New Book Alert: A Festive Juxtaposition by Paul R. Stanton; The Devil Takes a Holiday (So Do Formatting and Editing)
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Come on, even Satan can’t be the Odious Spinner of Lies, Prince of the Power of the Air, Leader of All That is Evil, Tempter, Ruler of Hell, and King of the Bottomless Pit forever. Every once in a while the Dude from Down Under (not Australia) needs to take a break and why not during the Christmas season? In Paul R. Stanton’s dark comedic satire, A Festive Juxtaposition, that is exactly what he does. This book is a brilliant concept and idea that is mostly carried out rather well, but is unfortunately hampered by bad formatting and some technical issues that could have been resolved with better editing and proofreading.
The Devil materializes out of thin air at 6:27 PM Greenwich Mean Time at Charing Cross Station. He forgoes the usual pitchfork, cape, horns, red skin, cloven hoofs, and scent of sulfur effect. Instead he takes the name Nick and opts to dress like a normal Londoner: nice suit, quiet demeanor, unassuming behavior, the guy you might say hello to but then forget about a few minutes later. Since this is his time off, he just intends to enjoy a holiday stroll while actually (gasp) doing good for some desperate Londerners and punishing a few bad ones. He gets involved in the lives of those that he calls “The Dispossessed” and changes their lives in many ways. It’s sort of like Touched By A Devil (minus the unfortunate implications of the title).
Stanton has a gift for darkly comic writing that questions the Reader’s assumptions about religion, God, the Devil, and the concepts of good and evil. In some ways, A Festive Juxtaposition is very similar to Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett with its all too human demonic protagonist and its biting commentary on religion. The Devil is written very similarly to Crowley, the demon from Good Omens. He is a very slick sardonic figure who has grown to like humanity to the point of actually wanting to help them out of the messes in which they are in. In fact, he even challenges the remoteness of God by wondering how a seemingly loving deity can be standoffish towards the people that he created and not doing anything to help them on Earth. After all, the Devil may be (incredibly and completely) flawed but at least he’s there. He sees the suffering and tries his best (and admittedly worst) to provide some form of aid and comfort.
The Dispossessed are the usual grab bag of city dwellers from all walks of life and all in need of some help or a sympathetic ear towards their problems: addicts, the lovelorn, mentally ill, the suicidal, career criminals, people who are doubting their faiths and beliefs. These are people who are in need of help right away and help comes from the strangest of sources.
The formula from each story is the saame. A human is in some kind of trouble or desperately needs something. They meet a strange man who seems to know more about themselves than they do. He assists or offers them advice on their particular predicament, sometimes providing the means for the solution. The person is left trying to decide whether to take that offer. The epilogue then catches up to that person to say whether they took the initiative and how it changed their lives for better or worse.
There's Nigel, a young stubborn runaway whom the Devil has to use some tough love and all caps to get him to go home to his parents and make him realize that whatever disagreement that he has with his pater and mater familias can't be as bad as sleeping on the streets and dying from hypothermia.
Nick also helps May, another young runaway, by posing as a private detective who had been hired by May’s parents. He even presents letters from her mother and stepfather to complete the effect.
There's Old Meg, a former prostitute who has lost her looks and charisma. She also seems to recognize “Nick” but it is purposely open for debate whether she knows that he's the Devil, thinks he's a former client, or doesn't really recognize him at all and just thinks that she does. Either way, Nick is enough of a gentleman to send her to better surroundings.
The Professor is a former academic whose career was ruined by a sex scandal and has fallen into the bottle ever since. He gets into an intellectual debate with the Horned One over the existence of God and source of Creation before he receives a potential answer to his crisis.
Nick isn't there just to help others. He's also there to mete out punishment to those with evil intent and do not have the excuse of saying “the Devil made them do it.” People like Ed, Barry, and Razors, a trio that like to rob and harm others just for the lulz. They realize too late that robbing the Devil is not a good idea. In one of the darkest and most humorous dialogues in the book, after the trio ask who the Devil Nick is, he gives a sinister grin and tells them to turn their question into a declaration, reverse “are” and “you,” put them at the head of the sentence, drop “who,” and then they will have their answer.
Next on Nick's Nice List are Lucy and Dominic, a pair of addicts who desperately need to get Dominic to a hospital. Nick helps them while putting Laz, a soulless career criminal with a penchant for hallucinogens and taking advantage of the troubled couple, on his Naughty List.
Miriam is a domestic abuse survivor who is in the process of getting herself and her beloved dog Tigger evicted. Maybe, that mysterious slightly demonic representative from her husband's law firm can help. Unfortunately, the news is not what Miriam suspected and may only make her life worse.
While Nick spends much time with the impoverished, even the more economically advantaged need diabolical intervention. His latest mortal is Michael Asquith, a well dressed man caught up in a conundrum. He is engaged but during a night of drunkenness, he had an affair and now is debating whether to tell his fiancee and end the engagement or live a lie. All of this is figured out by the Devil’s talent for deductive reasoning. (Sherlock Holmes had to learn it from somebody. Why not the Prince of well not Darkness but slightly Charcoal Gray?)
To prove that the Devil can be a good sport, he even lends a claw to a member of the Rival team by helping Rev. Adrian Noble. Noble’s church has been closed, left desolate, and is in the process of renovation. His church is low on funding and parishioners and Noble is hovering towards despair and doubts in his faith. Even the Devil is willing to forego an ancient rivalry to help a truly good man.
After messing with time travel and getting the better of a DoomSayer on the street, Nick encounters the final Dispossessed: Peggy, an anxious sad woman. Posing as a police officer, Nick questions her about her possible involvement in the death of a young woman. Peggy is confused and frightened about this line of questioning, but it becomes clear that this conversation is more personal than she thought.
14 lost souls. 14 lonely people in dire need of help and some lessons that they need to learn. Help comes in the form of a devil of an aid.
This book is a wonderful concept and weaves the various diverse characters with the Devil making the book a fascinating ensemble. However, what could be a perfect work is seriously hampered by poor editing and formatting. Words are spelled differently sometimes within a few paragraphs. Passive voice is used over active voice and creates too many filler words (“had seen” instead of “saw.”)
The worst issue is the formatting. The text is pushed upwards right underneath the cover, putting the pages out of order from the table of contents. There are little sprigs of holly that were probably intended to be paragraph breaks but some of them are inserted in the middle of sentences and even words. This makes the narrative visually confusing and deters from an otherwise potentially great story.
A Festive Juxtaposition is mechanically flawed, but the concept and themes are brilliant and challenges what we think that we know about God, The Devil, Good, Evil, and Mankind.
