The Werewolf of Paris is an interesting book. Part horror story and part historical fiction, it follows the travails of the titular werewolf of Paris from his birth to his death, as well as his place in the blood-drenched moment of history known as the Franco-Prussian War that was followed by the ill-fated Paris Commune. Interestingly the werewolf in question, Bertrand Caillet, is actually something of a secondary character in his own tale, as it is told from the perspective of his adoptive father Aymar Galliez. We never see the wolf itself in action, and despite some tantalizing clues built upon separate pieces of evidence, the actual lycanthropy of Bertrand could as easily be interpreted as a purely psychological affliction as opposed to a supernatural one. Add to that the fact that we are being told this tale third-hand (Endore’s conceit being that his story is being constructed from the reports and reminiscences of Galliez who had to put the pieces together mostly second-hand, interspersed with Endore’s own researches into the documents of the period) and the truth or fiction of the lyncanthropy in question becomes even greater. Sometimes this conceit does not always benefit Endore’s story, for there are many scenes and events that occur within the text that would have been clearly outside of the knowledge of Galliez or any documentary sources of the day…still that is a quibble for something that really is a novel and quite an enjoyable one at that.Endore starts his ‘documentary’ with a tale taken from the annals of history that purports to enlighten us as to the ultimate origins of our werewolf. It is a sordid tale of feuding nobility wherein the Pitamonts and Pitavals, after having waged generations of warfare against each other, finally end their feud in mutual impoverishment and one of the last of the Pitamonts is held captive for years by the last of the Pitavals. His imprisonment is an inhuman one, and he is left to suffer in a literal hole in the ground, fed nothing save raw meat. This apparently triggers his transformation into the wolf-man of legend. Our tale truly begins, however, when Josephine, a young peasant girl newly arrived in Paris, is raped by a priest, a descendant of the last of the Pitamonts, and bears Bertrand, a child destined to bring forth the family curse.We follow Bertrand in his young life, at first so full of promise and then slowly brought to near ruin by his ever-increasing taste for blood. Strange things begin to happen in Bertrand’s village: animals go missing or turn up dead, recent corpses are found exhumed and partially eaten. What could be happening? Slowly Bertrand’s “uncle” Aymar (the nephew of the woman who had taken in Josephine and the man who ends up becoming responsible for both mother and child) begins to put the pieces of the puzzle together and see that everything leads back to his nephew. At first he tries to slake the thirst of the monster inside Bertrand by feeding the boy raw meat and keeping him confined to the house. This only has limited efficacy and soon more drastic measures need to be taken. Ultimately the boy is able to escape his well-meant prison and, starving to appease his lusts, goes on a spree of murder and terror that takes him to Paris. Here, amidst the confusion of the end of the Franco-Prussian war and the rise of the Commune Bertrand is able to satisfy most of his hungers free from persecution or discovery. But his Uncle Aymar is spurred on by regret and remorse. He feels responsible for the release of this beast upon the world, a beast he is convinced is a supernatural terror, and decides to hunt him down. The rest of the tale details his attempts to find Bertrand and his slowly dawning discovery amidst the chaos and death that seems to permanently reside in Paris that perhaps mankind itself is the true monster. Side by side with this runs the parallel story of Bertrand and his fortuitous discovery of a lover not only able, but willing to supply him with a conduit for the slaking of his varied lusts…it is an interesting picture of depravity, lust and mutual co-dependence. Of course things come to a head and the piper must be paid.Endore’s overarching purpose is, I think, not really to tell a werewolf story, but a desire to expose the bloodthirsty nature of mankind, for which the werewolf of the title becomes little more than a symbol, or even a contrast to this thesis, since one lone werewolf, no matter how savage, can never hope to decimate the lives of which plain old human conflict is capable. For, as even Aymar the unstinting hunter of the wolf must admit, if the hands of “normal” men are able to commit and rationalize the cold-blooded killing of 20,000 commoners as part of the reaction against the Commune (not to mention those killed by the Commune itself in its heyday, or the casualties of the Franco-Prussian war before it) then “What was a werewolf who had killed a couple of prostitutes, who had dug up a few corpses…?” Endore, and by extension Aymar, even postulates that the very existence of the werewolf may have been nothing more than the sickness of the time manifesting itself physically…though it is left open-ended in a chicken-and-egg way whether it is the madness of the time that allowed the wolf to be born, or whether it was the existence of the wolf that could infect mankind with its madness and bloodlust.Overall this was a good tale, though I would say it came across much more as historical fiction for me than as pure horror (which in my opinion is fine). It has also been claimed that this is the “Dracula for Werewolves” and I’m not sure if I agree. Certainly it shares similarities with Dracula in its documentary format and is a well-written, and even seminal, version of the werewolf myth, but I am not widely enough read in werewolf stories to say whether or not it is the best of them. Also, the ambiguity of the actual ‘reality’ of Bertrand’s lyncanthropy and his relatively secondary role as a character in the story makes me think that while this is a good tale well worth reading, it may not be the ultimate exemplar of werewolf fiction.
