Why You Should Read 'A Fig for All the Devils'
Never before has the monochromatic Angel of Death been presented so colourfully
Genuinely creepy at times, laugh out loud funny at others. There is strong language throughout and elements of cruelty pop up unexpectedly. So, in a sense, fans of C.S. Fritz’s other books (which have been more child-friendly to date) may find his first novel, A Fig For All The Devils, to be fairly jarring. On the other hand, only C.S. Fritz could have written such a whimsically macabre account of the Grim Reaper; a menthol-smoking, junk-food-eating, foul-mouthed son of a gun. I suspect that never before has the monochromatic Angel of Death been presented so colourfully.
In comforting someone during the pain of death, often our words fall short. In that regard, lessons can be gleaned from the Biblical account of Job. The best thing Job’s friends could do for him in his suffering was to sit down and mourn with him in silence. Much of the real wrestling of that account was an outpouring from their unintelligible advice. In that wisdom, this book doesn’t seek to answer individual accounts of death, or to give the reader advice, but rather walks the reader through to the Valley of the Shadow of Death to arrive at a place where life is better understood.
Weaved into this tale are honest conversations, which are often messy but are the eventual outpouring of grief. As such, these talks cannot be hurried along to simply arrive at a destination. While not questioning God, a mourning Pastor questions his own fear of the vehicle that will take him to God. He struggles with the question of fear rendering his own faith defective. But “… fear is good. Like a police siren, it warns you when you have to step up. It’s when we run from fear that it becomes bad.” In that way, A Fig For All The Devils leads the reader from hopelessness to hope.
This book maintains that death is the result of sin. At the same time, the embodiment of Death manifests itself in different ways across space and time, finding itself at home in ancient and contemporary folklore. While an ancient Nordic may have seen Death manifested as Baba Yaga, a modern horror-movie-watching teenager may see Death manifested as the Grim Reaper. And I believe that the author may have had a stroke of genius in selecting moths as a visible representation of Death to the living, as moths are often seen as horrid creatures of the night which will expose themselves to the light.
This book is totally unorthodox in its presentation, having a curated Spotify playlist that you can read along with and dotted with centuries-old images of Death personified. The chapters go from short and abrupt to extended narrative. And I think all of this rightly compliments the intentional messiness of the story.
While I can find some enjoyment in a few horror classics (like Frankenstein), I typically avoid the modern horror genre altogether. That being said, I read A Fig For All The Devils cover-to-cover in one sitting; I simply couldn’t put this book down.
