Testosterone

Rating:
Summary: Excellent. A crazed and hypnotic nightmare
Review: I loved this book. In fact, I think it is my favorite Baker novel. (Not an easy task in itself.) The book takes off and sends the reader sailing through a trippy, action-packed, emotional nightmare. The descriptions are so vivid and fast, it is almost like a graphic novel built entirely with text. Not an easy story -- you will flinch on occasion, but it is impossible to put down.

Rating:
Summary: Hard to Take, but Worth It!!!
Review: Once I picked this book up and started reading it I couldn't stop. Written as a transcript from tapes sent by Dean Seagrave to Jim Baker, it tells the story of Dean's love for Pablo. To even attempt to describe this story would ruin the joy you'll find in its entertaining pages. It's not easy to read, and sometimes hard to take, but I found it really worth the effort. This is a novel you won't soon forget. It lingers on the mind for days to come. You are either going to love it or hate it.

Baker committed suicide in November 1997. Too bad Baker is no longer with us. His writing is truly brilliant and so different. This novel packs a punch and won't fail to move and effect whomever reads it. That's for sure!

Rating:
Summary: I couldn't put it down
Review: Testosterone burns with a frantic energy that is difficult to explain. Told through a series of audio tapes instead of chapters, the story burns rubber from page one and skids to a frightening, abrupt stop at the end, the smoke still burning from my fingertips.

The narrative, as told through the voice of Dean Seagrave as he drives through LA in search of Pablo Ortega, has a stream of consciousness feel as if I was reading a lunatic's rant, and I possibly may have. It's remains a bit unclear by the close of the novel. At first I started off sympathizing with Dean, I mean who hasn't been uncremoniously dumped? Then as event by disturbing event unfolds I began to question Dean's motives. Does he really have to kill Pablo? Is Pablo really involved in palo mayombe? Does Dean have to take such drastic actions to get answers? By the end I was unsure if should hate Dean, feel sorry for him or if everything that he told me was just an overactive fever dream of a drugged up obsessive mind. That's what makes this such a brilliant novel. I couldn't put it down.

Other reviews have cited the narrative as told through audio tapes as a gimmick that wears thin which, at times, is difficult to follow. I found it compelling, as if Dean was telling me the story through his tapes. Every time he stops the tape and then continues his narrative minutes or sometimes hours after he left off, there was this edge of your seat sense of anticipation that I felt. I think expecting anything more than pure entertainment from Testosterone, like some underlying message about homosexuality or obsession or something like that, is a huge mistake. This is pure entertainment.

Definitely one of the bleakest of Baker's novels,possibly influenced by Baker's state of mind when he wrote this but it 's also one of his best as well.