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Abyssinia
Abyssinia follows the intrigues and deceptions of two women, each of which are staying in one of seven luxury suites in the Hotel Argentum. The suites are named after former European territories whose boundaries have since been subsumed. Petra has checked into Fiume, whose final days were spent beneath the deranged auspices of the poet and dictator Gabriele D’Annunzio. Celia is staying in Galicia, whose fate was sealed soon after the First World War. Between the women stands Karl Reginald von Lobkowicz, an antiquated doll which Celia is seldom seen without. Petra’s fascination vacillates between the cracked and blemished figure and its eccentric owner. The matter is further complicated by the appearance of an eighth suite, which appears to be concealed somewhere within the Hotel grounds.
Abyssinia draws its intoxicating atmosphere from Robert Altman's Three Women, Claude Chabrol’s Les Biches and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona.
Abyssinia draws its intoxicating atmosphere from Robert Altman's Three Women, Claude Chabrol’s Les Biches and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona.
62 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 2, 2017
“Abyssinia” is the newest novella by Damian Murphy who has become one of my favorite authors and is in my opinion a phenomenal writer.
The premise of the story involves a luxury hotel known as “Hotel Argentum”, and the interplay of the eccentric residents therein. The time period is sometime between World War 1 and World War 2. There is a meeting at the hotel of two couples, Petra and her husband Dominik, and Celia, who is accompanied by a large ancient doll whom Celia controls and speaks for and carries in her arms everywhere she goes. Celia has named the doll Karl Reginald von Lobkowicz who has its own history and stories.
Above and beyond that, the hotel has its own secrets. Each suite in the hotel has its own name, and Petra has discovered one suite named “Abyssinia” listed in the hotel’s registry yet unable to be found on the hotel map. The hotel also has a gazebo that has mysterious qualities.
Mr. Murphy’s use of elegant language and his descriptive abilities are surpassed by no one writing today.
This hardcover edition is one of 107 produced and is inscribed and signed by Damian Murphy on the day of the eclipse August 2017.
The premise of the story involves a luxury hotel known as “Hotel Argentum”, and the interplay of the eccentric residents therein. The time period is sometime between World War 1 and World War 2. There is a meeting at the hotel of two couples, Petra and her husband Dominik, and Celia, who is accompanied by a large ancient doll whom Celia controls and speaks for and carries in her arms everywhere she goes. Celia has named the doll Karl Reginald von Lobkowicz who has its own history and stories.
Above and beyond that, the hotel has its own secrets. Each suite in the hotel has its own name, and Petra has discovered one suite named “Abyssinia” listed in the hotel’s registry yet unable to be found on the hotel map. The hotel also has a gazebo that has mysterious qualities.
Mr. Murphy’s use of elegant language and his descriptive abilities are surpassed by no one writing today.
This hardcover edition is one of 107 produced and is inscribed and signed by Damian Murphy on the day of the eclipse August 2017.
April 19, 2018
the doorway is there, not quite beyond your reach. close your eyes and step in. transform, transmogrify, transubstantiate; your head in clouds, your feet that burn. this too shall pass, as shall you; speak a name, and so pass through.
the writer Damian Murphy writes on the sinister ambiguity of certain things, places, states of mind... but with a bracing clarity, neither overwritten nor needlessly abrupt. seven - or eight - suites exist in an antique hotel, and they are all named for places "whose boundaries have since been subsumed". the painter Damian Murphy describes a lush atmosphere but "lush" does not describe his limpid, elegant prose. a decadent ambience is painted in soft, muted colors. the character Celia has found her mate: a puppet that gives her pale life a strange meaning, a partner who brings depth and emotion and melancholy and a sometimes strident, sometimes sly wit; Celia exults in the artifice of animating her puppet partner, and yet this is no performance. reality is what you make of it. the character Petra has her own sort of dummy, her partner Dominik: a supportive presence but of no real consequence to the story or, essentially, to Petra, whose search for an alternate or different or higher or immaterial plane forms both the plot and purpose of this novella. a plane of signs and wonders; a plane where meaning is given form, its own form but not a material one, a form that equals meaning and is thus recognized, at least by Petra. the author Damian Murphy writes of liminal spaces; such places are where his characters live or seek to enter. the magician Damian Murphy plays an otherworldly game with Petra and the reader; he riffs on all such stories of all such seekers of all such holy and unholy lights.
