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The Book of the Night
The Book of the Night is science fiction at its most challenging and allusive. On the island of Iona, where the tenth century co-exists with the twentieth, where the old Celtic gods fight against the rising power of Rome, where science and religion are locked in combat, Celeste, girl-child disguised as a boy, reaches puberty. The awakening of powerful sexual desire pushes her into the chaos that exists behind the apparent order of nature and the created order of human culture.
287 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 17, 2025
This might be the strangest and most demanding novel I’ve ever read, and very rarely did I understand anything that was happening. And yet, it kept me captivated, almost like a powerful dream that doesn’t really make sense and is hard to fully remember, but the feeling of it sticks with you.
Only this was even more tripped-out than any dream I’ve had, detailing a young girl’s life on the small, secluded island of Iona, where it’s seemingly the tenth century, and yet twentieth century items may wash ashore and even mail and the occasional visitor may arrive from other time periods. Almost as if the island is unstuck in time, though none of this is remarkable to its residents. The girl’s delusional father disguises her as a boy and drops her off at the monastery to live among an esoteric order of monks, who maintain extremely odd beliefs and occult practices. It’s narrated mostly by her, punctuated by occasional chapters from the official chronicler of the monk order.
Beyond that it’s impossible to describe this fever dream of a book, where it felt like anything could happen at any time and I wouldn’t have been surprised. I’m sure it would take multiple readings to glean the underlying themes and symbolism here, much of which is related to the amorphous, quantum nature of reality, god, and the self from what I could parse, as well as the various ways humans search for truth and meaning in their lives, whether through logic/science or faith/religion.
I’ve read a lot of weird shit in my life, but this left me almost entirely baffled, in a good way, much like Leonora Carrington’s The Stone Door or Ithell Colquhoun‘s Goose of Hermogenes (is it a coincidence that three of the weirdest and most incomprehensible novels I’ve read* were all written by women? Hmm…). It’s a testament to Lerman’s engaging writing style that I remained entirely absorbed despite my confusion. The fact that the characters were all memorably eccentric certainly helped as well.
I only wish that Rhoda Lerman had written more novels in this vein, but it seems The Book of the Night is unique among her oeuvre. Then again it’s unique among everyone’s oeuvres.
* Well I suppose Finnegan’s Wake would be up there, but I don’t think I can consider myself to have “read” it since I never made it through the entire thing.
Only this was even more tripped-out than any dream I’ve had, detailing a young girl’s life on the small, secluded island of Iona, where it’s seemingly the tenth century, and yet twentieth century items may wash ashore and even mail and the occasional visitor may arrive from other time periods. Almost as if the island is unstuck in time, though none of this is remarkable to its residents. The girl’s delusional father disguises her as a boy and drops her off at the monastery to live among an esoteric order of monks, who maintain extremely odd beliefs and occult practices. It’s narrated mostly by her, punctuated by occasional chapters from the official chronicler of the monk order.
Beyond that it’s impossible to describe this fever dream of a book, where it felt like anything could happen at any time and I wouldn’t have been surprised. I’m sure it would take multiple readings to glean the underlying themes and symbolism here, much of which is related to the amorphous, quantum nature of reality, god, and the self from what I could parse, as well as the various ways humans search for truth and meaning in their lives, whether through logic/science or faith/religion.
I’ve read a lot of weird shit in my life, but this left me almost entirely baffled, in a good way, much like Leonora Carrington’s The Stone Door or Ithell Colquhoun‘s Goose of Hermogenes (is it a coincidence that three of the weirdest and most incomprehensible novels I’ve read* were all written by women? Hmm…). It’s a testament to Lerman’s engaging writing style that I remained entirely absorbed despite my confusion. The fact that the characters were all memorably eccentric certainly helped as well.
I only wish that Rhoda Lerman had written more novels in this vein, but it seems The Book of the Night is unique among her oeuvre. Then again it’s unique among everyone’s oeuvres.
* Well I suppose Finnegan’s Wake would be up there, but I don’t think I can consider myself to have “read” it since I never made it through the entire thing.
August 6, 2009
I don’t really feel qualified to review this book because I believe it contains many allusions as well as historical material with which I am unfamiliar. However, because I have found only two other reader reviews online, both of which say very little, I feel I need to write something!
I found this book in a box on the sidewalk, a moldy hardback signed by the author, who took ten years to complete it. The first fifty pages or so were a confusing mixture of voices and descriptions given in lists and non-linear, poetic prose. This unconventional style eventually pulled together into a comprehensible plot and I found myself increasingly able to follow the meaning of the lists and alternating voices of the characters.
