this is so badly written and yet so readable. how can such tripe make me want to turn the pages faster, faster, faster? I dunno, but gee whiz, this suthis is so badly written and yet so readable. how can such tripe make me want to turn the pages faster, faster, faster? I dunno, but gee whiz, this sure stunk and yet I devoured it in like two sittings.
so a mad Alice, shorn of her basic traits of curiosity and sensibility (did the author even read the source material?), along with an equally mad hatchet-wielding murderer (who I assume will be revealed as the Mad Hatter in a subsequent book), escape from a burning asylum and travel through Old City to hunt down the Jabberwock. it turns out that Alice is also a Magician, because why not. the two are in love, because why not. Old City is a violent slum ruled by various magical pimps at war with each other, named the Carpenter, the Walrus, the Caterpillar, and the Rabbit, because why not. this grotesque sequel to Alice in Wonderland is all about the many, many, many horrible ways that girls can be trafficked, raped, abused, mutilated, and murdered, because why not.
if only the writing didn't read like amateurish fan fiction, I could have tolerated it as some kind of creepy, exceedingly dark fantasy adventure. the ideas are not uninteresting. I would love to read a book that has adult versions of the Caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat, two really fun and interesting (and dark) characters in the source material. but the author's lack of ability with characterization made all of her Wonderland villains equally flat and annoying. it's like her approach to characterization is to build a whole character around one usually horrible idea, and then leave it at that. and so these monstrous pimps mutilate girls (the Caterpillar) or devour them during rape (the Walrus), or they like roses and secrets (Cheshire), and that's about all we get. these are not interesting villains.
Christina Henry also does that incredibly annoying thing that many bad writers do: she repeats what just happened as a summary, right after whatever happens happened. is this to increase page count? it occurs so many times. almost as many times as her Alice repeatedly asking questions about what just happened or what is now happening or what will happen next. I think I've written "happen" too many times, maybe I'm just as bad a writer as Christina Henry?
it suddenly occurred to me why this book was so readable! the writing is so very bad, so nonsensical at times, that it somehow mirrors the madness of Alice. it just yammers away. or perhaps it just mirrors the nonsense of the original? I realize I'm grasping at straws here. anyway, this book was nonsense and not the good kind....more
27 nasty stories by a very talented writer wasting much of his talent, alas. by "nasty" I don't just mean wall-to-wall gore and fucking, which would n27 nasty stories by a very talented writer wasting much of his talent, alas. by "nasty" I don't just mean wall-to-wall gore and fucking, which would not necessarily be an issue for me. these stories do have tons of gore and sex, and much that is graphically scatalogical as well. really sickening stuff at times. they also have a genuinely nasty sensibility: joyously juvenile, sniggeringly sadistic, viciously mean-spirited, not to mention misogynist and homophobic. I don't particularly admire contes cruel and so I didn't particularly admire this collection. yet it was all still... fun, in its way? McNaughton writes like writing is a breeze; he is almost casually masterful in his ability to toss off a cleverly ironic bit of dialogue or an elegant descriptive sentence, which can be startling when his tales are often so crass and so broadly horrific. and his narratives, even in the shortest of his short stories, are often surprisingly complex. he was an ingenious and very original writer. RIP!
there were three stories that I might read again. (in bold below.) the first two reminded me of his brilliant cult classic The Throne of Bones with their dark fantasy settings, plots that hinge on misuse of magic, and of course their cruel humor. the third is set in an aristocratic English milieu and is chock-full of clockwork automatons and sport-fucking.
okay time to take a shower, these stories made me feel unclean. so very nasty!
☢
"Conversion of St. Monocarp" - nasty Medieval body-switcher gets her just reward
"Nothing But the Best" & "Drink Me" - nasty body-switching wizard gets his just reward - twice!
"Interrupted Pilgrimage" - nasty Medieval illusion-caster gets his just reward
"The Hole" - nasty young voyeur gets his just reward
"Changes" - nasty normal reality gets turned into an even nastier abnormal reality
"Lovelocks" - nasty ninny in love gets his just reward
"Fantasia on 'Little Red Riding Hood'" - nasty author reimagines a classic fairy tale
"Water and the Spirit" - nasty warlord is the recipient of some nasty revenge from a dead water wizard; in the end, the nastier of the two will survive!
"Congratulations" - nasty tv grifter gets his just reward; nice witch is nice to her neighbors
"Why We Fear the Dark" - nasty cop is also a nasty cat
"The Disposal of Uncle Dave" - nasty husband is also a nasty toad
"Getting It All Back" - nasty parents falsely accused of sexual abuse by their nasty children; nasty daughter gets her just reward
"Undying Love" - nasty necrophiliac finally lays a live one
"Child of the Night" - vampire-seeking youth finds his questions answered by a nasty priest
"The Dunwich Lodger" - nasty motel manager versus his nasty father; abused wife meets nasty sorceror
"Annunciator" - cryo-frozen head awakens to a nasty future
"Rubber-Face" - nasty colonialist gets his just reward in the Congo; rubber magic is nasty magic
"Herbert West- Reincarnated" - nasty Herbert West finds new employment in nasty Nazi Germany; a nasty Jesus Christ is reanimated, nastily
"La Fille aux Yeux d'Email" - nasty English earl versus nasty French clockmaker; lots of nasty sex with a nasty countess and a nasty maid
"Star Stalker" - nasty supermodel hires some nasty cops
"Marantha's Tale" - nasty illusion-casting creature called a 'bog-losel' gets its just reward
"To My Dear Friend, Hommy-Bet" - nasty hack author receives a nasty fanzine and a nastier creature from a nasty amateur book reviewer. so much nastiness!...more
It's wild that this wonderfully out there story was written sometime in the 1930s or 40s. Jūza Unno i
"What a terribly thoughtless death sentence."
It's wild that this wonderfully out there story was written sometime in the 1930s or 40s. Jūza Unno is apparently considered the "father of Japanese science fiction" and that's also wild. The story reads as if it were written by a drunk middle-school kid obsessed with mind control, post-apocalyptic dystopias, sexy lady androids, trans ideology, soap operas, and William S. Burroughs. All of that and so much more. "Eighteen O'Clock Music Bath" is about the end of post-apocalyptic Japan, now greatly reduced in population, living underground and under the thumb of its authoritarian yet very wussy president. All citizens must submit to a "music bath" at precisely 18 o'clock each day, which renders them both productive and patriotic for the busy hour following that painful infusion. The rest of the day is spent in aimless, lethargically horny discontent.
A typical scene: the power-crazed Secretary of State, mistress to the President, unsuccessfully tries to feed her parrot a bloody chunk of android meat - from the same android that she had tried to stab in the heart the previous day, in a hysterical fit of rage after catching the President excitedly eyeing the comely humanoid.
The writing is laughable and I'm not sure it's all the fault of the translator. *shrug* Who needs quality prose or a competent translation when the story is this berserk.
I loved this tender scene:
"Hey Paul. You'd better be careful about Bara. She was making a big fuss about how you were a scrap battery. If she gets wind of your big secret, it's not going to be pretty."
"Penn, Bara is your wife. As long as you don't screw up, there's no fear of her finding out."
"Yeah, but that woman is as shrewd as any man. I can't tell her what to do."
"Penn, for a husband you sure whine miserably."
"Actually, I'm considering giving up being a husband. Being married to a woman like that completely sucks out the life from me."
