The Lower Quarter. Elise Blackwell

      The Lower Quarter

      Elise Blackwell

      This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are either the

      product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

      to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events,

      or locales is entirely coincidental.

      Unbridled Books

      Copyright © 2015 by Elise Blackwell

      All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,

      may not be reproduced in any form

      without permission.

      Unbridled Books

      Copyright © 2015 by Elise Blackwell

      All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,

      may not be reproduced in any form

      without permission.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Blackwell, Elise, 1964-

      The lower quarter / by Elise Blackwell.

      pages ; cm

      ISBN 978-1-60953-119-5

      I. Title.

      PS3602.L3257L69 2015

      813’.6--dc23

      2015011743

      1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

      Book Design by SH • CV

      First Printing

      For David,

      who once observed

      that all novels

      are historical novels

      Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations. Our bright natures fight in us with this yeasty darkness, and neither part is commonly quite victorious, for we are divided against ourselves and will not let either part be destroyed.

      rebecca west, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

      The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down, and rearranges it.

      michel foucault, Discipline and Punish