Rating: 
Summary: .
Review: As literature overall, this book is not really worth more than2 stars. But I give it 5 because it is immensely impacting and willremain with you forever once you've read it. I've never seen anythingelse quite like it. The cold, unrelenting, calculated villiany of these stories is amazing, and you will be consistently receiving powerful details that you did not want and never would've expected to get. Gira's music (the now disbanded Swans) is dark but not usually downright grotesque -- in his fiction, he seems dedicated to pulling up the most abominable arrangement of imagery and content that anyone could hope to imagine. He succeeds in his goal admirably. As writing, this really is ridiculously wordy and articulate, much like Nick Cave's work. It is fancy prose for the sake of being fancy and intelligent-seeming. Some stories are toss outs and few of them have any particular point, other than to disturb you. But they *do* disturb you, to the core, and that is what is remarkable about them. It's hard to be genuinely horrifying, and it's tricky to write stories that make you physically nauseous. Gira's success in doing these things causes me to admire this book. It is vivid, important, and unforgettable. Too showy and one-track to be taken especially seriously as a work of literature, but too impacting and original to be ignored. A freak of a book, which is undoubtedly what Gira wants and expects it to be, which evokes a twisted, horrifying, and taboo world. The most perverse literature I've ever seen, and that includes De Sade.
Rating: 
Summary: the best
Review: At first Gira's similes seem strained but then become utterly captivating. They hit you with force. He has a completely new vision of the urban landscape - he makes us see things in new ways. Its a seamless melding of dream imagery with the everyday. A few of the writings tend to rants but most are well crafted stories, as they say. Even when they don't go anywhere, the message comes through.
Rating:
Summary: THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR THE SQUEMISH...
Review: but if you like sick, twisted, disgusting images, then read this book and admire Gira for his detailed, brutal imagry. I like to call his style "Poetic Vomit", because, believe me, his stomach-turning text will do a number on your gag reflex...ENJOY!!!
Rating:
Summary: very careful here
Review: don't read this one if you are having trouble with recurrent nightmares, or phobias, or are inhibited about sexual fantasies, or believe that everyone should just be happy and love each other. this is twisted sick stuff, incredibly powerfully delivered. each nugget of a chapter lasts only as long as is necessary to create a lasting image, or surreal image-association complex. wonderful reading if you are interested in exploring the depths of human consciousness.
Rating: 
Summary: Vivid? Yes!.... but still, not great.
Review: Gira has a talent that might almost be called a gift for coming up with fascinating, vivid, and almost inevitably macabre scenarios for his short stories. Unfortunately, he seems to have trouble figuring out just exactly where to go with them sometimes. He also can't seem to get through a sentence without tossing in at least one gratuitous metaphor - a problem common among musicians who have honed their writing skill on lyrics, since lyrics are much closer to poetry than to prose in most cases. With practice and a firm-handed editor I predict better things, short story wise, from Mr. Gira.
Rating:
Summary: Vivid? Yes!.... but still, not great.
Review: Gira has a talent that might almost be called a gift for coming up with fascinating, vivid, and almost inevitably macabre scenarios for his short stories. Unfortunately, he seems to have trouble figuring out just exactly where to go with them sometimes. He also can't seem to get through a sentence without tossing in at least one gratuitous metaphor - a problem common among musicians who have honed their writing skill on lyrics, since lyrics are much closer to poetry than to prose in most cases. With practice and a firm-handed editor I predict better things, short story wise, from Mr. Gira.
Rating:
Summary: Meat
Review: I find this book really interesting. I don't think that it is a work of perversion. It is just written from a certain perspective. It is a really dark vision. Parts of it remind me of Beckett. You don't have to be a serial killer to read about serial killers. This is a book that I return again and again when all other books seem too pretentious or fake.
Rating:
Summary: 5 stars for reader reaction
Review: I have to give the consumer 5 stars just for the reaction it drew from me. This book is twisted and sick - both resons why I was intrigued to read it in the first place. There were times I felt I couldn't take another word of it and wanted to hurl this book across the room into the fire. The power behind "The Consumer" is that instead of discarding it in disgust, it forces you to suffer through reading the entire book. I've also been a longtime fan of the Swans - Gira's music group - and reccommend them to fans of this book.
Rating:
Summary: 5 stars for reader reaction
Review: I have to give the consumer 5 stars just for the reaction it drew from me. This book is twisted and sick - both resons why I was intrigued to read it in the first place. There were times I felt I couldn't take another word of it and wanted to hurl this book across the room into the fire. The power behind "The Consumer" is that instead of discarding it in disgust, it forces you to suffer through reading the entire book. I've also been a longtime fan of the Swans - Gira's music group - and reccommend them to fans of this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not thrilling
Review: I was very disappointed in this book. Most of the reviews said it was sick and twisted, which I happen to like, but it was boring. Very wordy. Too much like "literature" to be sick and twisted.
|
