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darlingdani's review
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
erat's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
kitpower's review against another edition
5.0
Set in small town America in the early 40’s, The Rib From Which I Remake The World starts out as a smart and literate hardcore noir, before gradually descending into a bleak supernatural nightmare, which explodes in the final act into a maelstrom of violence and horror.
Central to the tale is JoJo, a hotel detective and ex-cop with a complicated past (and who I fondly imagine to be named after a character in a Tom Waits song). He’s a quintessential noir protagonist, in many ways - alcoholic, perpetually looking for either cigarettes or a light, laid low by a woman (or, to be more precise, women) - yet a combination of canny decisions about the specific nature of JoJo’s ‘sins’, alongside powerful yet unsentimental pathos, breathes not just life but vitality into these tropes, rounding out JoJo as a painfully believable character.
Similarly, the small town of Litchfield is practically a character in it’s own right. Using sparse but carefully chosen description, Kurtz brings this 1940’s Arkansas small town to vivid life, peopled with a believable cast of characters with their own tangled relationships. He also does an exceptional job of keeping these characters moving and interacting, weaving a complex plot with such skill that the narrative never becomes confusing or hard to follow.
After flirting with the supernatural murder mystery genre, the narrative takes a massive twist around the two third marker, and from there descends into a nightmare with elements of vintage King and Barker, but still with this jet black noir menace and vibe that is all Kurtz. I was astonished and deeply impressed by the way the finale played out, layers under layers peeling away, with poignancy and horror in equal measure.
In summary, this is an impressive and assured work - dark, often bleak, but with a fragile vein of hope that prevents it becoming totally nihilistic. There’s also an incredible sense of time and place, the darkness of which Kurtz does not shy away from or minimize, brilliantly realised characters, and a juggernaut of a narrative that fuses noir and horror with such ferocity that you can practically smell the burning cauterisation. A brilliant novel.
Central to the tale is JoJo, a hotel detective and ex-cop with a complicated past (and who I fondly imagine to be named after a character in a Tom Waits song). He’s a quintessential noir protagonist, in many ways - alcoholic, perpetually looking for either cigarettes or a light, laid low by a woman (or, to be more precise, women) - yet a combination of canny decisions about the specific nature of JoJo’s ‘sins’, alongside powerful yet unsentimental pathos, breathes not just life but vitality into these tropes, rounding out JoJo as a painfully believable character.
Similarly, the small town of Litchfield is practically a character in it’s own right. Using sparse but carefully chosen description, Kurtz brings this 1940’s Arkansas small town to vivid life, peopled with a believable cast of characters with their own tangled relationships. He also does an exceptional job of keeping these characters moving and interacting, weaving a complex plot with such skill that the narrative never becomes confusing or hard to follow.
After flirting with the supernatural murder mystery genre, the narrative takes a massive twist around the two third marker, and from there descends into a nightmare with elements of vintage King and Barker, but still with this jet black noir menace and vibe that is all Kurtz. I was astonished and deeply impressed by the way the finale played out, layers under layers peeling away, with poignancy and horror in equal measure.
In summary, this is an impressive and assured work - dark, often bleak, but with a fragile vein of hope that prevents it becoming totally nihilistic. There’s also an incredible sense of time and place, the darkness of which Kurtz does not shy away from or minimize, brilliantly realised characters, and a juggernaut of a narrative that fuses noir and horror with such ferocity that you can practically smell the burning cauterisation. A brilliant novel.
thaatswhatsheread's review
4.0
4 stars
This takes place in an Arkansas small town during WWII. Jojo, the town outcast, is working as a hotel detective when a strange group of people come into town with plans of showing a "hygiene show" at the theater, but there's a special midnight show where everyone that leaves a completely changed person.
This book had so much atmosphere. I also think the story did a good job with pacing. The fist part of the story did a great job with establishing the town, the characters and a sense of unease. Then there's a gruesome murder, a strange show and then a crazy finale! It was a very surreal story told with a noir style. This was a fun and fast-paced story I could not put down!
This takes place in an Arkansas small town during WWII. Jojo, the town outcast, is working as a hotel detective when a strange group of people come into town with plans of showing a "hygiene show" at the theater, but there's a special midnight show where everyone that leaves a completely changed person.
This book had so much atmosphere. I also think the story did a good job with pacing. The fist part of the story did a great job with establishing the town, the characters and a sense of unease. Then there's a gruesome murder, a strange show and then a crazy finale! It was a very surreal story told with a noir style. This was a fun and fast-paced story I could not put down!
romination's review
2.0
Ah, boy, was this one a disappointment.