the material shell of the book Abyssinia enchants; a rare synergy exists between the meaning of the story and the physical form it takes. the reader mark monday was transported. seek and you shall find; seek, and so be found.
the writer Damian Murphy writes on the sinister ambiguity of certain things, places, states of mind... but with a bracing clarity, neither overwritten nor needlessly abrupt. seven - or eight - suites exist in an antique hotel, and they are all named for places "whose boundaries have since been subsumed". the painter Damian Murphy describes a lush atmosphere but "lush" does not describe his limpid, elegant prose. a decadent ambience is painted in soft, muted colors. the character Celia has found her mate: a puppet that gives her pale life a strange meaning, a partner who brings depth and emotion and melancholy and a sometimes strident, sometimes sly wit; Celia exults in the artifice of animating her puppet partner, and yet this is no performance. reality is what you make of it. the character Petra has her own sort of dummy, her partner Dominik: a supportive presence but of no real consequence to the story or, essentially, to Petra, whose search for an alternate or different or higher or immaterial plane forms both the plot and purpose of this novella. a plane of signs and wonders; a plane where meaning is given form, its own form but not a material one, a form that equals meaning and is thus recognized, at least by Petra. the author Damian Murphy writes of liminal spaces; such places are where his characters live or seek to enter. the magician Damian Murphy plays an otherworldly game with Petra and the reader; he riffs on all such stories of all such seekers of all such holy and unholy lights.
the material shell of the book Abyssinia enchants; a rare synergy exists between the meaning of the story and the physical form it takes. the reader mark monday was transported. seek and you shall find; seek, and so be found.
September 24, 2019
The Esoteric, by its very definition, dictates that only those "in the know" are "in the know". Consider Abyssinia an esoteric work on two levels: 1) It is a work about the esoteric and 2) until you read it, you cannot know it's depth, meaningfulness, and beauty. I cannot relate it to you. I don't have the words.
Still, I must venture an attempt. "Sublime" is the first word to come to mind, and in the Kantian philosophical sense of something so immense and grandiose as to be beyond an individual's comprehension. I cannot enumerate the feelings inside me as I read Damian Murphy's offering. Nor can I quantify "how much" I enjoyed it. It is beyond all that.
"Delightful" is not a word I use often. I suppose it's because I think of fairies and old English grandmothers using the word to describe a flower or a cup of tea. I'm using the word to describe a lightness of soul that I felt as I got to know the characters and understand their motivations.
I might have thought, had I not been so submerged in my love of the characters, that Abyssinia was about the hidden heart of the Hotel Argentum. Though The Constitution and Bylaws of the Hotel Argentum ". . . elucidated a doctrine of sedition and dissent," it was in the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the characters, particularly Petra, that I saw the laws enacted. And though I had a particularly fond place in my heart and mind for Petra - I related to her on a number of levels, but particularly on her penchant for finding the hidden and trespassing in sacred spaces - I fell in love with every character in the hotel. Petra, Dominik, Celia, Karl Reginald, the Colonel, the Apostate, his sister/wife, even the hotel manager. Their interactions are what make this book deep and beautiful. Infuse A Room with a View with mystical philosophies and a hit of absurdism, and you begin to get the idea.
But just begin.
Not until you delve in, abandoning yourself to the void, I am afraid, will you truly understand. This story, this book, this initiation, is precious. The art by Jose Gabriel Alegria Sabogal is a fitting robe for the beautiful body of this work - resplendent and shimmering, from cover to cover. It is an artifact, a totem, really, to the freedom of spirit and the spirit of freedom, carefully hidden, except to those who know not only where, but how, to find it.
Still, I must venture an attempt. "Sublime" is the first word to come to mind, and in the Kantian philosophical sense of something so immense and grandiose as to be beyond an individual's comprehension. I cannot enumerate the feelings inside me as I read Damian Murphy's offering. Nor can I quantify "how much" I enjoyed it. It is beyond all that.
"Delightful" is not a word I use often. I suppose it's because I think of fairies and old English grandmothers using the word to describe a flower or a cup of tea. I'm using the word to describe a lightness of soul that I felt as I got to know the characters and understand their motivations.
