Love, or The Witches of Windward Circle by Carlos Allende

It is difficult to fault someone for seeing the world as an absurd, capricious place. Many of us are brought up under or around strict systems of moral and metaphysical guidance, be they organized religions or any other form of spiritual belief. And yet so many of the rules and concepts involving ethical balance are flawed or incomplete. Many of us are taught the wonders and virtues of science, only to come to realize that each question answered raises several more, like some eternal hydra. Laws are absolute, except for the moments when they aren’t. Answers and sense, ultimately, seem only temporary.

Love, or The Witches of Wayward Circle, by Carlos Allende, is, to me, a ridiculous and amazing response to the questions of fate and balance in the world. At its most basic, the story revolves around two protagonists relentlessly and desperately pursuing love and confronting the obstacles that arise as their individual stories intertwine. But the complex dualities in this book are too numerous to count: upper and lower social and economic classes, faith and skepticism, creativity and hedonism, heterosexual and homosexual, white and brown; the list goes on and on, to the point that the amount of politically charged and emotionally divisive topics touched upon by this work is stunning, brilliant, and unwieldy. This is a story about addiction, about romance, about bias and bigotry, about hypocrisy, about love, and about justice. But Love also accomplishes that most difficult of tasks when tackling these issues: it always refrains from devolving into preachy diatribe.

This book is not a criticism, but an observation. It neither condones nor condemns the lives, thoughts, and actions of its multitudinous cast. The book’s point is not to create a new existential explanation or set of morals for the reader. Rather, it looks on with an amused astonishment as proposed answers fail again and again. The key to all of this is the story’s combination of the supernatural and the utterly mundane. Whether witnessing a truly Satanic festival or listening to the inner monologue of the vapid, the reader is confronted with complete and total ridiculousness. Almost none of the characters presented are, in their individual totals, likeable. Some are far more sympathetic than others, but time and time again they are driven by wanton selfishness and absurdly distorted self-importance. The story is rife with grotesqueries, from the tonguing of demonic anuses to the relentless, oblivious self-entitlement of shallow people. Magic and curses and angels and God and Satan are all present, but their effects and appearances are whimsical and replete with unintended consequences. Traditional love narratives arise over and over, only to be mercilessly beaten into plotlines that cannot decide whether to tease or climax, then forget to care. It all congeals into a consistently amusing and engaging romp where everything makes a maddening, smirking sense.

About the only thing that provides balance to the story is the fact that, with so many characters trying to manipulate fate into manifesting their dreams, a strange, disappointed equilibrium is inevitable. I can think of only one character who most would agree “deserves” a happy ending after her part in the story, and even she does not truly get it. The world portrayed in Love achieves a wide-perspective and deceptive harmony, thanks to the countless little imbalances on either side of the scale. It is perhaps best summed up later in the book, when one of the pullers of strings says “Karma is the consolation of the coward. To expect that someone will be punished by fate is ludicrous. I believe in human justice. I believe it is the human instinct to reward kindness and to punish evil. It is a trait that has helped man to survive as a species. Don’t get caught, I say. If you do, lie. And if you get caught in your lies, play dumb. It works! Now, will you send me a check, my friend?” Even here, a nugget of potential wisdom is tarnished by an unpaid bill.

I highly recommend this book. It is funny, it is fun, and it will have you smiling with every clever trope twist and defied expectation. You will find yourself fascinated about the fates of some truly deplorable people. Most of all, you will have never been more satisfied to be left without answers.

Love, or The Witches of Windward Circle is available now from Rarebird Books