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A review by kriswasp
Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr.
5.0
Quite simply: this is a masterpiece.
Legally not obscene, this is a hate filled collection of short stories bound by a writing style so intense and frenzied that it picks you up and carries you away with it, and it doesn’t care where you end up. This book moves, and it’s up to you to keep up.
It is raw and brutal, words I’ve used in reviews of one of my favourite authors Irvine Welsh, and without this book, Welsh’s do not happen.
Seminal in how it transformed the landscape of literature, for changing what writing and indeed reading could be, where the shock factor lies not only in the darkness of the lives of these people but in the eyes averted, in those for whom they feel are above this reality, this narrative, in those unwilling to see what this world creates and nurtures. What is but by the grace of God a mere parallel to your own life.
This will not be for everyone, but everyone should at least attempt to read it.
Legally not obscene, this is a hate filled collection of short stories bound by a writing style so intense and frenzied that it picks you up and carries you away with it, and it doesn’t care where you end up. This book moves, and it’s up to you to keep up.
It is raw and brutal, words I’ve used in reviews of one of my favourite authors Irvine Welsh, and without this book, Welsh’s do not happen.
Seminal in how it transformed the landscape of literature, for changing what writing and indeed reading could be, where the shock factor lies not only in the darkness of the lives of these people but in the eyes averted, in those for whom they feel are above this reality, this narrative, in those unwilling to see what this world creates and nurtures. What is but by the grace of God a mere parallel to your own life.
This will not be for everyone, but everyone should at least attempt to read it.