Actually, I think if I was going to raise the specter of whump at all here, I should have spent more time gnawing on why Mayr's novel DIDN'T feel like whump to me. The strangeness is a big part of it. The inventive, horror-film weirdness of her imagery, and the genre-bending elements, both create an openness to mystery. You can't solve the book by having its emotions, if you see what I mean. This sort of gets at what I said about Whit Stillman in that post about "wholesome" art: comedy and mystery are both ways of puncturing sentiment. Exposing the reader's inadequacy/lack/longing in a way that is exciting, instead of irritating.
Actually, I think if I was going to raise the specter of whump at all here, I should have spent more time gnawing on why Mayr's novel DIDN'T feel like whump to me. The strangeness is a big part of it. The inventive, horror-film weirdness of her imagery, and the genre-bending elements, both create an openness to mystery. You can't solve the book by having its emotions, if you see what I mean. This sort of gets at what I said about Whit Stillman in that post about "wholesome" art: comedy and mystery are both ways of puncturing sentiment. Exposing the reader's inadequacy/lack/longing in a way that is exciting, instead of irritating.