife things about his night forays, even though they’re benign so he could’ve just straight up told her and put her mind at rest.

But later in the novel, we find out he’s on the home stretch of his probation and his wonderfully horrible probation officer, Nestor Reid, watches him like a hawk. Lyle could wait a few months until he’s free and clear of his probation but he decides to risk it by going out of state to visit his incarcerated dad. This leads to Lyle’s own imprisonment, and losing his wife and child, his job, etc. What an idiot. His dad wasn’t going anywhere - what an irresponsible and moronic risk to take.

Icarus’ chapters were my least favourite in the novel. They’re very… stylised, perhaps to reflect his chaotic state of mind. We’re not really sure whether he is the celestial being (or whatever) he says he is, or whether he’s simply mentally ill - the latter seems likely, but he does find out Lyle’s name and get ahold of Lyle’s granddad’s letter, neither of which are explained, so maybe he is supernatural. But so what if he is; what are we meant to take away from such a revelation - homeless people are magic?

Icarus is a well-written character but his inclusion felt more like a contrivance than anything else. Him knowing Lyle’s real name doesn’t go anywhere - he’s not going to tell anyone or do anything, so there’s no stakes. So what’s the point? Don’t know. He struggles with civil service bureaucracy, like Lyle, and identity plays a big role for both characters, so he’s there to further underline the failings of the system for the little guy and the theme of identity in the modern world. But take him away and you still have those things - the only crucial part he plays is in handing over the granddad’s letter, which, if Clevenger had decided to write out Icarus’ character entirely, Lyle could’ve probably gotten another way easily.

I loved the sheer unpleasantness of Lyle’s probation officer Nestor Reid - he is such an unrepentant shitbag that all of his scenes with Lyle were absolutely riveting. The opening chapters where Lyle’s family life is disrupted and then falls apart, leading to his fleeing everything, was brilliantly told as well. The novel portrays the frustrations of dealing with civil servants accurately and tangibly. Clevenger is a fine writer, he just lacks focus as a storyteller, as most of the novel was much less interesting.

It feels like he didn’t know how to end his story so, in the final act, Lyle decides to make it his goal to reveal to the authorities where the remains of his father’s undisclosed victims are buried, even though that hadn’t been a concern up to that point. It also seems odd that the authorities wouldn’t have dug up the killer’s grounds surrounding his house years ago when he was revealed to be a serial killer given that that’s where a lot of serial killers bury their victims. It felt tacked-on and underwhelming. I was so past the point of caring about Lyle by then though - that dude was his own worst enemy the whole time and so many of his woes could have been avoided with just a smidge of thought.

I’m not sure what we’re meant to take from the story besides the little guy suffers from the bureaucracies of the civil service or some trite sentiment like “the past ain’t done with you”, which aren’t exactly startling truths. We can’t escape our true selves whatever name we call ourselves? Eh. There IS a god? Er… On face value, the story is an unsatisfying and rambling one with few moments throughout to make the experience of reading it worthwhile. Maybe Craig Clevenger’s other novels are better but I found Mother Howl to be howlingly dull more often than not, unimpressive and ultimately quite forgettable.