The Elysium Testament is a savage exploration of the primal forces of transgression, fear and death. The narrative takes the form of an extended letter written by Nina to her husband, who has left her following the death oftheir four-year-old son, Roland. Nina's letter - confessional, diary, suicide note - begins on Hallowe'en and continues over six haunted weeks as she tries to make sense of her son's death.
Elysium is the name both of the house where Nina now lives alone and of thegrotto she most recently worked on. As a highly-sought-after restorer, Nina's work takes her to once-decadent estates to re-create lush caverns dedicated to Greek and Roman gods, ornate monuments to the mysteries of nature, fertility and excess. Through the beauty of rocks, crystals and ancient architecture, Nina believed herself and her husband to be in touch with the suppressed and sensuous world evoked by the decadent Minoan grottos - far from the spiritless, messed-up anaemia that passes for normality.
The passion triggered by destruction and death has terrible consequences, which unravel as the Elysium grotto, Nina's masterpiece of illusion, reaches completion. In pursuit of its perfection, Nina had escaped Roland for long periods. Her recognition of the boy's mysterious condition filled her with unease, and though she attempted to repress her feelings, her relationship with Roland became increasingly fraught.
What emerges is a record of Nina's failure to understand and accept her son's uncanny ways and her subsequent murderous desires to hurt and destroy aspects of his personality. The Elysium Testament is a provocative novel that bravely explores unspeakable secrets and the denial and complicity that surround terror in families. O'Donnell's writing is stark, clear and grimly witty, recalling the dark fables of Helen Dunmore or Michele Roberts.
There is, too, a dark, gothic aspect to this tale. The antiquated, half-forgotten grottos, decorated with bizarre objects like things picked from the underside of the human Imagination, relate to the suppressed emotions of guilt, sin and fear which endure long after the forms of religion have been dispensed with. At the heart of the book is revealed a moral question for our times: what happens when a parent fails to thrive?
ò Kathy Cremin is a researcher at the Centre for Women's Studies in the University of York