"Really, are you serious? If you got divorced I'm sure you'd just find another wife. Do you have someone in mind?"
"Are you kidding? There aren't any nice girls out there who are right for me. Hey Paul, to be honest... I think it would be great if you weren't my guy friend, but my girl friend."
"Girl friend?" Paul blinked his eyes, mouth agape. "Penn, do you really mean that?"
"Do I mean it? Of course I do. Why would you ask that sort of thing?"
Paul grabbed Penn's hand and silently led him behind a dividing partition in the corner of the room.
There was the sound of clothes shuffling. Paul's shirt appeared, draped over the top of the partition. There was a clang as a belt was drooped over the partition.
At that moment, a startled yell came from behind the partition; Penn's screams drowned out the voice of Paul trying to calm him down.
"Oh... That's what she meant by the rumor you were doing dissections on your own body. This is some surgery you've done. You disgust me!"
Don't worry, romance fans: Penn eventually gets over his unseemly transphobia and settles down with Paul. And Bara gets her own sex change, after realizing that turning into a man will help her get past the boredom she has with life.
SPOILER: literally the whole country dies at the end due to overexposure to the music bath. All except its wily inventor Professor Kohak, who becomes the leader of the new "Android Nation of Kohak." Fun!
Clemence Housman is perhaps best known for being an activist in the English suffragette movement of the late 19th century and as a co-founder of SuffrClemence Housman is perhaps best known for being an activist in the English suffragette movement of the late 19th century and as a co-founder of Suffrage Atelier, an artist's collective. As a member of the Women's Tax Resistance League, she spent a brief time in prison, released shortly after her imprisonment due to protests by supporters. (Thank you Wikipedia for that useful information!) Clearly she was a remarkable person, influential in an important movement and a source of great support for women.
She is also the author of my favorite classic horror short story "The Were-Wolf." The story is enchanting, evocative and layered and beautifully written, in my estimation a perfect work. It was written in 1896 and can be found in many places, including Masters of Horror.
I wrote all of that to avoid getting to this point: I completely loathed her novel The Unknown Sea. What a crashing disappointment. Just dreadful to read and weirdly offensive to me on a spiritual level. "Offensive on a spiritual level" - what does that even mean? Again per Wikipedia, each of her works is a 'Christian fantasy' that dramatises religious themes. (An aside: I will have to reread "The Were-Wolf" another time, with that knowledge as a lens.) As someone interested in spirituality and as a person who loves God - I doubt I qualify as a 'Christian' per se, but Christianity is the faith with which I feel the most connection - her interest in spiritual matters is something that would usually increase my own interest in her writings. Her faith is not the cause of my irritation with this confounded book; the irritation comes from her interpretation of that faith.
The story is about a young coral-fisher, a foundling from a place where folks have lighter hair and complexions (Scandinavia?) taken in by swarthier folks further south (the Mediterranean?) - in a seaside village. I mention the physical appearances because they are described almost obsessively by the author as well, so I imagine they were of some importance to her. The child is the sole survivor of a shipwreck and is named 'Christian' due to the inscription on the necklace found upon him. Although his parents are kindly (despite his mother's religious fanaticism), the villagers surrounding them are a brutal, violent, suspicious, and superstition lot who never accept the boy and give him the moniker 'The Alien'.
The novel starts out fine, although the prose is strangely stilted in comparison to "The Were-Wolf" - the writing made this far from easy or pleasurable to read. Hardy young sailor Christian survives a storm by landing on the Isle of Dread, which is always avoided by locals. On its shore, he spies a beautiful and naked young witch. He falls instantly in love, imagining his foot upon the footprint she left on the island's sand. (I did enjoy that strange, oddly sweet image.) But when he meets her in person, she teases and taunts him, and secretly chooses to send him back to the safety of his village, where she will somehow slowly and utterly destroy his life - the other options she rejects being to either kill him instantly or to keep him on her isle.
And so Christian is returned to his village, and in short order the villagers rise up against him, torturing him and leaving him for dead. He survives and loses his mind, becoming a man-child. A girl who has also been taken in by his parents is set up to be his wife, but the marriage never occurs - both Christian and the girl understand that his infatuation with the witch is an insurmountable barrier, despite her own love for him. A rival attempts to murder him; he regains his mind and nearly kills that rival, staying his hand only because of his promise to his mother to never return evil with evil. Throughout the novel we see Christian continually turn the other cheek, despite his great strength and the injustices heaped upon him. He struggles and struggles and struggles; he meets the witch again and again; his mother guilt-trips him again and again. In the end, he returns to the Isle of Dread one last time, where the witch not only continues to spurn him, but makes sure he understands that she is the architect of the ruination of his life. He dies alone and rejected, a martyr, his body lost at sea. But his self-sacrifice shall apparently redeem the witch - she realizes the error of her evil ways, rushes to a nearby convent, dies. His father has also died, his mother continues on, his stepsister remembers him sadly, as does his rival. And then they move on. The author makes sure that the reader knows that there is no happily ever after on this mortal coil, for anyone, in a nihilistic final chapter that details how all of this will be forgotten, time will march on, no lessons were learned, and the only happiness to be found is that of the afterlife.
Turn the other cheek, be rejected and harmed, turn the other cheek, be preyed upon, turn the other cheek, die alone and broken-hearted. Your reward shall be in Heaven. What the fuck kind of allegory is that supposed to be? Christian is clearly a Jesus figure, but come on. Is this how the author viewed the trials and tribulations of Christians? Lord in Heaven, her perspective on Christianity was revolting. The Unknown Sea is misery porn at its most hysterical and self-indulgent. I'm so glad Housman had other interests....more
I appreciate the independent journalist Matt Taibbi; he's a reliably intelligent, critical, anti-authoritarian writer who usually leans far-left. Due I appreciate the independent journalist Matt Taibbi; he's a reliably intelligent, critical, anti-authoritarian writer who usually leans far-left. Due to his exposé "The Twitter Files" and his perceived bias against Democrats and the current administration, he received a lot of heat from other journalists, social media, and various politicians (including a shameful threat from hack careerist Stacey Plaskett). Some of the attacks against him focused on cherry-picked quotes from this oversized book, a sort of self-exposé detailing misadventures editing the infamous eXile, an antiestablishment and often trashy publication for trashy expats living in trashy 90s Russia...
☭
Chapter 1: Mark Ames
what I didn't realize before reading was that the actual creator of eXile is Mark Ames, who in this first chapter recounts how the magazine came into being. it is in all ways a very subjective and personal recounting. it also took me over a month to get through. very hard to read! Ames is equal parts self-loathing and full of contempt for the entire world around him. he fell in love with 90s Moscow because it is violent, trashy, corrupt, cold, ugly, and bleak. literally those are his reasons. to Ames, the city is a physical manifestation of his own world view, and so it felt like coming to his true home when he moved there. it was beyond disagreeable being inside this fellow's head. his own self-debasement and his debased view of the humans around him made this as enjoyable as looking at the excrement someone left behind in an alley. Notes from Underground, meet your child Mark Ames.
