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gianlucafiore's review against another edition
3.0
A wholly imperfect book. It is clear why Nick himself consider this a not so good book: it shows a mix of great languages and narrative scope with tedious parts and forgettable moments.
It is pretty much a book that mirrors, thematically, the first part of Nick Cave career as a musician. It fits that period like a latex glove. And, as per the music, I love some of it while find boring some. Bunny Munro represents the middle part of Nick's career in music and it was much better, more mature as both a writer and an artist as a whole.
I wouldnt say not to read this book as I see how many would absolutely love it. It is not for everybody and surely not the best Nick Cave can do, though.
It is pretty much a book that mirrors, thematically, the first part of Nick Cave career as a musician. It fits that period like a latex glove. And, as per the music, I love some of it while find boring some. Bunny Munro represents the middle part of Nick's career in music and it was much better, more mature as both a writer and an artist as a whole.
I wouldnt say not to read this book as I see how many would absolutely love it. It is not for everybody and surely not the best Nick Cave can do, though.
ipb1's review against another edition
5.0
The sleaze, grime, and squalor is so palpable you need a shower after reading it.
merricatct's review against another edition
5.0
This book was a total reading experience, wow. If you made a Venn diagram of The Wasp Factory, The Painted Bird, and A Clockwork Orange, this book would be right smack in the middle. So, yeah, that's your warning about what to expect.
I literally had a dictionary next to me as I read, and I learned so many great new words! The language and the craftsmanship of the writing was just incredible. The main star of this was the atmosphere - the characters and story are smaller players on the much larger stage, and that stage is the real reason we're here. I don't know how much I liked this, but at the same time, I completely loved it. So glad I read it.
I literally had a dictionary next to me as I read, and I learned so many great new words! The language and the craftsmanship of the writing was just incredible. The main star of this was the atmosphere - the characters and story are smaller players on the much larger stage, and that stage is the real reason we're here. I don't know how much I liked this, but at the same time, I completely loved it. So glad I read it.
el_entrenador_loco's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
themorgueanne's review
4.0
Definitely a slow starter, the first 'book' dragged a little, but by the time I got to the second, my attention was grabbed. By the third, I was blowing through the pages. You have to really pay attention for the first part, since the main character has an interesting way of speaking, and things are a little confusing such as who's doing what to who, but by the last few pages, even though I was still asking myself "what the fuck just happened", it was sinking in a little faster. Great for fans of Paul Neilan, or any other 'seriously fucked up' literature, this one's definitely worth a read.
Book 19/150
Book 19/150
aneides's review against another edition
3.0
It's taken a fucking pandemic for me to finally get into this horrible, horrible book. I have tried several times over the last six years but have been unable to get past the first dozen or fewer pages. To be clear, the subject matter/content is horrible--a dark and twisted world full of omens and prophecies and scary-ass religious fanatics, torture and murder of both humans and animals, a swamp, and nearly every kind of ugliness one can imagine. The writing, however, is good, even poetic, with a few glaring problems.
This book is a muddle... spending much of its time inside the head of a mute young man, abused by his parents and the community at large, with any number of delusions. Complete with sizable gaps in his memory, Euchrid may be the quintessential unreliable narrator. There was a lot of imagery and symbolism that I recognized as Biblical without any confidence that I was understanding its full significance... I was in many cases unable to determine if an event/character was echoing a Bible story/character or, rather, inverting its meaning. In fact, ATASTA sort of reminded me of Cormac McCarthy's Outer Dark which appears to have been written as an inverse nativity. Perhaps only the formerly hyperreligious can fully understand and appreciate the depraved genius of this work. The glaring problems add to the muddle, perhaps in ways unintended by the author.
THE GLARING PROBLEMS:
1) Poor conformity to the setting the author has chosen.
The book is set in the southeastern US (unspecified exactly where, although in sugarcane country, so... Louisiana or Florida would be the best candidates) but word choices of the (omniscient?) 3rd person narrator and characters are from Cave's own Australian/British lexicon rather than the American terms that surely would have been used. (I have less of a problem with the Britishy spellings, although it does seem a little strange for an American character to be speaking in British spellings. Is a that ridiculous thing to be hung up on? Probably.) He mentions cane toads more than once, which, after doing some small amount of internet research I have concluded is possible but unlikely, cane toads having been introduced but having not had a significant presence in North America--and then, only in a small part of southern Florida--until the 1950s. Perhaps Cave thought the amphibian scourge of the Australian continent originated in southeastern North America rather than coming from adjacent regions (the Caribbean, Mesoamerica.) Cave also mentions hills... which, from what I understand, are not really a feature of the US's sugarcane country. I mean, Florida may as well have been ironed. Also, almost no mention of non-white people, despite being set in the rural South. For a book that tries to present as Southern Gothic, it seemed odd to not have some racially based undercurrent, at least in the parts not narrated by Euchrid. This omission may or may not have been deliberate but the author being a non-American makes me wonder. Every other form of cruelty is presented in this book, why not the racial bigotry (possibly violence--and in this book, surely violence) that would have been there? It is so obvious an omission that I suspect it was deliberate, but I'm still not sure what is achieved. I mean, this book was a veritable cruelty buffet.