I suppose that I owe a debt of gratitude to writer Marvin Kaye, who selected Guy Endore's classic novel of lycanthropy, "The Werewolf of Paris," for inclusion in Newman & Jones' excellent overview volume "Horror: 100 Best Books." If it hadn't been for Kaye's article on this masterful tale, who knows if I would have ever run across it, and that would have been a real shame, because this is one very impressive piece of work indeed. In this beautifully written novel from 1933, we learn the history of one Bertrand Caillet, the product of a lecherous priest with a sinister family history raping a French peasant girl in the early 1850s. Caillet is later raised by Aymar Galliez, the nephew of the woman who had hired the peasant girl as a maid, and his notes on Caillet, purportedly found many years later by the author, form the kernel of this tale. It does not take Aymar long to realize that something is decidedly wrong with his young charge; in fact, Caillet is a werewolf, who loves nothing more than leaping out of his bedroom window at night and killing livestock and assorted wayfarers around the countryside. Years later, as a young man, Caillet runs away to Paris, to continue his depredations in a more populous arena, but at a most inauspicious time: right in the midst of the Franco-Prussian War, and right before the incredible violence of the Paris Commune of 1871. But this novel is so much more than a simple tale of horror, although there ARE many grisly scenes. Endore (whose real name was Harry Relis) views his werewolf not as a monster, but rather as a sympathetic victim. Although Bertrand commits some truly horrible acts--killing his best friend, committing incest with his mother, despoiling graves, murdering countless creatures, draining his wealthy Jewish girlfriend (a neurotic, self-destructive, death-obsessed girl who today would probably be a Goth) slowly of her life's blood--the author makes it clear that the atrocities going on around him (e.g., the 20,000 Parisians killed by the Versaillists during the Commune) make his sins seem small indeed. Presciently, the author says that future wars will kill millions, a prediction sadly borne out just a decade after this book's release. Perhaps what is most remarkable about this tale, though, is its seeming veracity. Endore gives us so much information about the Commune, and peoples his novel with so many actual historical figures, that it really is difficult to tell where fact ends and fiction begins. There supposedly really was a Sgt. Bertrand in 1840s Paris who was said to be a grave-despoiling werewolf, and that fact adds an additional frisson to this tale. Thus, "The Werewolf of Paris" works as both an excellent tale of terror AND an easy-to-take lesson in French history. I knew virtually zilch about the Commune before going into this book, but feel that I've learned quite a bit about it now, and in a fun way, too. That's not to say that fans of a good horror tale will be left unsatisfied. As I mentioned, this tale contains its fair share of gore and grue, and some pretty terrible incidents are depicted. The horrible tale of that lecherous priest's ancestor being tortured in an oubliette will not soon be forgotten, the real-life facts of the Commune atrocities are equally quite disturbing, and a discussion of the dietary experiments tried by the desperate Communards (ragout of rat, anyone?) will surely turn the stomachs of most. The pitiful final fate of Bertrand Caillet will surely move most readers, too. Despite an occasional glitch here and there (Bertrand travels northeast to reach Paris from the Yonne River valley, when he should be going northwest; Bertrand is said to have been interred in August 1873 and exhumed in June 1881, after eight years and two months, but that should be seven years and 10 months), this really is a terrific piece of writing from Mr. Endore. Anyway, thanks again, Marvin! I owe you one!