I might have thought, had I not been so submerged in my love of the characters, that Abyssinia was about the hidden heart of the Hotel Argentum. Though The Constitution and Bylaws of the Hotel Argentum ". . . elucidated a doctrine of sedition and dissent," it was in the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the characters, particularly Petra, that I saw the laws enacted. And though I had a particularly fond place in my heart and mind for Petra - I related to her on a number of levels, but particularly on her penchant for finding the hidden and trespassing in sacred spaces - I fell in love with every character in the hotel. Petra, Dominik, Celia, Karl Reginald, the Colonel, the Apostate, his sister/wife, even the hotel manager. Their interactions are what make this book deep and beautiful. Infuse A Room with a View with mystical philosophies and a hit of absurdism, and you begin to get the idea.
But just begin.
Not until you delve in, abandoning yourself to the void, I am afraid, will you truly understand. This story, this book, this initiation, is precious. The art by Jose Gabriel Alegria Sabogal is a fitting robe for the beautiful body of this work - resplendent and shimmering, from cover to cover. It is an artifact, a totem, really, to the freedom of spirit and the spirit of freedom, carefully hidden, except to those who know not only where, but how, to find it.
January 25, 2021
Redolent of mystic awareness. Cryptic and profound. With a highly refined prose style, the author indulges in subtle subterfuge of the reader's expectations. A quiet and subconscious exploration of inner landscapes, characters bound by association to a storytelling doll, imbued with sententious sentience. Constricted to the confines of a microcosmic hotel, the novella radiates a distinctly European allure, but yet contains the puzzled musculature of a Borgesian foray into the wild unknown.
Mr. Murphy uses his locales to push and pull at the contours of his characters' perceptions. With a sort of blurred clarity, he conveys an elegiac acquaintance with the uncanny and a breathless insinuation toward the everyday-magical aspect of a quiet, plotless endurance of the presence of other beings. For when you get right down to it, people are other consciousnesses, whom we must perforce fail to comprehend. This is a sublime descent into the outskirt encounters of lives adjacent to our own, each possessing an exquisite and memorable texture.
Mr. Murphy uses his locales to push and pull at the contours of his characters' perceptions. With a sort of blurred clarity, he conveys an elegiac acquaintance with the uncanny and a breathless insinuation toward the everyday-magical aspect of a quiet, plotless endurance of the presence of other beings. For when you get right down to it, people are other consciousnesses, whom we must perforce fail to comprehend. This is a sublime descent into the outskirt encounters of lives adjacent to our own, each possessing an exquisite and memorable texture.
October 27, 2017
Common sense tends to place the ritual under the sign of repetition: the exorcism, the mass, the sacrifice, the prayer – so many formulas that the neophyte must perpetually repeat. Each repetition of the formula is equivalent to a step in the path of ascesis or the abyss, an objective always displaced in a horizon of near impossibility, a utopia, a constant and relentless quest. But it is not difficult to realize that such a view is unfair, that there are other types of ritual. Ritualistic forms that involve impulse, improvisation, intricate symbolization, dream, nightmare, reverie, hallucination. It is true that even in these differentiated forms of the ritual, the cyclical aspect still persists, but in a way that is far from the repetition that causes exhaustion, boredom, madness. We realize that this other ritual universe is clearly present in Damian Murphy's work. His latest novel, Abyssinia, in that sense, is a fantastic and hermetic masterpiece. There are in it the most diverse elements that could be understood as conventional – mysterious hotels, ventriloquist dolls, disquieting statues, and paintings – but which are transfigured by the fresh and fresh bloodletting of an ingenious, ecstatic, cynical, unique narrative.
April 18, 2018
This is, physically, one of the most beautiful books I have encountered, and happily the content is as magical as the presentation. I don’t want to spoil it by saying too much about the story. Significance hovers behind every scene, the whole narrative seems to reverberate with elusive arcana. I can only say that I felt utterly intoxicated after I finished the book. It was wonderful, and I look forward to starting Murphy’s ‘The Spy in the Panopticon’ next.
January 26, 2021
I am sporadically breaking my reviewing sabbatical by dint of a brief nonce…
Luxuriously upholstered book with quality materials, guessing about 13 inches by four, marker ribbon, all generously designed with artwork etc, stiff paper and even stiffer dust jacket, and illustrated endpapers.
Pages 7 – 10
“The lingering scent of tobacco suffused her senses as if it were a holy incense.”
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of my observations at the time of the review.
Luxuriously upholstered book with quality materials, guessing about 13 inches by four, marker ribbon, all generously designed with artwork etc, stiff paper and even stiffer dust jacket, and illustrated endpapers.
Pages 7 – 10
“The lingering scent of tobacco suffused her senses as if it were a holy incense.”
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of my observations at the time of the review.
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