Review: Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin (Spoiler-Free)

People call Shiva Baby a horror movie, but this book is Shiva Baby if it really were a horror movie.

Not to reduce this purely to comparisons, but it also bleeds with traces of I Saw the TV Glow (really any Jane Schoenbrun) and Carmen Maria Machado. You may recall that I love I Saw the TV Glow, highly enjoy Shiva Baby, and am a bit lukewarm on Carmen Maria Machado. Most of that rub comes from our misalignment on how sex/desire is portrayed, and it's very similar in Black Flame. Maybe there's a lesbian ferality that I simply don't possess. I found that ferality much more fitting in this story though, so even if it's not my cup of tea, I understand its objective purpose here, while I'm not sure I do in Machado's work.

I picked this book up because I love stories about lost films (plus, it opens with a Buñuel quote). I also really appreciate the New York setting (much more accurate than Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng) and the academic film references (shoutout Bazin). It definitely delivers on all those fronts and uses impressive writing. The descriptions are deliberately putrid, even during mundane scenes.

A wild time with a triumphant finale.