Book Review: "Hexis" by Charlene Elsby

Endless Cycle

By Alex Carrigan

CW: This review discusses sexual and violent material that may be uncomfortable for some readers.

Confucius once said "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." This is generally said to mean that revenge will often hurt the person seeking revenge in the process, either resulting in their literal death or their figurative death, where the pursuit of revenge cost them everything in the process to the point where revenge itself is ultimately hollow. While it is difficult to say if every act of revenge is as destructive as Confucius intoned, there is the question of what would happen if such a quest for revenge doesn't result in just two graves, but an entire new cemetery's worth of them.

Charlene Elsby's forthcoming novel Hexis​ follows a nameless protagonist on such a quest. While details are sparse, the story follows a woman who, over the course of her teens and adult life, continues to run into men who greatly resemble a man who once assaulted her in her teens. The similarly-nameless man is simply a "a skinny but broad-shouldered teenager with dark blond, close-cropped curly hair, dimples and bags around his eyes from not sleeping" who is implied to have sexually assaulted our protagonist. The story follows the protagonist as she finds herself continually running into, or seeking out, the man in question, all so she can brutally kill him and expel him from the Earth.

Hexis is a very dark and often-times confusing novel, but one that instantly draws the reader into its David Lynch-esque world. Much like the Laura Derns and Naomi Wattses of Lynch's filmography, Elsby's protagonist is a woman who often finds herself in different places and with a very cynical look on the world. She's continually haunted by a figure of her past, and no matter how hard she tries to eliminate him from the world, he's always back, dimpled and sleep-deprived and ready to whisper sweet nothings into her ear in hopes of avoiding his grisly fate.

What adds to the terror of Hexis is that we spend so much time in our protagonist's mind that we're left completely unsure about what is really happening. She's convinced the man is a being of pure evil and that she has to kill him, and has been apparently killing him for over 18 years. We barely know much about her beyond that, with scattered hints about the life lived between the slayings, but we're left unsure of how much of this is true or not. Whether the protagonist is really killing a tulpa of her rapist over and over again or she's merely acting out revenge fantasies while thinking about various grievances in her life that are spurred by her feelings towards the man is not clear, but that honestly may be more frightening than the story at face-value. 

Whatever is really going on to our protagonist, it's clear she's ultimately a very damaged person. Her life was ruined by a single act, and while she's able to kill her rapist repeatedly or fantasize about it, it's clear this has taken over her entire life. She never talks about her family, briefly mentions a past job without hinting she has a current one, and isn't even given any hint as to whether or not she has any friends, hobbies, or even a home to go back to. She's hurt, and she's not getting any better, and odds are she'll continue down this path for a long time, either as a serial killer, a demon slayer, or as a lonely, damaged shell of her former self.

Hexis is not an easy read, but it's an insanely effective one. It puts the reader in the mind of a very troubled and complex character and asks you to go along with each act of violence she commits. While it may frustrate some with its lack of clarity or detail, it does ruminate on a lot of subjects like revenge, violence, sexual abuse, and more in a way that demystifies and removes the glamour from revenge fantasies. It's an intense read, but one that can be needed in order to make one rethink the appeal of revenge narratives and think more about the long term effects of abuse.
   
Hexis is available for pre-order now.