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A review by ghostboyreads
Burn You the Fuck Alive by B.R. Yeager
4.5
It's like a toothache. It takes over everything. A patch of rot grasps a nerve and the world falls away.
Rot. Decay. Corrosion. It's impossible not to think these things when tackling Yeager's work. Once again, he has released a collection of devastation in the form of Burn You the Fuck Alive. Much like his previous work, there's a distinct brand of nihilism in these writings, the expected hopelessness persists. However, just about anyone can put to paper their nihilistic musings. What makes Yeager's works so unique is that he manages to reignite feelings long since forgotten. He doesn't simply state that the world is shit, he speaks to parts of the soul that were patched over and ignored.
The stories within Burn You the Fuck Alive may vary in their themes and narrative styles, but one centralized topic ties them all together, an uncontrollable yet weirdly poetic sense of loneliness and helplessness. When plunging into this novel the reader is forced to confront unending psychological horror, grotesque body horror, stories of intense isolation and grief. They'll have to face up to just about every situation, from the mundane to the downright bizarre. No matter the story, these are tales designed to attack, to viciously assault the scenes, and they shall do so.
Rot. Decay. Corrosion. It's impossible not to think these things when tackling Yeager's work. Once again, he has released a collection of devastation in the form of Burn You the Fuck Alive. Much like his previous work, there's a distinct brand of nihilism in these writings, the expected hopelessness persists. However, just about anyone can put to paper their nihilistic musings. What makes Yeager's works so unique is that he manages to reignite feelings long since forgotten. He doesn't simply state that the world is shit, he speaks to parts of the soul that were patched over and ignored.
The stories within Burn You the Fuck Alive may vary in their themes and narrative styles, but one centralized topic ties them all together, an uncontrollable yet weirdly poetic sense of loneliness and helplessness. When plunging into this novel the reader is forced to confront unending psychological horror, grotesque body horror, stories of intense isolation and grief. They'll have to face up to just about every situation, from the mundane to the downright bizarre. No matter the story, these are tales designed to attack, to viciously assault the scenes, and they shall do so.
She asks for a light. You reach in your pocket and dig out your Bic, strike the flint, and touch the flame to her cigarette. She inhales. The tip roils cinder. A line of flame draws down the paper, crossing the band, down the filter. It touches her lips and her entire face is a blaze. Engulfing, disappearing her hair, climbing down her throat, down her shoulders and arms and chest and belly, down her pants to her shoes. Washed in pumpkin light. She waves her arms, spinning in circles and howling.
Intense and mind-bending horror is seamlessly woven into the normality of every day life, making even the most simplistic of thoughts and feelings seem 0ff-putting and unpleasant. The population of this novel are wasters, underachievers, they're drowning in apathy and being smothered by their inability to care. They don't exist to be adored, rather, overlooked, fading into the spaces in between, they exist to soak in their own abandonment. While my teen years are long behind me, reading this novel allowed me to reminisce on what it was like to feel as lonely as these stories.
Thank you to The Young People, Burn You The Fuck Alive, A Favor, Puppy Milk and Highway Wars for allowing me to experience the rapture. To burn the fuck alive has been beautiful.
You'll be thinking of me for weeks. When your gums puff and swell, when you spit rust while you floss. You'll think of me, and won't ever be able to stop.