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The Bowery Auction House has been in business for over one hundred years but is now on its deathbed. Thus, when the opportunity for a huge sale comes Rilke's way, he doesn't think twice about taking the job. "Antiques of that caliber hadn't seen the inside of a Glasgow sales room for years, hadn't seen Bowery Auctions ever. [The] sister must be the last of the line, crippled by taxes or on the lam. She was selling the heirlooms too fast too cheap. It should have smelt wrong but my senses were overwhelmed. I [just] kept going, as pleased as Aladdin when he first rubbed that lamp and discovered his Genie."
The evening of that first day finds Rilke in the dead man's private office at the very top of the McKindless town house. He says, "I was standing in a long thin room. Along the right-hand wall were … tidily stacked cardboard boxes. The left wall was covered in waist-high, dark oak bookcases, books neatly arranged. In the centre were a plain office desk and chair … I was curious about the contents of the cardboard boxes but turned first to the bookcase."
Rilke is heartily impressed by McKindless's superb collection of erotica and pornographic materials. He tells the reader that Maurice Girodias, founder of Paris's Olympia Press (who published writers like Henry Miller and William Burroughs) is well represented in the cache. "Here was the private [collection] confined to the attic like a mad Victorian relative." When Rilke explores the desk he finds a card taped to the bottom of a drawer inscribed with the cryptic words: "PM camera club." He pockets the card and moves along a box at a time. "To anyone watching, my investigations would have appeared haphazard, but I have the skills of the searcher."
Among the detritus that comprises the McKindless legacy, he finds an envelope full of snapshots. While clearly titillating, especially for the era in which they were taken, he is only mildly curious until he flips to the last three; here he sees a naked woman on a rack. Can this be real? Is it possible that murder as art exists? Something about the girl in the photos touches Rilke very deeply. Her image haunts him inexorably and he becomes obsessed with finding out the identity of the woman. Despite the fact that the photos are least thirty years old, he embarks on a journey into the ugly world of snuff porn and bears witness to the dirty secrets mouldering in the underbelly of Glasgow's sex for sale industry.
Welsh tells a harrowing tale of pornography, erotica, perversity, homosexuality, friendship, betrayal, greed, dopers, and the humanity that often survives even the most horrific of human deeds. Louise Welsh is a wonderful writer. Her prose is pristine and her characters finely honed. The images she creates emerge in full relief on the page. From the buzz of the auction house to the stillness of the night, readers are almost able to smell the aromas, taste the beer, and feel the doom that pervades the narrative. THE CUTTING ROOM is an extraordinary novel, and one can only hope that Ms. Welsh is busy at work on her next. Enjoy!
--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum
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