I'm Gen X, the best generation since the Silent Generation. of course, it's inane making generalizations about an entire generation; such lists of traits often have little meaning within the context of individual lives. that said, I'm going to go ahead and make those generalizations. unlike the bombastic and complacent Boomers, the maudlin and self-righteous Millennials, and the sadly ill-equipped-for-life Zoomers, disaffected Gen X (supposedly) centers such underrated virtues as detachment and independence. in the lore of generational generalizations, nothing is less cool to a Gen X-er than getting all emotional about the vagaries of fate; Gen X has no time for crybabies and people who go on about their various traumas. but there is a flip side to that old coin: the potential for callousness. that tendency is front and center in this first chapter. it was just so ugly, from Ames' sneering at the suffering of various dipshits, to his detached acceptance of corruption & addiction & violence, to the way he physically describes both himself and all the people around him in the most degrading ways possible. back in the 90s, this would have been a person I'd sneer back at. here in 2023, it was like torture reading his perspective.
Chapters 2 - 4: Matt Taibbi
what a great antidote to having to deal with Ames' cruel and adolescent commentary! Taibbi's cold shower helped clean some of the grime off of this book.
Chapter 2 is all about Matt Taibbi. his life before, during, after, and during (again) Russia. Including some time spent in Mongolia, his bout with a life-threatening illness, and his own perspective on the creating and building of the eXile. I really appreciated his take on Russia during this time period: his is a cynical and incredibly critical way of looking at this society, but also a realistic one that doesn't reduce everything to a sneering joke. he does come across as a sarcastic, smarter-than-you asshole - a contrast to Ames' self-indulgent, nihilistic monster - but one who is still, in his own way, earnestly trying to understand and connect with a culture going through a complex identity shift.
Chapter 3 is a deep dive into both the world of the eXile and the world that the eXile was trying to mock and expose. mainly, various hypocritical neoliberal individuals and institutions that were making bank in Russia, usually at the expense of Russians. if you've heard of the term "dirtbag left" then you know the style and the political stance that Taibbi and the eXile channel - despite coming about two decades before dirtbag left writers became popular. Taibbi is hard left and it shows. practitioners of neoliberalism get extreme beatings within the eXile's pages, with the specific aim of running certain persons and publications out of town. the violence and corruption of 90s Russian society also gets eXposed, to a lesser degree, including via a queasy column that gloated over the high number of murders happening everywhere in Russia ("Death Porn" is the column's literal title). semi-Marxist muckracking side by side juvenile atrocity-mongering, as well as Taibbi & Ames' absolute willingness to be vicious antagonists, made the eXile a uniquely pungent rag. and, as with the dirtbag leftists that popped up 20 years later, there was no shyness when it comes to being un-pc: alongside Western neolibs and Russian politician-thugs, Jews & women & blacks received equally disrespectful treatment in the pages of the eXile, and to an extent, within this chapter.
Chapter 4 is weirdly inside baseball, all about deeply amoral American expat Michael Bass, an ex-con and wannabe power broker, infamous for a range of repulsive yet somehow boring shenanigans. Bass gets multiple beatings within the eXile (including a front page photo of Bass post-actual beating). this fascinating yet rather pointless chapter made me somehow ever so slightly sympathetic to a sex-trafficker and suck-up to the Russian powers that be. which is kind of a reverse accomplishment? it's that bad of a beating. hard not to feel sorry for the guy, a bit. mean Matt Taibbi!
Chapters 5-7: Mark Ames again
writers who aren't sellouts write about what they are actually interested in. in these three chapters, Ames writes about drugs, sex, and revenge. Ames is not a sellout! despite my loathing of his incredibly obnoxious and juvenile nihilism, the guy can really write. his natural talent (usually) shines, despite the cynicism. these chapters are basically fictive memoirs written in an intense gonzo style that is no doubt influenced by his idols Hunter S. Thompson and Eduard Limonov. and by "fictive" I mean more in the sense of a practiced raconteur's use of exaggeration for effect... these dirty, sickening, soul-deadening stories still have the ring of unvarnished truth to them. kudos?
Chapter 5 is an often fascinating mess. Ames writes that he was on a lot of drugs while writing this very chapter, which is about his love of drugs. namely, various forms of crank and heroin, which he prefers to mainline. the reader learns all about his habits, how to obtain drugs in 90s Moscow, and how he finally got in with the appropriate druggie crowd instead of having to socialize with the bougie normie expats ("Beige-ists") that he understandably despises. the problem with this chapter is that it was so clearly written... on drugs. he literally repeats anecdotes that he's told earlier in the book and sometimes repeats them again in the same chapter. there's a lot that was compelling but there was also a lot of annoying dross. the chapter felt like listening to someone high out of their mind. which he was.
Chapter 6 is the most infamous of the book. "White God Complex" is all about his sexual misadventures. his thoughts on women are, as they say, unreformed. to say the least! malcontent Mark scorns both macho fratbros and slimy eurotrash, but his deeply dehumanizing take on nubile devushkas comes from the same misogynist perspective. it is all about scoring the most chicks, preferably teens, the younger and more virginal the better, without condoms even better, anal the best. this - for any sheltered readers - is typical guy talk. from my college years listening to drunk Greeks horny for freshmen and openly theorizing about what they'd do to them, through my late 20s working in the corporate world and hearing casual comments from walking boners like "that bitch needs to be gangraped" - usually delivered in a blank, quasi-ironic monotone - I'm more than passingly familiar with how moronic, vicious, and sleazy many dudes can sound. yet the chapter surprised even me.
I think the surprise I felt reading this chapter came from actually reading it. rather than hearing it. I'm not sure I've read a personal narrative (despite its no doubt frequent tall tales) that is so wall to wall no holds barred in its graphic storytelling. we read all about the sex life of this swarthy, ape-ish, not-unattractive former-jock turned dirtbag druggie, all the details. in particular the ability of expats like him to use his Western Man status to repeatedly score sex in second-world Russia and Belarus. he's not cocksure, he's just American. thus the "White God Complex": sexually open Slavic women apparently threw themselves at him and others of his ilk, in the hopes of being whisked away from post-Soviet impoverishment. he, in turn, screwed them repeatedly then kicked them to the curb, and sometimes bullied them into having abortions. and then he occasionally wrote about them - demeaningly, of course - within the pages of the eXile. his favorite appeared to be Lena, a drug-dealing whore and ex-convict, who would excite him with tales of her raping other inmates during her frequent times in prison. so sad they couldn't make their touching relationship work out in the end!
Chapter 7 is how Ames dealt with hate mail and various anti-eXile campaigns from liberal Americans out to get our intrepid young (ish) hero. not a bad chapter, but it strangely made me want to read actual political articles by the author, rather than filthy tales of revenge, drug binging, and sex with underage Russians. those articles are apparently what gave eXile some sort of credibility inside and outside of Russia. why weren't there more examples of that writing? one piece that was included - "The Rise and Fall of Moscow's Expat Royalty" was fascinating.
Chapter 8: Matt Taibbi again
I wish I had read this chapter first! this is the Taibbi that I know and love (minus the occasional bits of crude misogyny, which honestly came as a big surprise whenever they appeared). "Hacks" is all about the ridiculous journalists of Western media. specifically, foreign correspondents in Moscow whose reporting sought only to underline the goals of neoliberalism and to portray Russians as simple-minded bumpkins (or Fresh New Voices who espouse Western economic values)... and who often couldn't even speak the language. these reporters rarely had a problem borrowing entire stories from each other - and themselves. Matt Taibbi rails against this cadre of grifters and how their entire world view was (and is) antithetical to true journalism.
