28th Annual
[books]
Ecothon
Saturday, April 12th, 2014
A day of community service for Missoula. A fundraiser for our kids. Visit sussexschool.org or call 549.8327 to pledge your support. Thanks to all who have contributed! Sussex is a progressive, K-8, independent school in Missoula with a focus on service learning, the arts, experiential education, and the environment. Now enrolling.
"One of the most exciting, g innovative, and delightful dance companies in the entire world." —New York Times
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DENNISON DENNIS S ON N THEATRE T H E AT R RE E
Corner of Connell & Maurice Streets, University of Montana
Tuesday, April 8 - 7:30 pm
Adams Center Box Office ~ All GrizTix Outlets 243-4051 ~ 888-MONTANA ~ GrizTix.com [20] Missoula Independent • April 3–April 10, 2014
Lush nightmare Harun’s dark fables reinvigorate a genre by Michael Peck
I recently watched “Top of the Lake,” Jane Cam- arrived to meet us—the bunch of us—in person.” It appion’s dark Australian miniseries starring Elisabeth pears to be a fable about disappearances, but it is more Moss, the person I know only as “Peggy” from “Mad about people suddenly appearing out of nowhere. Men.” It’s a haunting crime drama about a backwater Insofar as cohesiveness is concerned, A Man Came town overripe with secrets. All of it converges around Out of a Door in the Mountain doesn’t have it. Instead, a young girl’s disappearance—the catalyst that sends Harun gives us a lyrical series of ominous folktales Moss’ character, a detective, back to her hometown to wrapped in small-town desperation and ennui, told uncover layers of upsetting info about herself. If you through the lens of teenagers caught in mystical turmoil. were to transpose a lonely British Columbian town for An atmosphere of strangeness pervades every one of the the Outback, a teenaged boy for the detective and add author’s scenes: The sudden arrival of Hana Swann, many disappearances Kevin Seven and his instead of one, you magical cards and Leo’s would have A Man dying prophet Uncle Came Out of a Door in Lud, telling tall-tales that the Mountain. just might be coming Adrianne Harun’s true before Leo’s eyes. debut novel, the followEach of Harun’s people up to her acclaimed is fleshed out with maxstory collection, The imum sureness and poKing of Limbo, touts itetry, basking in the self as a horror mystery, well-placed details of and in fact contains all everyday life. A Man the trappings of the Came Out of a Door in genre: the Mountain’s narrative 1) A cursed highuntidiness is exactly way, dubbed the Highwhat makes it so unway of Tears, from nerving. Often intense, which Native women now and then cryptically are vanishing without a maddening, this is magtrace ical realism filled with a 2) A rogue’s gallery whole new breed of of colorful characters ready-made archetypes. seemingly yanked from It’s rural noir meets an unaired season of Carl Jung, with a dash of “Twin Peaks” physics thrown in for 3) An intricate good measure. scheme to murder a Evil is the theme of meth dealer and his A Man Came Out of a cohorts Door in the Mountain, A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain 4) Possible incarnabut it’s a modern, Adrianne Harun tions of the devil, in the oblique kind—an evil paperback, Penguin 272 pages, $16 guise of the unlikely that drinks too much and named Hana Swann drives around in pickup with her “bone-white trucks in the middle of skin” and Kevin Seven, who performs fantastical leg- nowhere. While many situations and people evolve erdemain with playing cards; an apparition dubbed the and fade rather randomly—the man who came out of Snow Woman a door in the mountain appears in one of Leo’s uncle’s 5) One dive motel, a seedy diner and spooky tales, and then again toward the end, but has little to woods, among other locales do with the central plot—the ones who linger are as Yet A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain bizarre as they are memorable. Interweaving the thrust is anything but your standard someone-goes-missing of the story with brief, almost snarky interludes detailtale. Even to call it a mystery is misleading. Harun’s ing the devil’s doings, Harun’s work is less cinema and protagonist is a 17-year-old half-German, half-Kitselas more mural. The disappearances on Highway 16 are boy named Leo Kreutzer, although the book gives barely touched upon, but, as Leo Kreutzer says and as about as much time to his four friends, each on the Harun explores throughout, “People go missing. That’s path to some kind of epiphany and/or self-destruction. not news, it turns out. It’s how they get lost that’s of There’s Bryan, who decides to kill the local meth king- interest.” A dense and mythic coming-of-age allegory, pin; Bryan’s sister Ursie, who works at the P & P Motel, equal parts fanciful and horrifying, it’s a bad dream where men take out their rage on the rooms; Jackie, worth having. “stinking of sour milk and old gravy” from her shifts at Adrianne Harun reads from A Man Came Out the logging camp; and, finally, Tessa, Leo’s supersti- of a Door in the Mountain at Shakespeare & Co. tious love interest. Opening with the five of them Tue., April 8, at 7 PM. Free. shooting rats at a refuse station, the novel soon spirals into a surreal fairytale whirlwind when “the devil first arts@missoulanews.com