I mean how could I not pick it up with a title like that? Biblical and portentous, a combination of both destructive and creative forces coming together. The description of the book itself felt rooted in a bunch of the usual checkboxes we all know and love - grizzled small-town cops, circuses and freak shows, old-timey settings, demons and Satan and all that cool stuff!
But after a strongly creepy opening, the book completely slows and seems to get entirely off topic. There are small things that are off about what's happening, but not in any special way, instead turning closer to a rather cliched hardboiled noir type story as people try to pull out the mystery of what's going on with the weird people and the bizarre sex movie they're selling.
And all of this isn't great, underwritten in a way that said someone had the IDEA of noir but not the skills to really pull it off. While there is an escalation to the action, a lot of it really feels like it's just keeping you from getting to the parts that it knows are interesting. The demon-related stuff from the beginning seems to be all gone, replaced by a lukewarm mystery about who these weird people are in town. It teases things to the audience, but for me it wasn't in a tantalizing way, but more in a way that I found frustrating, as though it was just wasting my time instead.
The best example of this was the midnight show, which is teased early in the book... and then it takes another whole day and multiple new characters being introduced before finally getting to the point of showing what it even is.
Which just wound up being disappointing, of course, as it really just took its time to delve into people's sad backstories (which blah blah blah, I get it, the real horror is in the LIVES OF AVERAGE PEOPLE) instead of really horrifying us with anything.
Then the book shifts into a much higher gear, but it works with a bunch of ideas that it never bothered to introduce, so now it all feels rushed and barely strung together. Suddenly here's the Satanic circus you always wanted! But the book is mostly done so we gotta rush through and not really explore it and oops.
There were a lot of things in the ending that I liked the idea of, but since it wasn't so well fleshed out, it also winds up feeling anticlimactic, and then it made me retroactively annoyed at the rest of the book. The reveal of the true nature of the world is the kind of thing that could have been teased out so interesting. Those little things that feel wrong, that make this place feel somehow creepy or, like, off. Instead it went from 0 to 100, then slams on the brakes because there's nowhere to go anymore. The pages have run out. The book is over.
So it winds up not working well as a noir, or horror, or as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit (which I think it's trying to be as the main point?) or even to something more abstract like the idea of divine creation. The ending hints at ideas of what could have been explored more but then they never were. A real shame.
I mean how could I not pick it up with a title like that? Biblical and portentous, a combination of both destructive and creative forces coming together. The description of the book itself felt rooted in a bunch of the usual checkboxes we all know and love - grizzled small-town cops, circuses and freak shows, old-timey settings, demons and Satan and all that cool stuff!
But after a strongly creepy opening, the book completely slows and seems to get entirely off topic. There are small things that are off about what's happening, but not in any special way, instead turning closer to a rather cliched hardboiled noir type story as people try to pull out the mystery of what's going on with the weird people and the bizarre sex movie they're selling.
And all of this isn't great, underwritten in a way that said someone had the IDEA of noir but not the skills to really pull it off. While there is an escalation to the action, a lot of it really feels like it's just keeping you from getting to the parts that it knows are interesting. The demon-related stuff from the beginning seems to be all gone, replaced by a lukewarm mystery about who these weird people are in town. It teases things to the audience, but for me it wasn't in a tantalizing way, but more in a way that I found frustrating, as though it was just wasting my time instead.
The best example of this was the midnight show, which is teased early in the book... and then it takes another whole day and multiple new characters being introduced before finally getting to the point of showing what it even is.
Which just wound up being disappointing, of course, as it really just took its time to delve into people's sad backstories (which blah blah blah, I get it, the real horror is in the LIVES OF AVERAGE PEOPLE) instead of really horrifying us with anything.
Then the book shifts into a much higher gear, but it works with a bunch of ideas that it never bothered to introduce, so now it all feels rushed and barely strung together. Suddenly here's the Satanic circus you always wanted! But the book is mostly done so we gotta rush through and not really explore it and oops.
There were a lot of things in the ending that I liked the idea of, but since it wasn't so well fleshed out, it also winds up feeling anticlimactic, and then it made me retroactively annoyed at the rest of the book. The reveal of the true nature of the world is the kind of thing that could have been teased out so interesting. Those little things that feel wrong, that make this place feel somehow creepy or, like, off. Instead it went from 0 to 100, then slams on the brakes because there's nowhere to go anymore. The pages have run out. The book is over.
So it winds up not working well as a noir, or horror, or as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit (which I think it's trying to be as the main point?) or even to something more abstract like the idea of divine creation. The ending hints at ideas of what could have been explored more but then they never were. A real shame.
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