"My colleagues weren't just stupid and petty. They were shilling for the rich and sucking up to tyrants, teaming up to squelch dissent, keeping the world, and particularly rich America, isolated from desperate emergencies.
Working for the eXile made me realize that right and wrong really do still exist, that the struggle between good and evil hadn't been phased out of existence. The fundamental things really did apply, as time goes by. All the rights that I'd enjoyed growing up - free speech, the rule of law - they were all tenuous and fragile, constantly in danger of being taken away. And everybody, even people working in professions as seemingly stupid and inane as newspaper writing, was playing a part in determining whether we kept them or lost them."
I wish the book had more chapters like this last one! still, overall this was a pretty interesting albeit frequently grueling experience. part squirm-inducing memoir, part diatribe against complacent and/or corrupt journalism....more
easily the most brutal bodice-ripper I've read yet, due to a couple insane scenes. but also, somehow, not the most intense? I think that's because itseasily the most brutal bodice-ripper I've read yet, due to a couple insane scenes. but also, somehow, not the most intense? I think that's because its heroine is a figment of a character and the same goes for the rest of the cast - outside of the novel's berserk, schizophrenically-depicted so-called hero. ("so-called hero" is probably the correct description for most Bodice Ripper Heroes.) The Silver Devil takes the prize for most intense; A Pirate's Love would have taken the prize for most rapes in one book, until Passion's Dawn entered the competition. similar to the weird lack of affect in Pirate's Love, there's a gormless quality to the writing that gives the impression of an author blandly detailing her most secret rape fantasies while forgetting things like narrative, characterization, tone, consistent writing style, etc.
the good or at least um eyebrow-raising:
(1) occasionally the writing actually does deliver that supercharged purple prose that I have come to rely on when reading this genre. for example, "Rain slashed the night and silver daggers of lightning pierced the darkness, sending the wind howling in protest and pain. It rattled the shutters seeking refuge but there was no escape from the jagged fingers of fire that sizzled and ravaged the storm." even the wind gets assaulted in this book, wow.
(2) the incredibly over the top rape-antics (rantics?) of the so-called hero were like nothing I've read in mainstream, non-horror fiction for many years. like since I read de Sade in college! good grief, our so-called hero rapes our virginal heroine bloody on her wedding night, right next to her passed-out husband, who he has drugged, and oh who is also his father. in an effort to plant his seed, he proceeds to rape her nearly every night over the course of who knows how many weeks, because revenge on an unloving father is a dish best served by an illegitimate child. of course he is secretly in love with her, which naturally explains why at one point he goes berserk with annoyance and attempts to drown her, and at another point is so upset that he ties her up and systematically delivers both bruises and BITES over her entire body, following up by branding her ass with his own signet ring, all in front of her tied-up lover who he has just kicked senseless. I'm very used to the rape-aholic so-called heroes of BR, but this guy is another level. despite his brutality, Scott Harrington is mainly characterized as a cheeky fellow with knowing brown eyes, a boyish grin, and a love of children. I mean, he's the whole package.
(3) after Scott allows himself to get shot in a duel by the lover he had previously beaten and forced to watch his rantics, he makes sure to put off medical care long enough for his extremely painful wound to get infected and therefore cause days and days of more excruciating pain. I guess this is his way of saying sorry to Angela Carlyle, his rape/bruise/bite/brand victim and the love of his life. Angela spends all of her time in his sick room as he feverishly writhes in pain, fighting death. she's not there to administer to him though. she's there because she really enjoys witnessing his agonies and doesn't want to miss a single moment of that good stuff. the attending physician understandably side-eyes her and her gloating smiles during his own visits. all of this was laugh-out-loud funny to me.
the very, very bad:
I'm not going to harshly judge a book within the notoriously rape-heavy genre literally called "Bodice Rippers" simply because it has rape(s) in it. I did that with my first one, A Pirate's Love, but now I'm older & wiser jaded. plus that would be like judging a science fiction novel because it is set in the future. (and the very rapey Silver Devil and Lemonade were both fantastic books.) but I will judge a book harshly if it features a heroine who:
(1) has no life, internal or external, outside of her experience of being raped and/or loved. I'm not sure I've read another BR that has a heroine this flat. admittedly, my sample size is small. but still. Angela Carlyle is characterized as *sigh* feisty, but that's about it. other BR heroines have at least some other things going on in their lives and in their minds. not this one. the only thing going on with Angela is how:
(2) her repeated rapes have made her increasingly dick-hungry. that's crass, but I'm not sure there's a better way to describe what Michele DuBarry does with her heroine. passion has indeed dawned: these rapes make Angela come alive. enough so that she eventually realizes that she prefers Scott when he is in a more rambunctious rape mood, not a cold mood when he doesn't even fully undress. (Scott in turns realizes that he prefers this girl who he can hurt so good to his affectionate but boring regular sex partner.) Angela gets annoyed when he occasionally skips one of his nightly rape-visits and is practically distraught over her lack of dick after he decides to temporarily move to Jamaica to manage his slave plantation (we can add "he's also a slaver" to the list of Scott's charms).
there's a brief - and awful - middle section where Angela is kidnapped while Scott is away by "Gentleman Jack" who she eventually forces to become her lover because she's getting so horny being around him. later, after her rescue, her sweet & kindly rescuer/lover #3 just up and rapes her out of exasperation, and this is about the only time she is turned on by him during their years-long relationship. all of this was not just extremely gross to read, it was... embarrassing? I think it's okay to have really pervy sadistic/masochistic rape fantasies, you do you in the privacy of your own head and/or bedroom... but it is a little mortifying when an author is basically just trotting out her weird sex fantasies and not bothering to do anything to attach those fantasies to an actual story with actual characters. I really don't think that being raped is something that will make a girl horny for more. even the doltish A Pirate's Love appeared to understand that. you deserve 1 star for thinking that, book!...more
some sort of gay vampire/wizard/clothier decides to help a hillbilly country singer hit the big time by making him a bunch of rhinestone cowboy suits,some sort of gay vampire/wizard/clothier decides to help a hillbilly country singer hit the big time by making him a bunch of rhinestone cowboy suits, feasting merrily on his blood and ass all the while.
poor Hank: catapulted into the fame of the Grand Ole Opry, and soon after, national celebrity, while also being manipulated into an obliterating alcoholism. not to mention being raped repeatedly while under sedation. best not to discuss the beyond gross things that happen to the two girls in love with him. this is an exceedingly cruel horror tale, mainly told from the perspective of the smug and sadistic villain. the narrative has shades of Pygmalion; the tone is comic; the style channels affectless Dennis Cooper. and so it makes perfect sense that Cooper himself provides the book's first laudatory quote on the blurb page. LOL well I also like people who are similar to me. I think this is some sort of indie cult classic? in Canada? in that subset of queer postmodern writers & readers who worship at the altar of Dennis Cooper? anyway, I despise sadism (at least in others) and so found this to be a very repulsive experience.
