Blurb:
| Another Elizabeth is a gripping literary psychological crip horror novel that readers will sink their teeth into. Fans of dark humor and challenging fiction will be thrilled to delve into the mind of a deeply flawed disabled woman with a desire to kill. Elizabeth’s life is taking a turn. She has three jobs, a boyfriend that loves her too much, and a recent diagnosis of Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. She’s coming apart at the seams. Now all she cares about is keeping her promise to her younger self before her body fails her—kill without getting caught. Will she physically be able to satisfy her urge while maintaining her carefully built façade of normalcy? And if so, will she be able to stop with just one victim? |
Inspiration
porn is a real problem when it comes depicting people with disabilities.
The term was originally coined by disability activist and comedian Stella Young. As Young
puts it in her 2014 TED talk in Sydney, “We’re not real people. We are there to
inspire.” She explains that we have been sold the lie that disability is a bad
thing, and therefore living with a disability makes you exceptional. One of the
reasons I love Another Elizabeth is because I thought of inspiration
porn while I was reading it and what the reactions of able-bodied people might
be. Elizabeth has Hypermobile
Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS), which, if you’re not familiar, is a genetic condition
that causes connective tissue to weaken resulting in hypermobility in the
joints and chronic pain. She works at a grocery store called Juno Foods with
her boyfriend, teaches ESL classes, and kills people who piss her off. That’s right, Elizabeth “overcomes” her
invisible disability despite struggling with pain and weakness to become a
serial killer! How inspirational!
All joking aside, I loved reading a book where the main character has disability, written by someone with a disability (and not some well-meaning ally) that isn’t meant to inspire non-disabled people or demonize people with disabilities. Elizabeth is a great character. She shows hints of being a sociopath, is an expert manipulator, and often fantasizes about hurting others. When her doctor suggests she start using a cane, Elizabeth immediately wonders if she’ll use it for anything other than bashing people’s brains in. Even innocent things bring out the darkness in Elizabeth. When she sees babies, she imagines how easy it would be to break their fingers, and when she makes candy, she fantasizes about putting poison in it.
Yet she still seems to care about her friend, her ESL
students, and her himbo boyfriend on some level, so she’s not completely
heartless. Or at least Elizabeth admits she wouldn’t murder any of them.
Awwwwww. In fact, she only kills people who she believes deserve it, like an
ableist woman who abandoned her family after her husband became paralyzed, an
obnoxious coworker, and maybe the odd pedestrian here and there. The fact that
she happens to like their teeth is just a bonus. In her free time Elizabeth watches
forensics shows and reads true crime novels for inspiration. This means she is
meticulous about covering her tracks. I found myself greatly appreciating
Elizabeth’s hyper-competence when it came to crime, carefully planning each
murder down to the very last detail. Elizabeth is also someone who is usually
good at whatever she tries, despite putting little effort into it, and this seems
to apply to being a serial killer. Because she can’t physically overpower her
victims, Elizabeth gets very creative finding ways to make her murders more
accessible.
Villains with disabilities in fiction are often portrayed in
a problematic way, at least when written by the non-disabled. They are the
monstrous “other,” whose moral corruption manifests physically as disability. Jan
Grue, is a Norwegian academic, author and actor (best known for role as Ivar
Salvesen in Occupied) who uses a wheelchair. In his Guardian
article The
Disabled Villain: Why Sensitivity Reading Can’t Kill Off This Ugly Trope
Grue writes "This particular trope, wherein a character’s moral and
physiological natures mirror each other, is as universal as it is ancient. It
is reflected in the philosophy of Plato, in commonplace phrases like ‘a healthy
mind in a healthy body,’ and in the foundational texts of the cultural canon.
In Buddhist tradition, too, disability has been construed as an impediment to
understanding and enlightenment – and even, for some, as a punishment for
actions in a past life."
The Take’s video Why the "Disabled
Villain" Trope is So Offensive, explains that disability is "used
as a metaphor for villainy or moral failing.” In an interview with Den
of Geek after the release of Skyfall, producer Michael G.
Wilson explains, "It’s very much a Fleming device that he uses throughout
the stories – the idea that physical deformity and personality deformity go
hand in hand in some of these villains. Sometimes it’s a motivating factor in
their life, and what makes them the way they are." In other words, those
with disabilities are assumed to despise their condition because being disabled
is undesirable, and they seek to harm the able bodied. Unfortunately, this
metaphor can cause real-life harm, as it reinforces the idea that having a
disability is “bad” and difference is “scary.” Horror is especially notorious
for using the “Evil
Cripple” trope, with famous villains like Freddy, Jason, and Leatherface all
sporting physical disfigurements. Other famous examples of disabled villains
are the Phantom from The Phantom of the Opera, multiple
James Bond antagonists, Mr. Glass in Unbreakable, Mason
Verger from Hannibal, Captain Hook from Peter Pan, Mr. Potter
from It’s a Wonderful Life, and Darth Vader from Star Wars.
 |
| Mr. Glass from Unbreakable (top left), The Phantom from the Phantom of the Opera (top right), Captain Hook from Hook, Raoul Silva from Skyfall, Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street (bottom left), and Mason Verger from Hannibal (bottom right). None of the characters pictured here are portrayed by disabled or disfigured actors. |
Although Elizabeth is a villain protagonist with a
disability, she’s an incredibly well written, well-rounded character. She’s an
evil (or at least morally gray) character who also has a disability, rather
than a character who is evil because of a disability. Most importantly,
Elizabeth is written in such a way that the audience is rooting for her
sociopath self and able to relate to her. (Or at least I was. Who among us
hasn’t fantasized about killing awful people?) Usually, villains with
disabilities are written in such a way that they feel alien and are frightening
in their strangeness, and this is accentuated by their disability or
disfigurement. Instead of seeming scary
because of her disability, Elizabeth finds the opposite to be true. People
assume she’s helpless: something she uses to her advantage. When suspicion
falls on her, Elizabeth plays up her disability, relying on other people’s
ableism so they think she’s innocent. It also helps that the author has hEDS
herself, so the
book is Own Voices and
Elizabeth’s character just hits differently.
Because the narration is first person, we get to see Elizabeth’s
detached way of looking at the world and her twisted way of thinking. We get an
intimate look at her struggles, both keeping her “other life” a secret and
trying to kill victims when she’s not as strong as an able-bodied male killer.
And of course, we get to learn about her frustration when dealing with her
chronic pain and her boyfriend’s annoying abundance of concern for her. He’s convinced
that she’s too fragile to function, yet doesn’t have the same concern for her
comfort during sex. Side note, I love that Elizabeth gets to have hot sex
scenes with her boyfriend. People with disabilities almost never get to
have sex in fiction. In fact, outside of Mat Fraser in American Horror Story,
George Robinson in Sex Education, and Peter Dinklage in Game of
Thrones, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone with a disability have sex in
popular media (and of course those examples are all white, cisgendered men with
conventionally attractive faces).
Another Elizabeth is a fascinating look into a
twisted mind with a character that you can’t help but root for despite the fact
she’s a serial killer who manipulates others. The story is the perfect length,
not so long that it drags but not so short that it feels rushed. The second
half of the book is especially exciting and the story is interspersed with bits
of dark humor.
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