The Motion of Puppets

by Keith Donohue
August 23, 2017


This book was on a horror display in the library. Of course the title and cover art caught my eye.  A big slow moving at first, but the story was compelling and as I got further in I couldn't stop.

Kay and Theo are living temporarily in Quebec while she works for a street circus and he translates a biography of Edweard Muybridge.   The old city is charming, especially its old buildings and shops.  One in particular, The Quatre Mains, fascinates Kay.  It is full of puppets and old toys.  Kay visits every day to see the old aboriginal puppet in the window.   But the store is never open, so all she can do is peer through the window into the darkness of the shop.  One night, while walking home from the circus, Kay notices a light on in the shop.  She is delighted to find the door open and enters to explore.  She is never seen again.  The book alternates between Theo's quest to find his missing wife and Kay's new consciousness as one of the Quatre Mains puppets.

The book is categorized as horror; occult fiction; and supernatural fiction.  I find that it's hard to pin down so easily.  It's a love story, a fantasy, at times a macabre story, supernatural, gothic, occult, and only a bit horrifying.   It is a horror novel in the same way that Ray Bradbury's books are horror.  To me it had a little bit of a Bradbury vibe.

I enjoyed this immensely.  It's kind of funny - the chapters dealing with the life of the puppets reminded me of books I used to read as a child - Five Dolls in a House or Five Dolls and the Duke  - in a macabre way.