despite the 1 star and the fact that I loathed this book, must be said that there is a quantity of distinctive prose and an excess of originality on display....more
A violently intense Victorian romance, if you can even call it a romance. This book is up there with As Meat Loves Salt & Endless Love & The Silver DeA violently intense Victorian romance, if you can even call it a romance. This book is up there with As Meat Loves Salt & Endless Love & The Silver Devil when it comes to its horrifying, over the top antihero, the over the top emotions on display, and its lack of interest in making its readers comfortable. While still being a rich, nuanced story set in a believable milieu and featuring prose that is sometimes elegant, sometimes eccentrically mannered, always literary. Wow bob wow.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book contains rape.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book has a very explicit and lengthy rape scene that comes out of nowhere and is not made remotely sexy because it depicts an actual physical and emotional assault, not a fantasy of a bodice being ripped and a girl saying no when she really means yes. this is a beating and a sexual assault, not a ravishment. the girl in question vomits at the end of this scene. because who wouldn't.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book lives in a world full of understandable, frequently relatable, often amusing characters in a Victorian setting where manners are as important as class status, marriage prospects, and money. it's all so delicate and subtle, so very Jane Austen. and yet TRIGGER WARNING! this book is full of deeply broken hearts and minds, brutal rape and dreams of revenge, of murder. and yet these characters tease and banter with each other, do comic and adorable things, play with children and animals, support each other through hard times, just like regular human beings do, and despite the fact that one of them was raped and another is the rapist. because no person is just one thing, even victims, even monsters.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book has a spilled glass of lemonade that leads to much else. is the lemonade to blame, or the humans spilling those glasses of lemonade, or the society that created humans who treat each other as far less than human, less than a glass of lemonade?
TRIGGER WARNING! this book has a woman who is a rape victim but who is not a victim of life. she does not 'get over' this rape but it also does not define her. this woman fights with all the tools she has at her disposal, she holds grudges, she doesn't excuse her rapist, she is bitter about the injustice of her experience. that bitterness does not magically turn into understanding in order to satisfy any reader who just wants her to move on and see the man inside the beast so that they can have a happy sexy romance; nor does that bitterness turn into the sole motivation for her existence so that the reader can have a satisfying revenge drama.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book has a man who is a monstrous rapist but who is not a monster in life. he recognizes that what he did was not just out of character, it was evil: an act for which he needs to atone. and yet he continues to act cruelly, as cruel as he was before the rape, because recognizing that an act is evil does not automatically change a person. he wants to atone but he has other things that consume him: he is living in a revenge drama of his own, he wants to rush past atonement because he has not recognized that devoting his life to destroying a villain is in fact destroying his own life by becoming a villain.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book does not paint its lead characters as victim or monster. each person is capable of kindness, of cruelty. each human is the sum of many parts.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book is not really about a woman falling in love or a man carrying out revenge or vice versa, although all four things are roughly the plot of this book. it is not really about the terrible abuses that happened in the childhood of a man and in the adulthood of a woman. it has other things on its mind. sometimes you don't get over the things that happened to you but you can make sure that those things don't define you. you can grow and transform who you are, even if that transformation is internal. and you may be able to change yourself but it will be harder to change another person, let alone change the world, because TRIGGER WARNING! this book is also about how sometimes we don't get what we want, not right away, maybe never, maybe not in the way that we wanted. but sometimes a person can forgive, if there is actual atonement. sometimes a rapist can become worthy of love. and sometimes a villain doesn't get their due. life isn't a revenge novel and the bad guys often don't get punished and injustices sometimes remain injustices. TRIGGER WARNING! this book is about how a life can't be lived solely by living inside of your head, by continually revisiting your sorrows and anger and trauma. you have to live for other things; that is how a person who has been abused learns to cope with life. understanding that lesson is how our abused heroine and our abused hero eventually find grace, with each other and most importantly, within themselves. that is what this physically and emotional brutal book is all about.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book has a happy ending....more
there is a battle happening within In Silent Graves involving three diametrically opposed forces: Braunbeck's vision, his actual skills, and his urge there is a battle happening within In Silent Graves involving three diametrically opposed forces: Braunbeck's vision, his actual skills, and his urge to shock & disgust. unfortunately the latter two trump the first. the author's vision is striking: he wants to weave a tapestry full of loss and mourning, creepy folk horror and the darkest of dark fantasy and the eeriest of October Season hauntings, storytelling that is layered and ambiguous. but his skills don't support his ambitions. the reviews for this book are schizophrenic: some laud the literary prose while detesting flat characterization, others despise the pretensions of the prose but applaud the realistic characters, still others appreciate the narrative and ideas but don't feel the skills are there to execute. I think I'm in the third camp? I admire ambition but there is such an amateurishness present at times, from the unrealistic dialogue to the regular misuse of words that an editor should have corrected (e.g. "sparse, matted chest hair"). this was often a pain in the ass to read. it brought out my own inner editor and at times I just wanted to grab a highlighter and pen so I could bring to the author's attention the many things that could have been improved if more rigor and reflection had been applied to the writing.
but there was nothing to be improved about Braunbeck's weird child-centered obsessions that really, as they say, go there. you can't improve bullshit. the urge to disturb people can be a slippery slope for writers prone to self-indulgence, and I think that some don't realize their story is sliding into eye-rolling bullshit with every new instance of vile, inexplicable behavior that they are trotting out and putting on display. in this book, these over the top scenes involve infants & kids & the physically disabled & a father grieving over his dead family: repulsive bizarro moments where readers like myself are taken out of the story and shoved into a place of reacting with disgust over what was just read and then questioning the author's motives for even bringing me to that place. there's only so much that I can tolerate before I have to say n to the o to the no no no. and so I gave up, I think about halfway. life's too short to deal with this....more
As another reviewer notes, it starts off so classy. (Well not quite - the prelude is shrill and bloody, but that's over soon enough.) Trevor Hoyle is As another reviewer notes, it starts off so classy. (Well not quite - the prelude is shrill and bloody, but that's over soon enough.) Trevor Hoyle is a rather elegant writer, paying careful attention to how his characters look, move, and talk. His prose is calm and thoughtful and dare I say it, refined. Lovely, atmospheric descriptions of landscapes and homes that are pleasing to read about if not always pleasing to his characters' eyes. The mystery of Who & Where Is The Witch is carefully unspooled and refracted through multiple perspectives, all of them completely sympathetic. There are some shivers and shocks to be had as well, still in the classy vein, in particular with the startling appearance of a misshapen Something and two very upsetting falls on a staircase. There's even a character with the classy name of Dr. Ravenscroft. And he's a very classy fellow!
But then it's like the author had a convulsion near the end and shouted to himself You Know What? Fuck This! and then all of a sudden we have some very explicitly described attempted rapes (one by demon dog and the other by a grotesque baby-shaped homunculus with a huge penis) and finally that ole standby, death by blowjob. Not that I'm complaining, I sometimes like my trash served up harsh & horrible. Still, that tone shift was something else.
"Now that God is dead we can begin."
That line was something else too, a jaw was dropped....more
Of course this is trash, but it was so creepy and absurd at times that I feel like I should give it more than 1 star. The so bad it's good-ness of it Of course this is trash, but it was so creepy and absurd at times that I feel like I should give it more than 1 star. The so bad it's good-ness of it all was kinda fascinating. This was a top YA novel a decade ago? Wow, that's wild.
synopsis: what happens when a boy stalker finally "reaches out" to the girl he's stalking, and also wants to kill, and it turns out she can be a stalker too, and then a third stalker tries to get between them and then all of a sudden there's a fourth stalker who's been there all along?
one of them is a fallen angel, another is a death angel, a third is a descendant of angels, and the fourth is having what's known as "trouble with angels". you figure out who is who, no spoilers allowed!