Do You like book The Werewolf Of Paris (2004)?
I really love werewolf novels. Unfortunately most today suffer from "Twilight syndrome". Were authors attempt to turn a monster into something sexy. What makes novels about these monsters great is the concept of the beast within. That evil side to every human being which we must all work to keep in check. The werewolf of Paris handles the concept wonderfully. The story centers largely around a young man named Bertrand who through no fault of his own is cursed with lycanthropy. He struggles with coming to terms with what he is which adds a lot of depth to his character. However he isn't very likeable but he is not meant to be. He commits many horrible crimes due to his cursed nature. Still You can't help feeling sorry for him for the entire story. The book deals with many social issues including war, sexual abuse, and just plain human evil. I really enjoyed this underlying theme. It gives us a lot to think about. Bertrand was a monster yes but are we in a world full of rapist, child abusers, and murderers any better than the monsters we fear in stories?
—Ethan
The novel features two of my favorite tropes - the found document and the person who knows the truth about a supernatural secret but is not believed.It's 1871, during the the terrible events of the Paris Commune's downfall. Aymar Galliez tries to warn people about the bestial behavior of his ward by submitting to a court a written summary of his research and experience."There are elemental spirits all about us, the souls of beasts that have died, or of the more horrible beasts that have never lived. When the body of a man weakens, the soul of that man begins to detach itself from the tentacles of flesh and prepares itself to fly off the instant the body dies. And around a dying man a circle of beastly souls peer and wait. They would like to have that beautiful body for a house, that body of man which is the highest creation ever to have come from God's sculpturing hands. Man, the body with the erect spine, before which the horizontal spines of the animal world must grovel."It is to guard against the invasion of roaming souls that bodies stiffen in rigor mortis, at once after death. Then the souls that enter the man's husk find only a stiff shell left. Nevertheless it happens occasionally that the soul of a beast gains entrance into a man's body while he yet lives. Then the two souls war with each other. The soul of this man may depart completely and leave only that of the beast behind. And that explains how there are men in this world who are only monsters in disguise, playing for a moment at being men, the kings of creation. Just as a servant plays with his master's clothes."Of werewolves," Galliez continues, "there are two kinds. There are first those that have two bodies and only one soul. These two bodies exist independently, the one in the forest, the other in the home. And they share one soul. The man then only dreams of his wolf-life. Lying abed, he thinks himself abroad, roaming great pine-woods in a distant country, slinking by on soft padded paws, or yelling in a pack at the flying hoofs of three horses dragging a sleigh in a gallop across a snowy plain. -And in the same manner, the wolf, satiated with his kill and drowsing in his den, dreams a strange dream. He is a man, clad in garments and is walking about, busy in the affairs of the city."And there are, in the second place, werewolves that have but one body, in which the soul of man and of beast are at war. Then whatever weakens the human soul, either sin or darkness, solitude or cold, brings the wolf to the fore. And whatever weakens the beastly soul, either virtue or daylight, warmth of the companionship of man, raises up the human soul. For it is known that the wolf shrinks from that which invites the man."These great truth are now forgotten, because in former days these monsters were so ruthlessly hunted down and expunged that we now enjoy a comparative immunity and freedom from such dangers. But it behooves us to watch sharply lest the race of mankind go into eclipse before the rise of a race of beasts ...."Kindle location 1314-1337
—Mary Overton
This book has a slow start and occasional disjointed jumping in the middle of the narrative, but once it gets going it is a riveting story set against an intriguing historical backdrop.I particularly like the way the violence of the werewolf is linked to and compared with the violence taking place in general at the time. It also offers a very frank appraisal of sexual proclivities and their link to violence. This book is not the modern fare of smouldering alpha male, but I sense it is a work that paved the way for our current day werewolf tales. Certainly Bertrand exudes a sort of magnetism (much is made of his eyes) and the sexual elements are most definitely there. But in addition to that, this book is also part thriller, part historical fiction and part detective story. I recommend this book to werewolf fans who are interested to see how the genre has progressed over the last 70 years and also to those who enjoy historical supernatural fiction.I received this book as a free e-book ARC via NetGalley.
—Nicki Markus