2) Euchrid's use of language
The protagonist, Euchrid, is mute, but when he narrates (one presumes his narration to be an internal dying declaration), he narrates very articulately in something of a Southern accent (ah, mah, unnerwear). People don't have accents in their thoughts, and Euchrid, being mute, is not speaking. We learn that Euchrid is at least somewhat literate and should know how to spell these simple words. We figure he might be a genius or perhaps his gift of language is divine (because he wouldn't have been sent to school and we can't imagine his hillbilly parents taking the time to educate him)... in which case wouldn't God/Satan have given him the proper spellings of common words along with the understanding of all these esoteric concepts? Even Foghorn Leghorn can spell "I" and "my," and he's a barely literate rooster.
Final comment is that this book felt a little self-indulgent but I am at a loss to explain why it should be any more so than any other literary novel. Maybe anything so steeped in religion would seem this way to me. Maybe just the sheer quantity of horrible material was gratuitous. Or maybe Euchrid himself is the self-indulgent aspect, wreaking vengeance after all his suffering. I might think about this some more, but it isn't likely. I'd like to get this black monster of a novel out of my mind as quickly as possible... by reading about a smallpox epidemic, I think.
This book is a muddle... spending much of its time inside the head of a mute young man, abused by his parents and the community at large, with any number of delusions. Complete with sizable gaps in his memory, Euchrid may be the quintessential unreliable narrator. There was a lot of imagery and symbolism that I recognized as Biblical without any confidence that I was understanding its full significance... I was in many cases unable to determine if an event/character was echoing a Bible story/character or, rather, inverting its meaning. In fact, ATASTA sort of reminded me of Cormac McCarthy's Outer Dark which appears to have been written as an inverse nativity. Perhaps only the formerly hyperreligious can fully understand and appreciate the depraved genius of this work. The glaring problems add to the muddle, perhaps in ways unintended by the author.
THE GLARING PROBLEMS:
1) Poor conformity to the setting the author has chosen.
The book is set in the southeastern US (unspecified exactly where, although in sugarcane country, so... Louisiana or Florida would be the best candidates) but word choices of the (omniscient?) 3rd person narrator and characters are from Cave's own Australian/British lexicon rather than the American terms that surely would have been used. (I have less of a problem with the Britishy spellings, although it does seem a little strange for an American character to be speaking in British spellings. Is a that ridiculous thing to be hung up on? Probably.) He mentions cane toads more than once, which, after doing some small amount of internet research I have concluded is possible but unlikely, cane toads having been introduced but having not had a significant presence in North America--and then, only in a small part of southern Florida--until the 1950s. Perhaps Cave thought the amphibian scourge of the Australian continent originated in southeastern North America rather than coming from adjacent regions (the Caribbean, Mesoamerica.) Cave also mentions hills... which, from what I understand, are not really a feature of the US's sugarcane country. I mean, Florida may as well have been ironed. Also, almost no mention of non-white people, despite being set in the rural South. For a book that tries to present as Southern Gothic, it seemed odd to not have some racially based undercurrent, at least in the parts not narrated by Euchrid. This omission may or may not have been deliberate but the author being a non-American makes me wonder. Every other form of cruelty is presented in this book, why not the racial bigotry (possibly violence--and in this book, surely violence) that would have been there? It is so obvious an omission that I suspect it was deliberate, but I'm still not sure what is achieved. I mean, this book was a veritable cruelty buffet.
2) Euchrid's use of language
The protagonist, Euchrid, is mute, but when he narrates (one presumes his narration to be an internal dying declaration), he narrates very articulately in something of a Southern accent (ah, mah, unnerwear). People don't have accents in their thoughts, and Euchrid, being mute, is not speaking. We learn that Euchrid is at least somewhat literate and should know how to spell these simple words. We figure he might be a genius or perhaps his gift of language is divine (because he wouldn't have been sent to school and we can't imagine his hillbilly parents taking the time to educate him)... in which case wouldn't God/Satan have given him the proper spellings of common words along with the understanding of all these esoteric concepts? Even Foghorn Leghorn can spell "I" and "my," and he's a barely literate rooster.
