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_biblio_obscura_'s review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
<b>3 stars</b>
**Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.**
<b>Basics</b>
Author: she/her (Brazil, Portuguese)
Genre: erotic fiction
Themes: sex, temptation, grossness of life/living
Vibes: blasphemous, hilarious, visceral
<b>Quotes - Bizarre & Blasphemous & Grotesquely Beautiful</b>
"What a butt! I laid my face there and sometimes half tearful, half silly, said to those stuffed meats, if I had had a little pillow like yours, Lutecia, when I was a filthy, shabby kid, I would have been a poet."
"I come thick thinking: I am a Brazilian writer, something of a macho, baby. Let's go."
"...your v*gina was a mixture of yellow star apples and loquats."
"But the phallus in the pink, in women, only <i>in extremis</i>."
"A woman's a** should serve as good steaks in case of an avalanche. Did you read about such people who ate their favorite frozen guyfriends or girlfriends? Do you remember that other guy, a Japanese man, who literally ate his little Dutch lover? Only there was no avalanche. He even ate her at home, and after having spent some time in the asylum when he got out (not sure why he got out) said: I was misunderstood. And how can you understand someone who literally eats someone, without either avalanche or snow?"
"Does he cut your tress with the ax or power saw? If it's the ax you are lying when you say you are not f*cking that guy."
"Reportedly Kraus protected his rim, literally dying of laughter. Do you believe it? He died. Tom wants to prove homicide...but who is going to believe that a guy died from laughing just from the threat of having his button licked?"
"Do you remember the whole Mishima story? The one who did <i>seppuku</i>... There were the details: he ate cabbage and thinly sliced raw chicken at dinner the night before. After he stuffed his orifices with cotton rolls so that his feces would not come out at zero hour. I have a horror of writers. The list of perverts is enormous. Rimbaud, the so-called genius: he would pluck lice off himself and throw them on the public. He urinated in people's glasses in bars...Then Proust: he tells how he stuck needles in the tiny eyes of mice. He beat the poor things. Genet: he would eat the crabs he found in his lover's crotch. Foucault: he'd go out at night, dressed completely in black leather, maybe sado, or maso, giving up and feasting on *ssholes. Mishima himself, crazy for sweaty soldiers and blood. He got off the first time he saw a picture of St. Sebastian pierced with arrows."
"And the otolaryngologist said: ma'am, there are basically three holes made for what the lady allowed to be done in her ear and there is no need to cite the three, but ears and nostrils are unfit to receive semen, do you understand?"
"But cheer up: yesterday I dreamed that I was sucking your p*ssy and you were ascending into the heavens with a harp between your thighs... Then two angels rolled me over like an o and licked me with silver tongues... Then, God himself... put a tire around my neck that looked like a collar, and was displaying a I know not what (how to name the ostentatiousness of God?), a pink and <i>kitsch</i> enough giant chorizo, decorated with tiny stars. I was completely shattered inside. I saw stars..."
"Think of all the innards. In the sewer of this package that is the body. Beautiful machine, say the fantasists. And then you remember the package of sh*t that is your body. Of a heap of debris. Of the foulness of being alive."
"A writer isn't a saint, my man. The thing is inventing ballsy stuff, things to turn people on, p*ssies in hand, the guys want to read something that makes them forget they're mortal and sh*t."
"I will never forget that providential prolonged and silent fart of age 14."
"He was telluric and unique. He was dreaming. He dreamt of goodbyes and shadows. He dreamt of gods. He was cruel because he had always been desperate. He encountered a human-angel. So that they might live together, on Earth, forever, he cut off his wings. The other killed himself, plunging into the waters. I am still alive today. I'm old. At night I drink a lot and look at the stars. Often, I write. Then I reconsider that one, the snowy breath, the desperation. I lie down. Austerely, I dream that I sow black beans and wings across a dark, sometimes mother-of-pearl, earth."
<b>Pros</b>
+ this is heinous, blasphemous, and erotic/gross and I had a blast reading it
+ HAHAHAHAHAHA for real
+ visceral, gross writing I love
+ stream of consciousness writing style DOES mostly work for me here (especially in the first part)
+ the absolute absurdist quotes made me literally laugh out loud (a woman writing a man writing to a woman (his sister/lover) about his conquests (men & women))
+ pan/bisexual opportunist lover (women & men)
+ absolutely WILD shit he's writing in these letters
+ laughing to death from protecting your butthole virginity
+ angelic orgy with God and his star-studded salami
+ some content is surprisingly modern (if you're not sleeping with the gardener who cuts wood with an ax, you're a liar)
+ another reviewer (Kev Nickells) said "you probably drift 10ft further from God every time this book makes you laugh" and I 100000% AGREE. It's blasphemous and hilarious and really, truly f*cked up
<b>Neutral</b>
/ Let's pour one out for the translator, John Keene, who must've had a helluva time translating this
/ Some glimmers of truly beautiful writing and hilariously dark prose but mixed with inane ramblings that don't make much sense. Mixed feelings about the writing style.
