Rating: Summary: Only for some people Review: I agree with the reader from New Jersey. If you couldn't handle this book then read Dr. Seuss. All the close-minded people out there should read nice little books that take no risks and hide from the real world. Okay, this book did have some vivid murder scenes, but that's what made it so beautiful. Poppy Z. Brite didn't play it safe and leave out parts that some people take offense to. She left them in and it made the statement that she's not scared to push her writing to the extreme. I hope she does the same in her next book.
Rating: Summary: Beautiful! Review: I friend had recommend this book to me because I told her I was looking for something over the top. This book did the trick, I was very pleased.
Rating: Summary: yummy yummy yummy i got PZB in mah tummy Review: screw all these people who think it's disgusting. if they don't want hard core sex scenes and grisly murder descriptions, they've got the wrong author. go read dr. seuss or something. for us PZB fans, this book [admittedly splatterpunk-ier than LS or DB] seems a natural progression. the amazing description we love her for is still there. it's just...yuckier. :o) definately recommended.
Rating: Summary: I liked it....... Review: This book isn't as bad as everyone is trying to make it out to be. In fact, this is the only book that has ever made me like the "bad guys" and the so-called "good guys" at the same time. The ending could of been better though. But overall this was a good book to read.
Rating: Summary: I take it all back...absolutely stunning Review: After re-reading this beautiful and dare I say EXQUISITE novel, I stand corrected. This is a well-written and sharply executed modern classic that should please both hardcore veteran horror fans and squeamish beginners. An absolute TRIUMPH!
Rating: Summary: Why do editors buy this stuff? Review: Well, Brite missed the serial killer bandwagon by a few years. But that didn't stop her from writing a truly awful novel. It wasn't the subject matter that offended me; it was this poor attempt at storytelling. All I could think as I read through this self-indulgent silliness was "where the heck was the editor?" Even if someone in the publishing community made the ill-considered move to buy this book, they still should have put some effort into making Brite turn in a literate manuscript. But no one did that. This was the last time I'll purchase a book by the author. She's burned me three times, and I won't make the mistake again.
Rating: Summary: I find this book morally reprehensible Review: I hardly think my feelings and/or opinions could be more reprehensible than this work of "fiction" which, to my mind, USES the gay community in a way which is not laudable; starts off in an "unreal" England, and goes on to describe an autopsy performed on a still living person as a type of love. I was taught that this "form of violent self expression" is called "torture" and condemned soundly in all parts of the world but in particular by Amnesty International when the actions are "politically motivated." I cannot say for certain WHAT motivates these people's dark actions, I can only say that I personally find this book sick, written for a society without affect, and not at all gothic as I have known and loved the genre since the 1980's. All that said, I was handed this book by a teenager, I read it, I was violently effected, and I personally will continue voicing my feeling that Poppy Z. Brite cuts into (no pun intended) dangerous territory here that I cannot only not justify morally but neither can I find anything in the sick power dynamics that would justify this book aesthetically either. I hope my opinion will be printed now that I have taken out the allusions to certain past historical personages that did come to mind while reading this book. Perhaps the disgust I felt led me to dabble in hyperbole (shocker). I felt a sense of evil and disgust reading this book. I like horror stories like "The Hunger" and Stephen King's "The Stand" and I can even tolerate Clive Barker's morality plays. Poppy's a little closer to Harlan Ellison in all honesty, and yet, her work does not leave the planet and seems most interested in the "torture" and "violation" of a beautiful, transient, Vietnamese boy named Tran. The voluptous and sensual rendering of Tran by Ms. Brite points up her ability to really write (along with her bio of Courtney Love which for a bio on a living person I did enjoy) yet I don't understand her perverse fascination with this kind of "attack" on a member of the transient gay population, and someone so evidentally beautiful and young... It is so visceral it apalled me physically and I felt sorrow for the ways homosexuality was being dragged into this, being myself gay. These opinions belong to this reader, not to Amazon. Others have written "this book is filth" and had their reviews placed online. I refrain from something that might sound so obviously squeamish because I am trying to make the point that it's alright to dislike a book for it's total moral turpitude. If people "like" a book because it made them feel "such and such a way" then people should be allowed to dislike a book for feeling "such and such a way." I wouldn't use it to line my birdcage. Literally. I believe words have ramifications just as actions do and I would like my bird to live free of the burden of such a foul (no pun intended again) work of arrrrtttt.
Rating: Summary: the lowest lows Review: Having read and loved Brite's other novels, I was grossly disappointed by Exquisite Corpse. And no, it was not the cannibalism or the wonderfully detailed scenes of violence--I actually have a very strong stomach. What bothered me was the the way AIDS was handled in the story, the way it turned its victims into monsters. Usually so loving in her portrayal of homosexuals, Brite stepped over the offensive edge in this case.
Rating: Summary: wow how shocking(!) Review: ho hum, yes Brite's book is very nasty. oh look! somebody's easting human flesh, how shocking(!). basically this book is not all that bad, gross yet nastily compelling. what spoils it is the fact you can almost hear Brite going 'wow how controversial and extreme i am'. she writes like a little girl trying to shock, full of cliches and cod-mysticism. readable, but you'd only ever want to read it once.
Rating: Summary: A Great Scare! Review: I have looked long and far for a book like this. This is the only book that has ever left mental images in my head. This book plays with you mind like no other book can. I highly recomend it if you want to get away from the rest of the world.
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