This cover for Michael Brandon’s novel Nonce is one we’ve seen around a lot. We’ve been curious about the book for a long time. What story could possibly pair with such wild art? We’d have known it was voodoo related even without the tagline, but what other curious things could be happening here? It took a while, but finally we bought a copy. The novel was originally released in 1944, but this Avon edition came in 1953. The same art was later used on P.H. Mulholland’s 1957 novel The Calypso Murders, but in both cases it’s uncredited. Well, it’s a great piece in the sense that we never stopped being curious what was beyond the book’s cover.
The story follows Borde Kane, who has travelled the world and grown bored (see what Brandon did there?) with people, places, and experiences, and wants only to live alone in the Georgia swamp to which he’s fled and write a monograph. His solitude is intruded upon by Rhoda Thorpe, who becomes stranded on horseback in Borde’s section of the swamp. Rhoda is— Actually, we’ll let her describe herself as someone who has been through many men and learned, “I wasn’t looking for heights, I was looking for depths. I wondered where was the limit of how base men could be, how black the sewers along which they can creep. I found out. With fifty others I found out. That there is no answer. That the height of a man is a thing you can measure, but not his depths.”
They would seem to be kindred spirits, these two misanthropes (and is the “thorpe” “thrope” similarity a coincidence?), except Borde is hateful to the core. When Rhoda attempts to sexually entice him, she’s doomed to failure, and that failure is the entry point for the character of Nonce, who is a servant back on the property from which Rhoda originally began her abortive horseback ride. She’s a backwoods voodoo priestess, and a medium of sorts. Borde’s world—or perhaps his understanding of the world would be a better way to put it—is turned upside down by Nonce. His very acquaintanceship with her is dangerous—all the more so when it arouses a murderous jealousy in local constable and game warden Tramp Benwood.
We’ll have to stop, as spoiler potential is strong with Nonce. We’ll end by saying that the book is atmospheric and capably if baroquely written, but it’s also dark, brutal, steeped in sexism, racism, and depictions of black women as chattel to be traded or stolen. Is there a point to it? Portraying 1940s rural Georgia as a backwards netherworld trapped in a benighted past might have been the entire purpose, but there’s a pandering feel to the story that belies any possible noble motives. Its general grimness and cruelty, may (indeed, should) turn many readers off, but then again, we seem to live in a time of grim cruelty, so maybe Nonce is exactly the fever dream people want.