NEXT WILL BE SPOILERS but honestly who cares - if this is your kind of book, you should have read it already. and if you haven't by now, that doesn't matter either because the book is 10 years old and Young Adult years are like dog years so it has basically been around for what feels like 70 years and so you know all about it anyway.
I have so many parts of this book lodged up in my mind that I'm still dumbfounded by, I just don't know if I can list them all. I could go on and on about the worst best friend ever - I mean this girl doesn't just continually humiliate our heroine in public, she calls in a bomb threat to the high school to enable her buddy's stalking, and later tries to force her to go camping with some dude that just physically assaulted her (not the hero this time, and not even a stalker, just the third point on the love triangle) by excusing it as "he was just drunk" because LOL isn't that a great excuse! but I not only can't stand that character, she's not even a stalker either, so I'm not going to waste more time on Worst Best Friend. although I think I just wasted a lot of time on her.
instead I will just treasure the memory of that one stalking scene (so many to choose from) where the heroine goes from a booth in a restaurant to the bathroom to change into what appears to be a hooker outfit so that she can question a bartender at the same restaurant. that was definitely some creative stalking investigating and the hooker outfit was um completely necessary.
the hero has - in addition to chiseled abs, dangerous eyes that you can get lost in, and apparently a body that smells like a combination of mint and cigars (not joking) - quite a lot of mysterious powers. these powers include telepathy, which allows him to cheekily and sometimes sexily enter her mind to read her thoughts and sexually harass her and of course eventually save her life and - in another moment I will always treasure - help her do better at baseball.
I know that the other big controversy about this book besides the stalking is the hero's tendency to invade the heroine's personal space and get super handsy and say dirty things to her, often in the middle of class with the teacher egging him on, but I'm not going to critique that, because even though the heroine says she doesn't want him to do that she often realizes she loves it and then she often realizes she hates it because he's scary except that she actually loves it, he's so hot, except no she actually hates it, he's a predator, no he's her protector, except that he literally said he planned on killing her, except she thinks he can't possibly mean it, so she loves it, except she actually feels she hates it, except she actually loves it, no she hates how he chases her around the parking garage, well she may as well get a ride home from him after that, go ahead and invite yourself in and there are some knives you can wave around at me that's not threatening at all because he's just making tacos, no she hates it no she loves it no she actually doesn't appreciate being locked in a motel room with him, no she loves it, oops all of her clothes are soaked and there's only a towel to wear, oops his t-shirt is soaked better take it off, no she hates it, no, really, she loves it, so I guess it's all okay and consensual, and after all, he does love her! love wins!
fun fact: did you know there is a whole subgenre of erotic fiction devoted to "mind control"?
well everyone has their kinks, so I'm not judging. oh yes I am. Becca Fitzgerald clearly loves this subgenre. poor weak-minded Stalker #2 (our heroine) gets mind-controlled so hard and so long by Stalker #1 (hero) & Stalker #4 (final boss) that it goes from weird to confusing to uh oh am I reading about a fetish that the author accidentally decided to tell the world about? at first, it's relatively harmless mind control, like making you think your seat belt flew off and causing you to almost fall out of a roller coaster but you don't, LOL he's just messing with you, he doesn't really want to kill you, except he does. but at the *cough* climax, it's no longer just illusions anymore, boyfriend psychically enters girlfriend's body to literally control how her body moves, and it's just so literal I was like Author! c'mon! and of course it's to save her life so no harm no foul, that's kind of an assumed consent, right? make that body move bro, she loves it. oops, now she's dead. but don't worry - he also has the power to raise that hot teen body from the dead!
a happy ending: of course all's well that ends well because our hero levels up into a "guardian angel" (for real) and so now he gets to literally stalk her forever. and maybe a little mind control too, to keep things fresh?
Sometime in late 2011, after my great experience reading Catching Fire, I went on a giant Young Adult buying binge because I realized I had fallen wildly in love with the genre. Although that love eventually turned into more of an earnest and realistic friendship, I am still very fond of YA.
Anyway, here's what I've read and what I still need to read:
the inhuman ghouls skulk about the graveyard at night, waiting for the humans to depart, scrambling atop the graves and scrabbling for purchase, tearithe inhuman ghouls skulk about the graveyard at night, waiting for the humans to depart, scrambling atop the graves and scrabbling for purchase, tearing the coffin asunder, ripping the rotting flesh from bone, slurping up the entrails and scooping out the brains, to relive the memories of tonight's tasty dish. the human ghouls would do the same, their heavy-breathing necromantic fantasies leading them to cemetery and tomb, to play with corpses, to dance with them, to copulate in now-emptied coffins, atop the drying fluids and writhing maggots. the sorcerer makes the dead alive again, he rapes and cavorts with his undead playthings. the living and the dead alike yearn for their one true perfect love, no matter the cost and no matter the body count. the young and the old alike live in the daydreams and nightmares of the dead, turned playthings. adventuresses and noblemen and woodcarvers alike shall be drawn into plots and magic and long-games played by Fate and other unkindly forces. shudder shudder toil and trouble/bodies burn and corpses bubble. and that's the synopsis!
I loved this horrible collection. Brian McNaughton exhumes the mind of Clark Ashton Smith to use as inspiration, his descriptions of a dark fantasy horrorland often voluptuous, a place of magic and monstrosities and little lives just tryin' to live their lives, you know? Don't judge them. McNaughton channels the spirit of Jack Vance in his prose full of dry nonchalance and sardonic wit, in his grouchy and self-absorbed characters trying to figure out who they are, or were, seldom looking at the big picture or the shape of the vaults they've trapped themselves in, rarely noticing paths of potential escape, instead making a home below. I smiled so much at the decadent cleverness, the cheerful audacity, despite the constant gruesomeness on display, the necrophilia and incest, brutality and morbidity, the dank festering horror of it all. a delightful book!
these are sometimes linked stories set in a bizarre and gothic, beautifully detailed fantasy world. I'm glad I didn't read this as a kid, it would have ruined me!
Well I suppose it was a good thing that the friends Truman Capote chose to publicly betray and humiliate were mainly a bunch of high society matrons (Well I suppose it was a good thing that the friends Truman Capote chose to publicly betray and humiliate were mainly a bunch of high society matrons (including one on her deathbed from cancer) because otherwise I think someone might have gotten his ass kicked. Deservedly.
Name dropping. Name dropping. Name dropping. Name dropping. Name dropping! Reading this was like being forced to spend a weekend with some long-winded, pretentious air-quoter who glories in dropping the names of all of his famous friends and acquaintances - most of whom I've never heard of - while also doing his gossipy, petty best to trash each of them completely, on the most repulsively personal of levels. I've had to deal with such weekends, it's not fun. Just like this book: not fun. I wanted sparkling, somewhat malicious wit, not an open-mouthed deep dive into the sewers led by a person who loves talking shit.
This was a particularly sad and frustrating experience because prior to this book, Capote had talent to burn. Some of his stories are amazing. I read his classic In Cold Blood way back in college and it still stays with me, his ability to get inside a head, that calm mastery of his effects, the indelible prose. The intensity, the tension, the restraint.
