A review by yak_attak
Bad Brains by Kathe Koja
5.0
A book somehow fully composed of simply sensation and force, this grimy boiling mess of personal pain, depression, ennui, and existential dread. It's impressive how simple the story begins, and how natural each pitiful step feels until like the main character you're in far too deep and there's only one way out of this thing - through. A look into the horror of hospitals. Of not knowing the answer. Of bathrooms. of God. of transcendence and unknowingness.
Word of warning to that though, there's a heavy aspect of this book that's just absolutely bizarrely confusing - it's literally about something incomprehensible - through science, emotion, faith.... and there's a beautiful slipping quality to Koja's writing that binds all this together perfectly - a story about a man with brain trauma who forgets time, forgets things he does, blanks out, and Koja omits moments. sentences. Words - a chapter or two in and you won't notice, instead it spills out mercury smooth and just as deadly.
Fucking great, but a little hard to recommend - I suggest you give it a shot of course, but we're dealing with abstracted writing about confusing concepts dealing with a lousy fucking asshole guy who's not great to women and spends most of the book vomiting on the floor in the bathroom, like... it's brilliant, don't get me wrong, but you're in for it if you pick this up
Word of warning to that though, there's a heavy aspect of this book that's just absolutely bizarrely confusing - it's literally about something incomprehensible - through science, emotion, faith.... and there's a beautiful slipping quality to Koja's writing that binds all this together perfectly - a story about a man with brain trauma who forgets time, forgets things he does, blanks out, and Koja omits moments. sentences. Words - a chapter or two in and you won't notice, instead it spills out mercury smooth and just as deadly.
Fucking great, but a little hard to recommend - I suggest you give it a shot of course, but we're dealing with abstracted writing about confusing concepts dealing with a lousy fucking asshole guy who's not great to women and spends most of the book vomiting on the floor in the bathroom, like... it's brilliant, don't get me wrong, but you're in for it if you pick this up