Lulu Allison | Beast

978191569327

31/07/25

PB

264 pages

It is the early 1990's and a young a self-taught female musician wants to become a rock star. Will she make a pact with devil like Robert Johnson or will she pursue her own desires searching for the divine. Her demon and familiar have their own ideas but as she reaches her own crossroads desire and the divine lead her to her own future.

Beast explores how dreams and desires can both liberate or confine the dreamer. Eve, a young self-taught musician sits on a bench overlooking the grassy crossroads of a model village. She is dreaming of the power of music. Her dreams reach into the cosmos, summoning Demon and his rabbit familiar. 

Eve longs to harness the divine in service of her music. But will she instead make a deal with Demon for worldly success? Demon dreads the terrible price he will pay for failure and thus begins a long battle for Eve’s soul.

About Beast (questions asked by Kevin from Blue Moose)

What do you want the reader to go away with after reading BEAST?

I hope the reader will enjoy spending time with the characters: irascible and mighty Demon, Rabbit exploring the burdens and blessings of his borrowed divinity, and Eve, searching for the divine in music. Christopher helping Jon to find his place in the world. Leon, always wanting more.

I hope to spark curiosity about rules set within our culture, and how our myths and stories are often about taming the further reaches of desire. 

I hope the reader will think about the yearning some have for greatness and power. 

Maybe they will consider the varied reach of dreams – how a wish can be as grand as the cosmos or as seemingly small as domesticity and acceptance – and yet sometimes, for some people, it is the second that is the greater leap.

What do you want to say in your story?

Perhaps the musician at the crossroads, Robert Johnson, or Paganini or Eve, was not looking to do a deal with a devil, but reaching into the cosmos for the divine, and a demon just happened to be the divine creature who answered the call.

For some dreams are about power, about riches, about accessing the divine. For others, it is as simple as finding love and acceptance. Eve dreams in pure music.

Faust paid for his deal with his soul. That meant he could not go to heaven and have eternal life. But perhaps eternity is after all for the damned. Perhaps death, a return to unknowing existence, is a blessing.

What are the universal questions that arise from your book.

Given its ability to both elevate and destroy, what is the value and nature of desire? Humans have enormous capacity and need to tell stories – why?

Was Faust really punished by a demon, or is the myth shaped by a vengeful culture that expects people to stay meekly in their lanes? 

Anything else you’d like to add?

The inspiration for Beast came from Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus. I found it really interesting that as an act of homage, Mann based the central character, Leverkuhn, on Albert Schoenberg. But Schoenberg was offended by the implication that his new and groundbreaking atonal music was in some way of supernatural origin. In a roundabout way, it was what lead me to the idea that a demon, in the world of Beast, cannot add greatness to Eve’s music, he can only give her worldly success – wealth and fame. Eve’s struggle is to understand whether is this that she wants.