Reviews tagging 'Excrement'

Try by Dennis Cooper

4 reviews

loki_the_gnome's review

Go to review page

dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Dennis Cooper's "emotional" deconstruction of closer is as patently devastating as one could imagine. Every bit of coldness that marks his earlier work is destroyed in service of pure emotional turmoil. Idea's of people become people, violence has consequences outside of the physical, and every moment and interwoven storyline is somehow more devastating than the last. 

Cooper's final lines have a tendency to make me cry, every one has so far. Try's not only made me cry, but totally gutted me. Every tiny bit of safety I somehow felt I could hold onto in Cooper's worlds was torn away from me - which is entirely by design. Fiction like Cooper's should never and could never be safe. It was never designed to comfort or placate, and it never has, but Try, somehow, manages to pierce one's heart even more in totality than anything the Cycle has offered before.

A patently gutting portrait of abuse and its after-effects. Highly empathetic and immensely human, in all it's ugly, ugly depravity in its contents and beautiful care in its construction.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

cwzw's review

Go to review page

challenging emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Like watching a kid claw at the walls of a bottomless pit, but they're slick with the heinous shit that grows in those dark places. Escape may be impossible, but he can still try.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

vern31's review

Go to review page

dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

unfeathered's review against another edition

Go to review page

Calhoun's the greatest person on earth, as far as he knows

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
More...