... the Soul of Wit - Short Reviews

Hey, how are you guys? Spring is here and I'm absolutely psyched about the nice weather! Here are some books you can read in parks and on balconies when the sun is shining to top that happiness and inner peace (maybe take a blanket with you though, not so warm yet).

Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

I do understand the urge and need to make female characters unlikable, it is nice to break conventions as - surprise! - we as women are different and come in many forms and shapes. Sometimes it’s a little much, though. In Boy Parts, a book with an unsettling premise of a woman taking compromising photos of boys she recruits on the street, sometimes underage, main character Irina was that unlikable power engine catapulting the story forwards.

Often edgy, mean, arrogant and controlling to a fault, she’s one of those unhinged characters (Maeve Fly which I recently read was another one) based off American Psycho Patrick Bateman, right down to their morning routines. So, I’m not sure about the originality of choosing such a character, but she was sure very entertaining to read in a “can’t look away from this car crash” kind of way. Her snarky reactions come in good when confronted with someone equally obnoxious as her, like rich boy Remy, who got space in Irina’s exhibition just because his uncle is the sponsor.

Not only the main character, but her whole entourage was kind of weird and not really likable, to the point that some parts feel satiric, probably that's the point too. I like roommate Flo’s blog entries to show a different point of view. The amount of drugs they did was insane! I wouldn’t be surprised Irina’s brain is fried as a consequence and she hallucinated the whole book. A nice pastime kind of book and a nice debut of a young author.

Twisted by Andrew E. Kaufman

Christopher Kellan is a psychiatrist at unit Alpha Twelve of the Loveland Psychiatric Hospital, where the most dangerous and psychotic killers are being held. Something is familair about his newest patient Donny Ray Smith, but he can't quite put his finger on what. Smith is accused of murdering ten young girls and making their bodies disappear and he unsettlingly knows things about Christopher. As Christopher is trying to treat his patient, things start going wrong in his everyday life, just slight distortions like his hairline looking wrong in the mirror to a major car crash which might have given him a head injury. What is illusion and what is even truth anymore? Christopher doesn't know but Smith seems to be informed. In order to protect his family, he will need to be careful.

This is a psychological thriller/horror and it was wow, it was really good! I didn't think to be so engaged in this read but once the characters and their lives are introduced and settled the action and a jarring "is this all real or a mental thing?" game begins. Very gripping!

Myopiatropolis by Tom Over

Nicely done.

Basing his latest short story off Thomas Ligotti's My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror, Tom Over confronts his readers with a very currently relevant, dystopia – tinted scenario.

We've been through it all - lockdowns, hard lockdowns, working from home, zoom meetings, the comfort of working from home... and all of a sudden we're supposed to go back? Into the physical work places? What if all the black boxes of people not wanting to be seen in zoom meetings were actually hiding something? What if those face masks were hiding something?

I'm excited that literature, notably horror literature, has started discussing and processing the pandemic phase and Tom's work (which I hope is not yet done) contributes to the discussion on a very high level, in his signature quality and prose.

My wholehearted thanks, Tom, for the review copy!

Cymbals Eat Guitars by Josh Hanson

Cymbals Eat Guitars is probably the novella equivalent of being thrown into cold water without warning – the story loses no time to get to action, which starts during a punk rock gig, when a train crashes into the concert premises. I admit, the concept is quite unusual, though the zombie trope, fun but a little overused by now.

I like the immediacy of the story, I would have been fine if it dared a little more and didn't give any background for any character, just leaving them as human beings confronting this situation. Because once the background giving starts, it needs to be done in a way to make the reader feel and root with them, which wasn't quite the case here. I didn't really feel connected to them.

Nevertheless a fun, quick-paced story for fast reading. The cover imitating The Clash-London Calling is this book's biggest asset.

Poor Things by Alasdair Gray

So what we have is a pastiche Frankenstein story of a scientist finding a pregnant woman who kills herself and tranplants the baby's brain inside her still intact body, resulting in a seemingly adult person who knows nothing about social norms and conventions and acts it.

I first watched the movie and I'm not going to lie, I was smitten despite some of its problematic aspects. I wanted to see if the book follows the same problematic line and I was surprised to find a much much more political work in front of me than I was expecting.

Unfortunately Poor Things is written all over the place... Letters, POV switches, unreliable narrators... I appreciate the idea of the book and the comment on patriarchy and capitalism but I didn't really enjoy reading this; it's not very enjoyable to jump from one narrative device to another. So I feel it's a problem of prose and maybe me not clicking with the writing.

I was initially hoping to do a "Based on Books" article but I think I want to see the movie a second time before doing that.