<b>Cons</b>
- something about "c*nt" being written so many times in so many pages makes me cringe 😬 it's definitely my American curse-word preferences because I never use it (Aussies love using it)
- Sadly, the work splits into another narrative half way through. I was SO confused. I went back to the synopsis and found this: "The letters' text becomes intertwined with the life of the poet Stamatius, who finds Karl's letters in the trash. It quickly dawns upon the reader that both men are in fact the same person albeit at different points of time and circumstance." I'm going to keep reading, but that switch up was really disorienting and almost made me DNF the book.
- The last half of the book (the 2nd and 3rd sections) is rambly, incoherent, and less incisively sharp and witty than the first part. Bummer.
<b>Similar Recs</b>
In Praise of the Stepmother by Mario Vargas Llosa (incest vibes in weird format) × Little Birds by Anais Nin (grossly erotic themes/tone)
<b>TW</b>
explicit sexual content, cheating, incest, an abundance of curse words, sex with a minor (referenced), f-slur, sexualization/fantasies about himself/his sister in their childhood, murder, disposal of a corpse, blood, cutting off body parts, farts, suicide, hanging
**Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.**
<b>Basics</b>
Author: she/her (Brazil, Portuguese)
Genre: erotic fiction
Themes: sex, temptation, grossness of life/living
Vibes: blasphemous, hilarious, visceral
<b>Quotes - Bizarre & Blasphemous & Grotesquely Beautiful</b>
"What a butt! I laid my face there and sometimes half tearful, half silly, said to those stuffed meats, if I had had a little pillow like yours, Lutecia, when I was a filthy, shabby kid, I would have been a poet."
"I come thick thinking: I am a Brazilian writer, something of a macho, baby. Let's go."
"...your v*gina was a mixture of yellow star apples and loquats."
"But the phallus in the pink, in women, only <i>in extremis</i>."
"A woman's a** should serve as good steaks in case of an avalanche. Did you read about such people who ate their favorite frozen guyfriends or girlfriends? Do you remember that other guy, a Japanese man, who literally ate his little Dutch lover? Only there was no avalanche. He even ate her at home, and after having spent some time in the asylum when he got out (not sure why he got out) said: I was misunderstood. And how can you understand someone who literally eats someone, without either avalanche or snow?"
"Does he cut your tress with the ax or power saw? If it's the ax you are lying when you say you are not f*cking that guy."
"Reportedly Kraus protected his rim, literally dying of laughter. Do you believe it? He died. Tom wants to prove homicide...but who is going to believe that a guy died from laughing just from the threat of having his button licked?"
"Do you remember the whole Mishima story? The one who did <i>seppuku</i>... There were the details: he ate cabbage and thinly sliced raw chicken at dinner the night before. After he stuffed his orifices with cotton rolls so that his feces would not come out at zero hour. I have a horror of writers. The list of perverts is enormous. Rimbaud, the so-called genius: he would pluck lice off himself and throw them on the public. He urinated in people's glasses in bars...Then Proust: he tells how he stuck needles in the tiny eyes of mice. He beat the poor things. Genet: he would eat the crabs he found in his lover's crotch. Foucault: he'd go out at night, dressed completely in black leather, maybe sado, or maso, giving up and feasting on *ssholes. Mishima himself, crazy for sweaty soldiers and blood. He got off the first time he saw a picture of St. Sebastian pierced with arrows."
"And the otolaryngologist said: ma'am, there are basically three holes made for what the lady allowed to be done in her ear and there is no need to cite the three, but ears and nostrils are unfit to receive semen, do you understand?"
"But cheer up: yesterday I dreamed that I was sucking your p*ssy and you were ascending into the heavens with a harp between your thighs... Then two angels rolled me over like an o and licked me with silver tongues... Then, God himself... put a tire around my neck that looked like a collar, and was displaying a I know not what (how to name the ostentatiousness of God?), a pink and <i>kitsch</i> enough giant chorizo, decorated with tiny stars. I was completely shattered inside. I saw stars..."
"Think of all the innards. In the sewer of this package that is the body. Beautiful machine, say the fantasists. And then you remember the package of sh*t that is your body. Of a heap of debris. Of the foulness of being alive."
"A writer isn't a saint, my man. The thing is inventing ballsy stuff, things to turn people on, p*ssies in hand, the guys want to read something that makes them forget they're mortal and sh*t."
"I will never forget that providential prolonged and silent fart of age 14."
"He was telluric and unique. He was dreaming. He dreamt of goodbyes and shadows. He dreamt of gods. He was cruel because he had always been desperate. He encountered a human-angel. So that they might live together, on Earth, forever, he cut off his wings. The other killed himself, plunging into the waters. I am still alive today. I'm old. At night I drink a lot and look at the stars. Often, I write. Then I reconsider that one, the snowy breath, the desperation. I lie down. Austerely, I dream that I sow black beans and wings across a dark, sometimes mother-of-pearl, earth."