Two characters tell the story of a monastery on the isolated Irish island of Iona. The protagonist is a girl named Celeste who has been brought to the island by her mad father (“the hermit” to the monastic order) where he gives her a highly philosophical education in a small hut near the shore. Celeste’s father disguises her as a boy so she can live on the monastery land and, when she is old enough, banishes her to live as a novice in the monastery. The other main narrator is a monk, Generous, who is the chronicler for the monastery.
Besides the often confusing prose style, there is ambiguity about the era, a co-existence of centuries. It is the 10th century in Iona, but objects, technologies, and people of the 20th century can come to the island. Many kinds of magic and pieces of knowledge are referred to and hinted at, but either they are not meant to be fully understood, or would be only by someone more familiar with the story’s allusions and historical context.
Lerman is utterly successful in creating a place in which magic and the mundane coexist. The characters’ voices seem as if they have inherited the language of a specific and earlier place and time, while also feeling modern, abstract, and original. The story is dramatic, but much of the novel is a kind of urgent, poetic meditation on the nature of consciousness and reality, where the relationships between words reveal their true meanings and the hidden meanings of the world. At some points I found this urgent inquiry overwhelming and plodding, but overall I felt the book is wonderfully wise, funny, and poignant. It is also a love story, a story about a daughter’s longing for her father, and of the historical scission between a traditional, still partly pagan Irish Church and Rome, of a time before mysteries were lost to religious politics, and a woman could become a cow.
I found this book in a box on the sidewalk, a moldy hardback signed by the author, who took ten years to complete it. The first fifty pages or so were a confusing mixture of voices and descriptions given in lists and non-linear, poetic prose. This unconventional style eventually pulled together into a comprehensible plot and I found myself increasingly able to follow the meaning of the lists and alternating voices of the characters.
Two characters tell the story of a monastery on the isolated Irish island of Iona. The protagonist is a girl named Celeste who has been brought to the island by her mad father (“the hermit” to the monastic order) where he gives her a highly philosophical education in a small hut near the shore. Celeste’s father disguises her as a boy so she can live on the monastery land and, when she is old enough, banishes her to live as a novice in the monastery. The other main narrator is a monk, Generous, who is the chronicler for the monastery.
Besides the often confusing prose style, there is ambiguity about the era, a co-existence of centuries. It is the 10th century in Iona, but objects, technologies, and people of the 20th century can come to the island. Many kinds of magic and pieces of knowledge are referred to and hinted at, but either they are not meant to be fully understood, or would be only by someone more familiar with the story’s allusions and historical context.
Lerman is utterly successful in creating a place in which magic and the mundane coexist. The characters’ voices seem as if they have inherited the language of a specific and earlier place and time, while also feeling modern, abstract, and original. The story is dramatic, but much of the novel is a kind of urgent, poetic meditation on the nature of consciousness and reality, where the relationships between words reveal their true meanings and the hidden meanings of the world. At some points I found this urgent inquiry overwhelming and plodding, but overall I felt the book is wonderfully wise, funny, and poignant. It is also a love story, a story about a daughter’s longing for her father, and of the historical scission between a traditional, still partly pagan Irish Church and Rome, of a time before mysteries were lost to religious politics, and a woman could become a cow.
June 20, 2010
Kalends A.D. 900, The Island of Iona. In a remote monastery on Dun Hi, the monks are caught between the old gods and the new rules of Rome. Beyond the spine of Britain, all is strife, plague, murder and heresy travel the land. A world of imagination in which the 10th Century exists simultaneously with the 20th.
January 29, 2019
I am so confused, I have hardly any idea of what happened in the book other than she turned herself into a cow from repressed desire and then... She was somehow related to the creator? Something? So confused. I need to read it again to understand but am afraid that I will lose what little sense left I possess.
January 6, 2026
I'm never a big fan of the chuck in a bunch of Freudian (Kleinian if you're feeling too basic) symbolism to make it darker and edgier attitude. I will admit that Lerman uses an impressively diverse array of words for penis, but a lot of the direction and impact of the novel gets lost through so much excrement, cracks, farts, and sausage tools. I was also annoyed by the two narrators - very much seemed like a matter of convenience rather than adding anything meaningful. I'm sure there was symbolism and connections that I missed through my lack of familiarity with certain source material, but the book is unfortunately just not that well put together.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews