Chantel's Reviews > At Night All Blood Is Black

** spoiler alert ** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on the consequences of war, extreme violence, body mutilation, racism, bigotry, grief, mental illness, & others.

Much of the world is ravaged by our individual need for preservation. Skipping the line at the coffee shop, sneaking an unpaid avocado in your purchase, teasing out a rumour, gargling lies—we are no strangers to the minute ways in which our lives can be led by striving for our own needs. Many of the ways in which we seek to preserve ourselves are at the mercy of shadows. No one is going to combust if we skip the line at the coffee shop, no matter how much their red rage convinces them otherwise. But, what if we thought about how the time in which we decided to avenge our own need, saw the agency of another dashed?

We drift devilishly close to Chaos Theory in these pondering moments but, what I am driving at is rather more simple. I wonder what might happen if, in each of our actions we thought of the consequence our decision posed on another person. Certainly, we might say that to do so would be to remain stationary for life. We are inevitably poised to cause harm to one another, if only as a consequence of living in such proximity to each other. Therefore, let us round out the question to a grander scale. Skipping the line at the coffee shop will not send someone into exile but, what if ignoring the barbaric practices of a dictatorial government does?

Here we have a rather extreme, if poignant, scenario that is easy for people to remove themselves from. We can say as forcefully as we want that the past shall never occur again. Yet, it continues to do so. It is simple to state that people who hold power will do as they please & we have no power to change their choices. How can both things be true? How can we structurally believe that life is as it is—nearly existentially—while promising that terror will never rain through the human species again? Unfortunately, they cannot live in tandem.

This book presents readers with a simple scenario & one which drives home the questions that I was asking at the beginning of this review. Why were specific groups of people put on the front lines to be massacred by opposing forces? The answer is simple if depleting—because according to some people, one life is worth more than another. For many of us, this is not a new phenomenon. Many people have to hide in the shadows or, if you will, in plain sight not to suffer a shower of bullets to the brain by people who are too mentally inept to be using automatic machinery of any kind.

If life had been valued at all we wouldn’t have had wars, let alone be witness to the brazen murders that suffocate our species. Part of the wonder of this story is that nothing is necessarily as explicit as it is in real life. Alfa does not need to tell the reader that the French soldiers forced those that are Black to the front lines because Black people were seen as disposable. This is something that every reader can witness for themselves. He did not need to tell us the complexities of having a parent stolen from you from an unconfirmed disappearance & from grief because these are things that we can witness for ourselves.

Though this story appears to wander in circles it represents the circular nature of our thoughts & our history. We speak so openly about the casualties & horrors of war. Then, we turn around & bomb cities where children sleep simply because we can. All the while, back home we are complex individuals who led lives before we became the haunting figure of nightmares we will never visit. Alfa is a nightmare to those whom he killed viciously under the guise of avenging a friend. Alfa knows that this is a lie just as much as we do.

The reason why Alfa has chosen to remember enough of his life up until this point is a mystery. Why is he recalling the last night he had in his hometown? Why do we need to believe that sex makes a person grown? What part of love allows someone to suffer? Circling around the point is what Alfa does best. He allows the reader enough insight to encourage us to believe that he is lost within himself but, I do not think that is the case.

Certainly, Alfa is traumatized. Whether or not he has the freedom of acknowledging this fact is another story entirely. The person with whom he was closest in the entire world was wounded in war, cruelly & horribly. Alfa was not able to set the person that he loved free. The reader can wonder for all the money in the world if they would have done differently but, here we find ourselves looking into our own reality once more.

With that being said, the narrative that this story undertakes to translate Alfa’s inner thoughts veers on the messy & muddied words that do not allow the reader to follow Alfa’s train of thought. I suppose that was the point. Alfa lives through numerous horrific events by the time he is twenty (20) years old & he will never go home again.

What is the reader meant to take from this story where the main character walks in circles trying to hide things from the reader? What feelings is this meant to illicit? Every reader might take something different out of the meandering of watercolours, sketches, boiling war trenches, severed hands, bloodied organs, wet pleasure, & dry eyes of the main character. Ultimately, this is a sad story. We know that Alfa does not survive the things that occur around him. Ever the more hopeful that life will change, he seems to grasp onto dreams that weren’t his, under the guise of having a plan.

To take the hands of men during a war is to take away agency. It is to tell those around him that he does not care for freedom. This is a practice that is old & barbaric; once more we find ourselves with the past within our midst. We can hypothesize about the singular pull that led Alfa to sever another person’s hands & to replay the death of his best friend. We can study his methods & interpret his desire to alter the scenario as any compassionate individual might long to do. Maybe, this time around when he kills the blue-eyed villain, Alfa will set his friend free from the suffering that his body experienced when his soul was sawing his bones to fly free.

When all is said & done, I found this novella interesting if not a little empty. We miss out on parts of the main stage because Alfa is consumed. This is not to say that I think that this decision is bad, certainly, it works in the case of this story. I suppose I feel that the book was missing something but then again, I am met with my own words—the emptiness is all around us with breadcrumbs leading us to the answers; the starting point of pain, sorrow, vapid concave heartbeats dulled by humanity’s penchant for destruction.

Though this is not a book I might recommend to all readers, it is certainly a book that makes me wish I could set Alfa free from the confines of the pages where he will meet a reader once more at the start of his story & where, in the end, he will be just as he has been with me.