fiction book reviews – Page 3

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis – Pervert or Prophet?

I read this book the way I watch grizzly slasher films. I squint my eyes so they’re barely open and quickly scan over the gruesome parts, trying not to comprehend too much, but for some godawful reason, I’m unable to just turn the page and move on to the next scene. Bret Easton Ellis will be remembered for this book—one of the strangest “horror comedies” ever to spew from a mind more twisted than Edgar Allan Poe’s, more macabre than H.P. Lovecraft’s, and more harrowing than Stephen King’s. With American Psycho, Ellis raised the bar for thriller writers.

Allow me to reproduce here just a few sentences of a scene that goes on for a number of pages. WARNING: I’m not joking. Continue reading American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis – Pervert or Prophet?

Chad Kultgen’s The Average American Male – What Salinger Couldn’t Say

This novel by Chad Kultgen reminds me more than any other book of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. The main difference is that The Average American Male is simply more honest about the way young guys think about sex. I’m sure just about every guy who reads The Average American Male starts cracking up almost immediately because he relates to the way the narrator’s mind works, mentally undressing every attractive female he sees and imagining raunchy sex acts. It may be a slight exaggeration of the “average” American male’s mind—granted: most men don’t masturbate ten times a day—but the mental activity itself is not that far from average. This really is how guys think, all guys—I suspect even gay guys think like this, except that their fantasies are about men instead of women.

Continue reading Chad Kultgen’s The Average American Male – What Salinger Couldn’t Say

Charles Bukowski’s Post Office – Through Rain, Sleet, Snow and Booze

Charles Bukowski is primarily known as a poet. He was also a lifelong alcoholic and often wrote about his drinking in both his poems and especially in his prose. Post Office was his first novel.

Although it’s labeled “a novel,” Post Office is really a memoir. (I think the only actual novel Bukowski ever wrote was Pulp, a parody of a detective novel, “Dedicated to bad writing,” that was published in 1994, the year he died. I’ll review Pulp in the future.) There’s no plot to Post Office, hardly even a story. A man hires on as a letter carrier, works a few years then quits. He hires on again as a clerk, works a lot more years, then quits again. That’s the story.

In this time frame of some 14-15 years, he goes through a number of wives and lovers, drinks, has a kid, drinks, plays the horses, and drinks. I’ve heard many people say they love Bukowski’s poetry, but hate his prose. In my opinion, they’re not reading him right. His prose is poetry. I’m not saying that every word Bukowski has ever written is poetry. But there are hundreds of poems, disguised as prose, throughout his “novels.” Post Office is a book you can flip open to any page and start reading and you’ll soon find yourself engrossed.

Continue reading Charles Bukowski’s Post Office – Through Rain, Sleet, Snow and Booze

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk – A First Novel with Punch

We are getting into some serious dick-lit here. There’s so much testosterone gumming up the pages of this thriller, you could tear ’em out, chew ’em up, and throw away your Cialis prescription. Here’s the story in a nutshell:

Guy can’t sleep. Chronic insomnia. He’s suffering. Shrink tells him he’s a wimp. “Why don’t you go to a cancer patient support group so you can see what real suffering is?” Guy goes to a testicular cancer support group. The ploy works. Guy sees that men with no balls are in bad shape, making his complaints about sleeplessness pale by comparison. What’s insomnia compared to having your nuts chopped off? Continue reading Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk – A First Novel with Punch