But burn that talent he did, and how. Capote certainly didn't do things by halves. There is the ghost of a vaguely intriguing idea in this incomplete set of linked novellas, but it is totally lost in the toxic crap. The last one "La Côte Basque" is possibly the single most tediously bitchy story I've ever had the displeasure of reading. It is also the story that ruined Capote: his friends all understandably turned their backs on him after being vilified in print, and he sunk into a pit of alcohol, drugs, and a particularly Capote-esque stew of megalomania and depression. Karmic payback's a bitch, much like Capote. I shed a theoretical tear for the talent lost but certainly not for the man himself....more
French dandy Philippe Julian was an illustrator, art historian, biographer, and occasional writer of fiction. His interests: the morbid, the grotesqueFrench dandy Philippe Julian was an illustrator, art historian, biographer, and occasional writer of fiction. His interests: the morbid, the grotesque, the ornate; homoeroticism, transvestism, sadomasochism; and above all, decadence. And thank you very much Wikipedia for letting me know about all of those sides of him. I would have just left it at "Philippe Julian was super perverted" if it weren't for my good buddy Wikipedia dropping some knowledge on me. And thank you very much Sketchbook for their review of this, which reminded me that I've had this squirreled away for a couple decades, unread. Anyway, it sounds like Julian was a man after my own heart. Although I have yet to mess with transvestism. One of these days...
So yeah this book is what one would call deliciously decadent. It's a dessert dish featured as an entree, followed by more dessert dishes, oh and they are all made of poison. A toxic confection. It is basically a series of stories told to a young Frenchman by a blind Scandinavian beggar in Cairo, recounting that beggar's former life as a bored student abroad who is willingly kidnapped and delivered into a very strange court existing on an Egyptian peninsula. And there he finds that the sex is plentiful (and free!), the days are hot and the nights are cool but um also pretty hot, the men are women, the women are men, the servants are enslaved, the children are for sale, the ruler is one of the last remaining survivors of the Russian aristocracy and her guests are various famous authors & aristocrats & assholes. Eventually, everyone's ridiculous ambitions combined with a ghastly but understandable uprising by those exiled from this court to some awful backyard will cause it all to end in flames, murder, atrocity, and an almost offhand blinding of our poor Nordic stud who should probably have kept his own ambitions in check and escaped long ago with one or more of his girlfriends and some filched royal jewels. Plus the novel features a highly intelligent baboon named Monsieur who is basically the only decent individual in the entire cast.
SPOILER sweet Monsieur survives!
I enjoyed it all well enough. What is it saying? Not much, just appreciate the slow decadent ride. You already know that really really really rich people are capable of doing some really really really fucked up things, and hey the same goes for the middle class people and the poor people as well. Doing really fucked up things to each other is surely a hallmark of the human race.
However I do wish the decadence of the story was matched by equally decadent prose. I kept imagining what someone like Angela Carter could have done with this. Swoon at the thought of all of that overripe prose put in service of such a diabolical narrative! But Julian is an unfortunately dry writer, probably due to his time spent as an historian and biographer. And I don't like my decadence to be served dry, I prefer it overly sauced....more
these characters are dangerously overripe fruit fit to burst, to spray fluids and seed everywhere, juices sickly sweet and pungently sour a
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these characters are dangerously overripe fruit fit to burst, to spray fluids and seed everywhere, juices sickly sweet and pungently sour and acridly bitter, their flesh glossy, their innards rotting. they love their melodrama and they! love! their! exclamation! points!! they arrive on this island paradise ready to break down and ready to break each other down. they are witches and warlocks, actresses and groupies, innocent twins and a predatory 14 year old, priests and virgins and whores of both genders. they burst all over each other while playing various inexplicable games and enacting various inane rituals, all created solely to reveal their hollow cores and lack of soul, and to provide what skeleton there is of a plot. the characters and the story itself teeter constantly between seething malevolence and outraged shock.
this is a rarified world of sophisticates who are basically garbage people. it also appears to be a view of Straight World through a very dated gay lens. the women are mainly over the top, theatrically emotional divas - drag queens turned into women but who have no relation to any women that I've ever met. perhaps I should spend more time with sophisticated garbage people? there is a trans woman as well, treated respectfully by the other guests but quite cruelly by the far from woke author. the men are all studs, their bodies drooled over, fit and hung and hairy (even the priest and even the boy - whose oversize equipment and fuzzy legs are repeatedly described), all ready to fuck with your head while feigning interest in fucking your body. toxic predators, with a smattering of prey. the book itself is quite toxic in its hilariously overheated take on human nature, power, secrets, and sexuality. well, straight people have written gay characters as vicious predators for who knows how long, so I suppose turnabout is fair play. but that doesn't make the book any less noxious, and obnoxiously written. I imagine the lesson to be learned here, the underlying theme, is a fairly reductive one: trust no one, not even yourself; you are probably better off dead.
the book is pretentious, silly, and trashy, yet enjoyable in the way that a bad movie is enjoyable. a bad movie of the excessively mannered, melodramatic, arty sort. it takes itself all too seriously which makes it a pleasing experience to laugh at it. you have to understand that it is telling you nothing useful about the human condition and that its attempt at ambiguous storytelling is a joke; there is nothing in The Vampires that is actually worth understanding. but it is also a lot of fun at times, a rickety rollercoaster tour of garbage lives, a water ride where everyone is drenched and everyone's clothes have to come off. the book has a garbage perspective on relationships, gender, life itself. but! it! is! still! a lot! of pretentious! trashy! silly! stupid! mean! fun!
alright young lady, all you wanna do is KILL KILL KILL because you're free you're free, free to be yourself if you're a psychotic young lady and if yoalright young lady, all you wanna do is KILL KILL KILL because you're free you're free, free to be yourself if you're a psychotic young lady and if you're a second psychotic young lady and if you're a third psychotic young lady and if all of the above are of the so-called "Killing Kind" and all they wanna do is KILL KILL KILL to get their blood pumping their adrenaline rushing which gets the narrative hurtling which gets the reader turning those pages, what next what next, wondering what will happen what will happen to those rich college kids all coupled out in their Myrtle Beach house, what atrocities will happen to them what what what will happen when three psychotic young ladies are calling the shots, like literally, and all it takes is some KILL KILL KILL for some men to show their true mettle, for some men to go soft and for some men to go hard, I think you know what I mean, some men will show what they've got inside of them, some quite literally, but it isn't about those guys it's about the ladies, the psychotic suicidegirl deadeyed coldblooded ladies and all it takes is some KILL KILL KILL for all of the juices and I mean all of the juices to get to flowing, this is a very wet book, and a very straight book, and it's Gay Pride weekend and now it's time to get out there and get my Gay Pride on and I surely do hope I don't run into any creepy straight people because it sounds like all they wanna do is, well, it rhymes with "goodwill" but sorta means the opposite...more
synopsis: lives mired in poverty and cycles of abuse and neglect transform young whippersnappers into a marauding band of murderous, devouring animal-synopsis: lives mired in poverty and cycles of abuse and neglect transform young whippersnappers into a marauding band of murderous, devouring animal-kids.
