A Matrix Of Angels

Is this a horror novel? Or is it a horror novel because it is currently nominated for the Bram Stoker award. Or because author Conlon has written other novels and edited anthologies, which I have not read, that sound more solidly in the horror genre than this. But then he has also written poetry.

Horrible things happen in Matrix of Angels, or at least they did thirty years before the story begins. This is a novel both of survival guilt and of the awful repercussions encounters with violent insanity can wreak of lifetimes spent in their shadow. Three horrific murders of teenage girls occur, but they are told in retrospect with a tender attention to tragedy mixed with the scant knowledge that could have been attained from newspaper and TV news reports of the time. Conlon captures us in the matrix of reminiscence, current trauma, and eventual redemption that entangles his protagonist.

Not unlike Elizabeth Massie's Sineater, this could be a midlist mainstream novel lost to any audience without its genre credentials. But Conlon's novel is a thoughtful and sorrowful journey through an unremarkable life defined by extraordinary circumstances.