The Friendship of Mortals

by Audrey Driscoll

A Note from the Author

  I discovered the works of H.P. Lovecraft through a handful of little Ballantine paperbacks whose covers were embellished with pictures of grotesque heads. One was splitting open – despite an iron band and padlock around the forehead – to release a horde of little red bats. Another was a mixture of rat and human, complete with a tail sprouting from the cheek. Over the years, I acquired more paperbacks as I tried to find and read all of HPL’s stories. Some of the Ballantine books contained lists of the titles, and I can still see the tick marks I made as I succeeded in tracking down the tales. Only “Herbert West, Reanimator” remains unticked. The occasional comments about this story I came across in books about Lovecraft were disparaging, but that only increased my curiosity about it. Why was it so elusive? I didn’t read that story until 1998, when I found it by accident in a library.

  The commentators were right – it’s not one of Lovecraft’s best works. But it has something not often found in HPL – a memorable main character who does more than witness the weird. Herbert West was compelled to reanimate corpses, and the nameless narrator of the story was, apparently, compelled to help him. Why? That’s the question I began to answer with this book. I didn’t realize it would take three more books to finish the task. I devised a life story and family for Herbert West and sent him on a journey that takes him around the world and ends with a return to Arkham.

  Readers familiar with “Herbert West, Reanimator” will recall that the unnamed narrator of that story was also a medical student and, later, a physician. When I decided to write a novel based on the story, I deliberately made my narrator, Charles Milburn, a librarian. I knew I could never do a good job of representing the knowledge and attitude of a medical man of the early 20th century, but I am a librarian. Lovecraft mentioned the Miskatonic University Library in several of his stories, so nothing could be more natural than for Charles to be employed there.

  Music I listened to while writing this book: J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, in performances by Glenn Gould and Murray Perahia, as well as an arrangement for string trio performed by a group called Triskelion. This music found its way into the narrative. Loreena McKennitt’s album, The Mask and the Mirror, specifically “The Dark Night of the Soul” was a huge influence on the atmosphere and the way the story developed.

  For more of my views on writing and other topics, read my blog at https://audreydriscoll.com