A Look at Black Ambrosia by Elizabeth Engstrom
As you may know from my prior post, I’m reading through a number of vampire novels this year. It is, after all, the year of the vampire. I plan to talk about these in different ways, but in some cases I want to look at a book as a standalone blog post. That’s certainly true for Elizabeth Engstrom’s novel, Black Ambrosia. If there’s one thing that stands out most in this novel, it’s how the writer marries psychology and the vampire trope.
This book deserves independent mention due to the complexity of the psychological underpinnings in this tale. Angelina, the protagonist, is a vampire…or she’s not. On the surface, it’s hard to say. And that right there, is the point.
I’m avoiding plot spoilers in this post, so feel free to proceed!
Synopsis
We learn very early on, that Angelina’s father – a man whom she describes warmly and fondly – died when she was eight. Her mother remarries and then, when Angelina is fifteen, she dies, leaving the girl with a stepfather who, though he doesn’t seem overly fond of her, isn’t abusive. They quickly sell the house, divide the proceeds and go their separate ways.
Angelina leaves to see the world, by which she means hitchhiking and wandering around the United States. The book takes place in the 1980s, an era in which this type of travel was more prominent and less problematic. However, readers still have a sense of impending doom. A young girl wandering alone is bound to encounter trouble.
Less than ten pages, but a little over a year into Angelina’s story, she encounters two men – Earl Foster and J.C. Wickers – whose intentions differ dramatically from the hospitable travelers she has met up until that point. The scene isn’t graphic or intense. If anything it’s surprising.
Something awakens in Angelina and she quickly gains the upper-hand in the situation, tearing out Earl Foster’s throat with her teeth and drinking his blood.
Thus begins Angelina’s travels as a self-proclaimed vampire.
The Root
On the surface, it’s merely Angelina’s indignation and fear over this incident that awakens her latent vampiric nature, setting into motion her life as a serial killer. But Engstrom leaves readers with more to ponder than merely this (as significant as that would be in and of itself).
While she doesn’t write the scene with Earl Foster in such a way that we see Angelina brutalized, it’s highly likely that that’s actually what happened. There are two reasons I think this:
- As the book progresses, readers quickly infer that Angelina is something of an unreliable narrator. The story is told from a very deep first-person perspective. However, at the end of each chapter, Engstrom includes a quick perspective from another character to add color to the story. These are written as if the other characters have been asked, in hindsight, to record their experiences with Angelina. Through these, we often see a slightly different story than what our protagonist has told us. For example, at one point in the story, Angelina tells us that she needed a change and left her job. But at the end of the chapter, her coworker relates a sequence of events in which Angelina’s actions devolved to the point at which she was fired.
- Also, throughout the book, Angelina displays a distinct interest in men but views sexual activity as repulsive and something that she must occasionally entertain in order to obtain her objective.
Both of these suggest that, though she doesn’t tell us about Earl Foster raping her, it was very likely what transpired. This left her scarred and sexually avoidant.
This is essential to understanding the story because this root dictates how we interpret Angelina’s claim to be a vampire and her actions as a killer.
Trauma-Based Mercy Killings
Angelina is a killer. The back of the book tells us is this so, and the story delivers as much. Angelina herself (and the back cover) would have us believe that these are mercy killings, but readers will quickly see through that claim. As we watch her choose her victims, what we see are well-adjusted, perfectly healthy men who have no desire or need to die.
The real question in the book is not whether Angelina is actually a vampire – she isn’t – but rather why she kills.
This is a psychological tale in which we’re seeing the events unfold through a flawed perspective. When Angelina tells us that she kills to spare this one or that one from his suffering, a trauma that readers can clearly see is, at best, nothing more than a temporary disappointment – what readers need to understand is that Angelina projecting.
In psychological terms, she is reassigning her own feelings to others. When she sees the men around her as victims, it’s because she can’t bear to acknowledge that she herself is a victim. That she’s suffering from what Earl did to her. That she feels weak and helpless and fearful. That she can’t heal or save herself, or undo what has been done.
Instead, a deep part of her mind assigns the role of powerful savior to herself, and takes her own suffering and hands it over to her chosen victim. In each killing, she attempts to put to death her past. To lay to rest the pain that she can’t rid herself of. If you read the book this way, it reads very, very differently than what Angelina claims. And it makes a lot of sense.
Problematic Vampire
Otherwise, Angelina’s vampire nature is a challenge to accept. She doesn’t seem to need to kill in order to eat. After all, she’s able to eat regular food whenever she chooses to (though she begins to starve herself later in the story).
She can walk in sunlight, handle garlic and crosses, and lead a normal human life. Except that she can’t.
Something within Angelina is broken. If you’ve read (or watched) a lot of vampire storytelling, one thing that stands out more than anything is the strength and confidence of the vampire. Vampires have physical limitations depending upon the tale (the sun, garlic, fire, etc.) but they have nothing but psychological and intellectual superiority. They are a race of power-brokers, albeit married to the night.
In addition, despite the vampire’s physical limitations, it’s a universally-acknowledged fact that vampires have a supernatural capacity to heal.
As we read Angelina’s story though, both of these elements are entirely missing, and I’m sure that that’s by design. Engstrom isn’t portraying a vampire with internal spiritual angst like Louis or Lestat in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. Or a vampire with a tormented history of remorse like Anthony Carter in Justin Cronin’s The Passage.
Instead, what we’re left with is the virtual certainty that Angelina is nothing but a mentally ill young girl who has reimagined her identity as a vampire out of the need to feel strong and invincible.
Further, Angelina deteriorates physically as the book progresses. She becomes weaker as time goes on, and when the inevitable happens – another type of assault – she is helpless to escape it. Angelina is no vampire.
Conclusion
I’ll leave it at that. It isn’t the most complex plot on the surface. Rather, this story’s significance lies in understanding Angelina. Watch what she does. Watch what others say about her. Look for what she doesn‘t say, or how her actions differ from what others report. Therein lies the key to understanding this story.
And never forget that the vampire is first and foremost a symbol. A metaphor. Engstrom has taken this to a psychological point and uses it to represent an alter ego that arises out of trauma.
It’s a very dark and disturbing book, but it’s well-written and intensely thought-provoking. If the subject matter isn’t too much for you, it’s an interesting read. Let me know what you think of it and how you read Angelina’s character!
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