Book Reviews for Homunculus
Unemployed playwright Hector Owen's few theatrical successes are long behind him. Languishing at home while his emotionally distant wife earns a paycheck, he still manages to keep his eccentric imagination running at fever pitch. One night, after enduring a protracted bellyache, he watches as a slimy little man, or homunculus, crawls out his navel and burrows under the bed. Cleaned up and kept hidden from his wife and neighbors, the homunculus, who calls himself Robin, quickly becomes a much-needed friend and sounding board for Hector's creative and sexual frustrations. But Robin has a nasty side that personifies Hector's repressed urges, including one that may involve avenging an early marital wound and plotting to murder his wife. Stubblefield draws on his own playwriting experience to deliver crisp dialogue and penetrating character studies. Despite its horror-genre motifs, Homunculus is a psychologically probing tale of a dysfunctional marriage's effect on literary ambition, and its portrait of neurotic impulses made flesh is one readers won't soon forget.
--Carl Hays, Booklist Magazine
Hector Owen, a failed playwright trapped in a libido-starved marriage, conjures up a devilish little creature named Robin, a charismatic and id-driven fellow who is either a product of Owen's personality, a psychotic delusion, or something else. HOMUNCULUS combines the macabre humor of a horror novel with a deeper exploration of the dark side of the human psyche. With hints of FRANKENSTEIN, THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, and THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS, Jerry Stubblefield's novel is a sinister journey into one man's battle with himself.
- MUZE, Inc.
I knew Jerry Stubblefield as a playwright many moons ago. And his novel Homunculus
(Black Heron Press) is about a playwright who lives in Asheville. It is my fervent hope that the resemblance stops there. What a beautifully crafted and deeply weird book. For
once, you really can judge a book by its cover — the art here is striking and slightly disturbing. “Homunculus” is about the little manikin that is born — along with some graphically nasty goo- from Hector Owen’s navel. The little man’s name is Robin and I could almost hear a diminutive Alan Rickman delivering his sarky, funny lines.The publisher’s blurb intimates that this is science fiction or horror but the author disagrees somewhat and I have to side with him. It’s a psychological exploration of someone you can’t like very much, even if he is tormented by his little creation. The book does have a creeping- dread quality but never leaps over the fence into the horror genre.
The slow build from the discovery of the hypodermic needle in the still-packed
boxes to the murderous attentions of the little man towards Owen’s wife is eerie
and very well done. But the larger story is about Hector and Robin and who they are
to each other. It’s about how we set ourselves up for failure, then deal with it (or not) and
about the lack of true intimacy that has become a hallmark of the early 21st century.
How can we really know each other when every jot of nuance is aired through
Face Book and Twitter. How do any of us know what we really feel and who we really are, when we are creating “profiles” accessible to a million of our closest cyber-friends? Do we all have a homunculus ready to emerge?
- H. Byron Ballard, Rapid River Magazine
*Rare birth*
Under the Covers
Jerry Stubblefield has captured the subtlety of madness. He has written insanity as if it were as natural as writing love or anger. He created an aura of crazy that could only be projected with equal amounts of sanity to showcase it. Stubblefield made delirium seem as if it were waiting just around the corner for everyone, like a song we can almost recognize or a word that dances just beyond the tip of the tongue.
In his book, Homunculus, Stubblefield spins an excellently paced tale of a man’s burgeoning insanity. His main character is named Hector Owen, a disconnected former playwright in the middle of a failed relationship and life, though he is lax to admit it and absolutely paralyzed when it comes to taking any action. His emotions are mostly subdued and rarely does he express any sort of passion. Instead, he stays mostly in his head, writing the play that is his life while simultaneously avoiding the real thing.
The book starts out with some police reports that hint at his eventual fate. After a few scant pages, it progresses right into his journal. Getting right to the point, his journal begins on a day when Hector was feeling intense stomach pains that soon paralyzed him in his bed. His wife, Faye, half-heartedly tries to help him, though they lack any sort of intimacy. Being unable to offer any real comfort, she soon leaves the room. This is when Hector goes into a sort of labor.
Yes, that’s right, Hector is giving birth. After a brilliantly described birthing process which culminates in him pushing out a small, already clothed body through his belly button, Hector feels more relief than he has felt in years. Though no concrete indications are given at this time, this is the start of his downfall. The small being is a homunculus, a tiny human from legend, normally created by alchemy.
Stubblefield does a wonderful job of taking every regret, weakness and other self-categorized negative aspects of Hector’s identity and personifying them in this little homunculus. He does so in such wonderfully subtle ways, never mentioning it to the reader but bringing them undoubtedly to that point. Stubblefield does this slowly enough that you are almost discovering it right alongside Hector as he goes more mad and the homunculus grows ever larger and stranger.
Throughout the book, Hector goes back and forth between a certain amount of intimacy with the homunculus, which makes sense as it is all just part of him, and trying to kill it, which is also justified when one thinks of what qualities it represents. When he is apart from it, the reader experiences a sense of hope as Hector seems to almost make headway in the many issues that plague him. He always gets pulled back, however, ultimately a slave to himself and his madness.
Homunculus is a great book... It was mentally stimulating and didn’t fear going straight for the creep out factor when it was appropriate. I give Stubblefield a lot of credit and can only wonder how much he identifies with Hector. To write it as well as he did, I can’t help but think he must be close to his subject matter. I’d suggest you get close to it, too
-- Electric City, Northeastern Pennsylvania's Premier Arts & Entertainment Weekly
