A review by iprobablywontlikeit
The Underworld by Kevin Canty

Did not finish book. Stopped at 40%.
Wonderful prose here, and very real characters. Those two things go a long way for me. But after awhile it wasn't the sadness that brought me down (the dust jacket let's you know what you're in for), but the hopelessness. Before the plot-driving catastrophy even takes place, the characters start out with lives and relationships built upon survival, fear, fetishes, and dysfunctional forms of intimacy. Add a mass casualty event, and what little they have is taken away. There is no "all we need is love" here. There is no real testing of relational bonds because there were no real bonds to begin with, just prisons of circumstance.

The final straw for me was when one of the characters, realizing her husband is probably dead, reminisces not about her husband's personality, but about the softness of his scrotum in her hand while he slept.

No thanks.
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