Many Restless Concerns: The Victims of Countess Bathory Speak in Chorus is a dark yet beautiful, lyrical, and enchanting read. I read this prose/poetry novel in one sitting, then immediately flipped to the beginning. Though the horror was difficult to endure even the first time, Brandeis’s haunting words pulled me back into the story.
Between 1585 and 1609, a Hungarian countess, Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed, allegedly killed 650 girls aged ten to fourteen to become the world’s most prolific female murderer. Not satisfied with simple killing, she used masochistic methods the verbs of which Brandeis staggers across the page—stab, strangle, pummel, hack, burn, drown, freeze, scald—allowing each to stand alone, yet be joined to the others, forcing the reader to see and feel the pain these girls endured. They cry out: “Your body remembers even when you no longer have a body, some tender part of you still flinches; some immaterial nerves still flare.” I found it very compelling that the book addressed me, the reader, directly involving me in the lives and deaths of the killed girls.
Because Brandeis tells her story from the point of view of the victims, she avoids fetishizing Báthory’s killings. She begs the reader to not look away, but to remember her nameless victims, not the perpetrator. Not only should we not look away from Báthory’s victims, we should stand witness to the countless women who are harmed around the world on a daily basis.
The cover is perfect for this book: the vibrancy of the image reflects the wording within while the red pouring off the page is the blood of the 650 girls.
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Many Restless Concerns: The Victims of Countess Bathory Speak in Chorus is available through:
