A Coven of Slippery Eels

A Coven of Slippery Eels is novel that has no characters who are eels, at least no characters who utter dialogue. Though Mr. Deane is truly a master of metaphor he has never found it necessary to bless eels with a capacity for conversation. Lewis Carroll may do something similar, but Mr. Deane does not. For him, slippery eels are the elusive identities that we seek to retain but which slowly disappear. At times they rapidly vanish. But like the minds and ideas that John Locke saw as eternally perishing, Mr. Deane demonstrates with cynical compassion that humanity deceives itself when it refuses to recognise changes that irrevocably transform one's personality no matter how stubbornly we may cling onto some favourite aspects of ourselves. There is no enduring substance for any members of the coven of slippery eels, a truth that Mr. Deane conveys with patience and concern for those who may be on a similar path to destruction, torn as he is by senses of goodness and justice that cause him to write with such brilliant cynical compassion and saintly concern for the damned. Unlike Plato, Mr. Deane has grasped how some persons may find virtue in corruption and evil. They do not seek the good or happiness or the virtues of justice, wisdom, temperance and fortitude. They delight in bias and corruption, spiced with black humour; they seek knowledge for the sake of power and revenge, but merrily, with jolly cruelty; they are only temperate when their appetites fail, but they can still giggle and cackle; they dare to do evil but only under a veil of secrecy and hypocrisy, while withdrawing into a cocoon of their own making, where they laugh at their own injustice. But they will forgive no wrong against them.

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