EXQUISITE CORPSE

Rating:
Summary: Avoid this one at all costs
Review: What is with Poppy Z. Brite? I read "Lost Souls" years ago and loved it... it's joined my shelf my very favorites. However, it seems that Brite is on a downward spiral. Where "Lost Souls" was origional, quirky, and eerie, this book is just gross. Do we really need detailed descriptions of a child being tortured? Book after book, Brite continues to obsess over gay men (always disfuntional ones, of course) and either leave women out completely or cast them in the most degrading roles. Perhaps she should just give us the pretense of being a real writer and switch to writing gay porn.

Rating:
Summary: Gross and grossly inaccurate
Review: It seems that ms Brite got stuck after the beauty and decay of her previous books. The only way to go was sicker, more graphic and more often. I found this book unpleasant and unpleasantly real but fortunately her descriptions of corpse dissection were so inaccurate that I was able to dismiss the entire composition. Anyone who thinks you can "lift out the intestines like a pile of warm sausages" or remove the heart and lungs through the diaphragm without batting an eyelid has obviously failed in her research......take it from one who knows....a postmortem/autopsy is strenuous and time consuming and...yes it makes a mess. Its all quite tightly bound together beneath the skin and fascia. So, this is a product of a sad mind...desperate to shock in any way she can, and shock she does but without literary merit and without credibility.

Rating:
Summary: no insight, no love of pain, no relentless killings
Review: (I do trash this book and the author but NOT in a personal sense. this review should be seen because of that fact)I tried once before to read this short novel. I put it in the trash after the obvious layout of the plot came into focus. A couple queers would fall in love, then fall in love with a mutual interest. Thats not bad if you dont force them as being killers. one guy likes to say 'smart' comments well supposedly (from Brites headview) doing atrocious things to a dying boy. Yes,,like the detail of a wound being "like a paper cut multiplied a thousand times" who honestly can say thats gutsy writing??? The end of one victim having injuries compared to a paper cut? the bonus cop out is Brites weakness in details. Kills take a paragraph until the last one that starts by a screwdriver incident. This action is the second major action taken from one of Dahmers murders. How can author do that and then sell the work like its anything new? This is really bad for literature when a book is praised in spite of its unoriginality (includes the title),its ignorance to any sexual impulses taking over the characters who are supposed to be amoral. (They keep telling themselves they are.) I suppose its the same sydrome of another killer book from a few years back. The story is obvious, thin, and full of unneeded talking. The 1 rating is because Exquisite Corpse is a dull, unimaginative, drone that keeps you at a distance fromm any 'true human repulsion' and instead settled itself in drunk and ignorant characters. Some "shocker" you can try and pull out of those facts. Have a pleasant day readers.

Rating:
Summary: whoa . . .
Review: Crazy book, very grotesque and graphic. It is [very bad], but a page-turner. If you've got the stomache for it, that is.

Rating:
Summary: A decidedly rare love story...
Review: "Exquisite Corpse" is a love story set in contemporary New Orleans between a necrophile and a cannibal. Not for the faint of heart (or the weak of stomach). Ms. Brite, through the gore and perversion, is able to provide an insight into both a killer's mind and a killer's heart. Lifting slices from Jeffrey Dahmer's modus operandi, Poppy Z. Brite's "Exquisite Corpse" is more finely written than her first two novels. If you like true crime, you'll like this novel and all its gorey details.

Rating:
Summary: Dahmer retold
Review: Brite, the daring author of two previous novels ("Lost Souls?" and "Drawing Blood") is, I must admit, my favorite author in the horror genre. Needless to say, after "Drawing Blood," I was waiting and waiting and waiting for "Exquisite Corpse." As I read the novel, I was annoyed at how the book was progressing. It seemed only to be a barely fictionalized account of the Jeffrey Dahmer case. Anyone who is familiar with Dahmer's attrocities can tell you that this book could well be a newspaper account. But, I had faith in Brite, knowing that before the last page she would put an interesting twist upon it. I was, however, greatly disappointed. Gone was the beauty, romance and true horror I had come to expect. I was shocked. I was "grossed-out", but I felt nothing for the characters. What I did feel was an immense sadness and a great hope that the family of the Vietnamese-American boy that Dahmer killed NEVER, EVER, EVER read this book. If they do, they will get every gory detail of their son's/brother's death as fictionalized by Brite. That possibility disturbs me more than the graphic-ness of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Exquisite corpse was an excellent book considering........
Review: I have started reading her books during the past several months thanks to the internet and the many horror links. I found this book to be much more than i bargained for, this lady is a great dark horror writer and because the subject matter may not be for everyone it still shouldn't stop you from one great read! bon' apetit!!!

Rating:
Summary: This book will give you an insight
Review: This book will give you an insight, question is are you sure you want it? This was the first Poppy Z. Brite novel I've ever read, but It wont be the last!

Rating:
Summary: Equisite Corpse - Equisitly written
Review: Poppy Z. Brite has a knack on how to write a page turner. After I read Lost Souls I was hooked. She writes with such amazing detail and with such everyday topics and situations it is like living an erotic nightmare. And those nightmares are perfect.

Rating:
Summary: A modern masterpiece of urban decadence
Review: In this book Brite centers not on plot but on the exploration of the minds of both hunters and victims. She crafted a superbly structured book where she expressess a decadent view of life, that "only as an aesthetic phenomenon are existence and the worlde justified"(Nietzche), and thus the killers are admired for making their life and other people's deaths an art. To make this an amoral book(as well as immoral..) Brite makes at least two of the four main charecters HIV positive while the other two are probably infected as well - thus rendering all charcters "beyond good and evil". One exeptionally well written part in the book is when the two serial killers catch tran and he tries to escape - here Brite breaks horror conventions. while this book is written much more cleverly then Brite's previous books, mind you that she'd probably read Sade and some of the descriptions are far beyond what you've come to expect of splatterpunks.