<b>Pros</b>
+ this is heinous, blasphemous, and erotic/gross and I had a blast reading it
+ HAHAHAHAHAHA for real
+ visceral, gross writing I love
+ stream of consciousness writing style DOES mostly work for me here (especially in the first part)
+ the absolute absurdist quotes made me literally laugh out loud (a woman writing a man writing to a woman (his sister/lover) about his conquests (men & women))
+ pan/bisexual opportunist lover (women & men)
+ absolutely WILD shit he's writing in these letters
+ laughing to death from protecting your butthole virginity
+ angelic orgy with God and his star-studded salami
+ some content is surprisingly modern (if you're not sleeping with the gardener who cuts wood with an ax, you're a liar)
+ another reviewer (Kev Nickells) said "you probably drift 10ft further from God every time this book makes you laugh" and I 100000% AGREE. It's blasphemous and hilarious and really, truly f*cked up
<b>Neutral</b>
/ Let's pour one out for the translator, John Keene, who must've had a helluva time translating this
/ Some glimmers of truly beautiful writing and hilariously dark prose but mixed with inane ramblings that don't make much sense. Mixed feelings about the writing style.
<b>Cons</b>
- something about "c*nt" being written so many times in so many pages makes me cringe 😬 it's definitely my American curse-word preferences because I never use it (Aussies love using it)
- Sadly, the work splits into another narrative half way through. I was SO confused. I went back to the synopsis and found this: "The letters' text becomes intertwined with the life of the poet Stamatius, who finds Karl's letters in the trash. It quickly dawns upon the reader that both men are in fact the same person albeit at different points of time and circumstance." I'm going to keep reading, but that switch up was really disorienting and almost made me DNF the book.
- The last half of the book (the 2nd and 3rd sections) is rambly, incoherent, and less incisively sharp and witty than the first part. Bummer.
<b>Similar Recs</b>
In Praise of the Stepmother by Mario Vargas Llosa (incest vibes in weird format) × Little Birds by Anais Nin (grossly erotic themes/tone)
<b>TW</b>
explicit sexual content, cheating, incest, an abundance of curse words, sex with a minor (referenced), f-slur, sexualization/fantasies about himself/his sister in their childhood, murder, disposal of a corpse, blood, cutting off body parts, farts, suicide, hanging
kev_nickells's review against another edition
5.0
It's difficult to describe a book that's at turns baffling, vertiginous, spiteful, pornographic. It's ridden with acid wit in the sense that you probably drift 10ft further from God every time this book makes you laugh (in my case, quite a lot). What story there is ends up subjugated (to my way of reading, at least) to her vertiginy - such pacing, such turns. A litany of weird and abject characters who never quite get fleshed out but rather hover over the text like ghosts.
I read her 'with my dog eyes' previously and I imagine I mentioned her spite - I was describing this as like if Joyce was a bastard and if Joyce is a high water mark of writing in English (which he is) then I'd put Hilst squarely next to him. It's not as enjoyable as Joyce but it's doubly as pornographic. But Hilst is electrifying, her translator John Keene has done what I can only assume is a formidable job in keeping a sense of the contraction and expulsions of Hilst's language.
There's moments where this is 'standardly' experimental - insofar as it seasickly switches from prosaic tracts to dialogue, poetry - but never with a feeling of affectation; more like Hilst has just excised this fully formed like some kind of eldritch, glistening, pus-filled welt.
I suspect it's also worth noting that while this is pornographic - insofar as it describes intimate sexual acts graphically - I wouldn't describe it as erotic, except in the sense of the writerly-eros. It's distinctly not a turn-on, is my point - any sex is oddly passive or existential rather than bodily and ecstatic. In itself I wonder if this is a book, like '...dog eyes', designed to exude spite from every pore.
Formidable, astonishing, bastard awkward, amazing.
I read her 'with my dog eyes' previously and I imagine I mentioned her spite - I was describing this as like if Joyce was a bastard and if Joyce is a high water mark of writing in English (which he is) then I'd put Hilst squarely next to him. It's not as enjoyable as Joyce but it's doubly as pornographic. But Hilst is electrifying, her translator John Keene has done what I can only assume is a formidable job in keeping a sense of the contraction and expulsions of Hilst's language.
There's moments where this is 'standardly' experimental - insofar as it seasickly switches from prosaic tracts to dialogue, poetry - but never with a feeling of affectation; more like Hilst has just excised this fully formed like some kind of eldritch, glistening, pus-filled welt.
I suspect it's also worth noting that while this is pornographic - insofar as it describes intimate sexual acts graphically - I wouldn't describe it as erotic, except in the sense of the writerly-eros. It's distinctly not a turn-on, is my point - any sex is oddly passive or existential rather than bodily and ecstatic. In itself I wonder if this is a book, like '...dog eyes', designed to exude spite from every pore.
Formidable, astonishing, bastard awkward, amazing.
twixbatata's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0