Lortz tries to bring attention to the supposed nihilism of ghetto life with what amounts to a morality tale disguised as a horrorshow, but it's clear that the author has no real understanding of these lives. this is a drive-by view of tough living and broken surroundings by someone who is horrified, disgusted, and completely clueless; the windows are rolled up and the doors are definitely locked. there is a secret condescension here, along with the lack of dimensions. Lortz paints a picture of excrement and calls it a picture of life in the hood. sorry, but no. I'm not sure whether this is a staid bourgeois perspective or, more likely, a terminally artsy perspective. it certainly doesn't help matters that Lortz's previously displayed fascination with the sexuality of children and of gays has somehow curdled into homophobia and a pretty gross interest in sexualizing kids.
the author's talent with prose actually works against him: his various bits of writerly flair were like ribbons and bows wrapped around said excrement, and often came across as hopelessly amateurish to boot. this is a writer whose past three books I've really enjoyed; after reading this ostentatiously grimy book, it became clear that he is best off writing about milieus that he actually understands: the often eccentric lifestyles of the upper and upper-middle classes.
so yeah, this was super disappointing. I usually love Lortz but this time he overreached and fell into an abyss of pretension, bad writing, and all around repulsiveness.
also, there are way too many cock-rings in this book! I mean 1 is already 1 too many. alas!...more
#1: Ignore how completely pretentious the title "How To Squander One's Writerly Gifts"HOW TO SQUANDER ONE'S WRITERLY GIFTS
12 QUICK & EASY SUGGESTIONS!
#1: Ignore how completely pretentious the title "How To Squander One's Writerly Gifts" will sound to a normal human being. And... a title on a book review for chrissakes.
#2: Be an esteemed author and write the book "John Dollar". It will be a female version of Lord of the Flies. Don't get to the shipwreck until, oh, over halfway through the book.
#3: Confuse Twitter and Instagram with actual modes of intelligent communication.
#4: Make your castaway characters suffer and die horribly within days. Oops, spoiler. Apparently little boys can handle a shipwrecking. Just as apparently, little girls will immediately act like infantile morons who can't be depended on to look for things like, oh, fresh water or shelter. They'd rather bicker and play in the sand. Silly little girls!
#5: Assume that the text and/or emoji that you just sent truly conveys what you are thinking or feeling. 😢
#6: Introduce your child characters via sensitive miniature portraits of their lives in the first half of the novel. Proceed to do nothing further with their characterization. In fact, flatten those characters. It will make them easier to kill off in various excruciating ways!
#7: Really, really believe that the rant you just posted on FB about something that really, really bothered you today is getting your point across to people that really, really care.
#8: Imagine some incredibly loathsome acts. Be creative, have fun with it: make these acts as gross and as cruel and as pointless as possible. Now make your characters see and do those things. Why? Why not! You're the author, after all. Show little shyness in depicting these ridiculously over the top atrocities. However, do show some reticence and hesitancy in illustrating important scenes that may actually help to illuminate the narrative, themes, characterization, the whole purpose for writing your book. Just shyly or slyly hint that such key scenes even took place. You can pass off your decision not to show these things as "ambiguity".
#9: Troll threads. Or blog books on YouTube. Either/or!
#10: Favor style over substance. Misuse your amazing talent for writing idiosyncratic, evocative prose in multiple ways: ever so slightly touch on but never truly examine things like sexism, racism, classism, colonialism, assimilation; instead, unspool page after page of nonsensical, trivial dialogue; prop up easy straw targets like "white people" and "English colonials" without offering the slightest nuance or complexity; create one fully developed (adult) female protagonist and then abandon her halfway through your novel; create one fully developed (child) female protagonist but make sure she comes across as an unsocialized aboriginal who can barely vocalize her thoughts - despite how you've established her as a person of imagination and intelligence - because hell she's the only non-white character so why not, oh and nickname her "Monkey"; write precisely one sex scene and make sure it's an unnecessarily weird one; set up the potential for a redeeming love and then betray it with the most disgusting, nihilistic "twist" you can imagine; pretend that all of this amounts to something even slightly meaningful. End your novel with a whimper.
#11: Exorcise your anger by writing a trying hard to be clever so-called "review", like say this one.
#12: Title your book that purports to be about women with the name of its sole male character: John Dollar.
adorable little frog has a boner and is excited to share it with his friends, which include a lisping bunny rabbit, a butterfly, and yoDЯUNK REVIEW #?
adorable little frog has a boner and is excited to share it with his friends, which include a lisping bunny rabbit, a butterfly, and you the reader. kinda mean how he refers to his adorable bunny friend who definitely knows his name as "some bunny". it stings when you like a friend more than that friend likes you, huh bunny? or at least so I've been told. anyway, there are a couple of really important lessons here for any kid that happens to read this bright and cheerful children's book that's actually not for children at all because it is super pervy - SO KIDS DON'T READ THIS - there, I've done my due diligence. anyway, those lessons are: (1) never drink an entire jar of pickle juice and (2) knowing that Jesus Loves You won't take away the sadness of losing your boner. those are some important lessons!
I'm reminded of J____, a roommate I had when I lived in a flat with a dozen other people in my 20s. J was also excited about his boners, in general, but especially his morning wood. many were the weekends when he'd jump immediately out of his bed and walk around the place in his boxers, abashedly displaying something he probably shouldn't have displayed because memories are long buddy, just like your morning wood. and was he even abashed? I dunno, he seemed like it, but there he was walking around the place like Fancy Froglin so I guess he wasn't that abashed. "abashed." I think I got full mileage outta that word, time to stop.
I wonder what J's doing now? last I heard he had a lucrative business doing food tours down in Mexico City. probably spending a lot of money on coke and hookers if I know J. ah, J. hope your boner's doing okay!
oh wait, what is wrong with me? I just saw J a couple months ago when I was in Mexico City myself! wow, mark, wow. I blame that damn Southern Comfort that my neighbors gave me because they hate Southern Comfort and I clearly loved drinking it at their get-together a couple nights ago, and so stupid me, I thought one glass tonight would be fine, but I forgot to have dinner and I'm a lightweight so here we are. anyway, J is definitely running a food tour business but he's probably not doing coke anymore (or at least that's what he said; I have my doubts) and I really hope that hookers aren't a pastime these days because he has a really cute girlfriend who seems really smart, although I guess who knows because I don't actually speak spanish at all, but sometimes you can just tell someone is probably way smarter than you so you just keep smiling and nodding and thinking, wow, good job J, don't lose this one.
so yeah, enjoyable book. not for kids. reminded me of J____. all the best to you J! I really hope you dont' read this because I hear you'll be crashing at my place in month or so and that might mean some awkward conversation and neither of us are good at those. but maybe you'll just laugh it off? I would....more
she's not from this world, she's from her own world, a world of bizarre things and bizarre practices. a father who loved her, all too well. a trunk inshe's not from this world, she's from her own world, a world of bizarre things and bizarre practices. a father who loved her, all too well. a trunk in the attic, locked, full of secrets. costumes and roles and personas, put on and taken off, whenever a whim moves her. the children run amok. the husband strays. the chauffeur comes to visit. black moths that cover her body. birds that see her and aren't quite sure what they're seeing.
it is a chamber piece: an older man who loves his young fey bride; a young fey bride who loves her dear dead dad; an elderly psychiatrist, getting in over her head and saying all the right and all the wrong things. they dance together: a danse macabre.
the prose quirks and the characters surprise and the story darkens and darkens and darkens. it starts out strange and only gets stranger. once you feel you have a grasp of it, an understanding, it turns and strikes you. you don't know what you know, or perhaps you are trying not to hold what you are grasping. it escalates, it escalates, it escalates. the path winds slowly, then quickly, moving ever downward.
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