Final comment is that this book felt a little self-indulgent but I am at a loss to explain why it should be any more so than any other literary novel. Maybe anything so steeped in religion would seem this way to me. Maybe just the sheer quantity of horrible material was gratuitous. Or maybe Euchrid himself is the self-indulgent aspect, wreaking vengeance after all his suffering. I might think about this some more, but it isn't likely. I'd like to get this black monster of a novel out of my mind as quickly as possible... by reading about a smallpox epidemic, I think.
acquaintance's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
zzzreads's review against another edition
2.0
Nick Cave is, in my opinion, one of the finest musicians working. His music is endlessly creative, seemingly taking on new forms with each album he and the Bad Seeds, and The Birthday Party in his younger days, make. His music is raw, violent, tender, romantic, honest, tragic, and beautiful. Cave has never been afraid to push the envelope and write what many would consider demented, Murder Ballads being a shining example. On the opposite end, he is fearless enough to compose something as stripped down and touching as The Boatman's Call. It's for all of these reasons that Cave and the Seeds are some of my favorite musicians. But it is also for these same reasons that I failed to enjoy, or even like, And the Ass Saw the Angel.
Cave wrote Angel in Berlin, in the 80's, at the height of a drug binge. And the novel reads just as you would expect knowing of the background to its composition. The book takes place in the American south in the first half of the 20th century. Our narrator is the mute and decrepit Euchrid Eucrow. Angered at his torturous parents and the Ukulite religious cult that surround him, we eventually see Euchrid wreak his bloody vengeance on those who have wronged him. This premise is all that I knew about the book when I picked it up one winter day in a Bratislava bookshop.
And the Ass Saw the Angel is exactly what you'd expect from Nick Cave. In the first page we read Euchrid's memory of his birth, alcohol-fueled C-section administered in a barn with a shard of glass and all. There is no happiness to be found here, only chaos and despair. But if you're reading Nick Cave, then that's probably what you want. What may be jarring to some readers is how much Cave leans into the Southern Gothic, Faulkner-esque style. The pronoun "I" is substituted for "Ah" and heavy dialect is used throughout. Cave himself described the prose as being "written in a kind of hyper-poetic thought-speak not meant to be spoken, a mongrel language that was part Biblical, part Deep South dialect, part gutter slang, at times obscenely reverent and at others reverently obscene". It's this hyper-stylization where some of my criticism comes into play. For me, the book was 99 parts style and 1 part substance. There just wasn't much there beyond the violence and style. Given that the book has been praised by critics and most on this site, perhaps my distaste is due to my own biases rather than an inherent lack of ability from Cave. Cave is an excellent writer, any fan of his work will agree with that. And there is excellent writing here. It’s just buried under heaps of, in my opinion, needless and misdirecting syntax. The sheer creativity of the book still shines through, just dimmer than it should.
I just did not enjoy the novel. I wanted to, I really wanted to. Perhaps if Angel was 100 pages rather than 300, or if Cave expanded the focus from Eucrow to other characters in this lush and intriguing world he built more than he did, my feelings would be different. Something also to note is the discrepancy in the editions of the book. The edition I read is the 20th anniversary special, which apparently has been “completely revised...cut down and reorganized by the author so the plot is clarified and the characters stand out more clearly”.
Ultimately, I would still recommend this book with the prerequisite of being a Nick Cave fan first-and-foremost. It is a sensory gut-punch that will make your skin crawl and give you anxiety. For the reasons that I disliked it, some may love it. It is simply that, in my opinion, Cave’s experimental genius lends itself better to music than a 300 page novel.
Cave wrote Angel in Berlin, in the 80's, at the height of a drug binge. And the novel reads just as you would expect knowing of the background to its composition. The book takes place in the American south in the first half of the 20th century. Our narrator is the mute and decrepit Euchrid Eucrow. Angered at his torturous parents and the Ukulite religious cult that surround him, we eventually see Euchrid wreak his bloody vengeance on those who have wronged him. This premise is all that I knew about the book when I picked it up one winter day in a Bratislava bookshop.
And the Ass Saw the Angel is exactly what you'd expect from Nick Cave. In the first page we read Euchrid's memory of his birth, alcohol-fueled C-section administered in a barn with a shard of glass and all. There is no happiness to be found here, only chaos and despair. But if you're reading Nick Cave, then that's probably what you want. What may be jarring to some readers is how much Cave leans into the Southern Gothic, Faulkner-esque style. The pronoun "I" is substituted for "Ah" and heavy dialect is used throughout. Cave himself described the prose as being "written in a kind of hyper-poetic thought-speak not meant to be spoken, a mongrel language that was part Biblical, part Deep South dialect, part gutter slang, at times obscenely reverent and at others reverently obscene". It's this hyper-stylization where some of my criticism comes into play. For me, the book was 99 parts style and 1 part substance. There just wasn't much there beyond the violence and style. Given that the book has been praised by critics and most on this site, perhaps my distaste is due to my own biases rather than an inherent lack of ability from Cave. Cave is an excellent writer, any fan of his work will agree with that. And there is excellent writing here. It’s just buried under heaps of, in my opinion, needless and misdirecting syntax. The sheer creativity of the book still shines through, just dimmer than it should.
I just did not enjoy the novel. I wanted to, I really wanted to. Perhaps if Angel was 100 pages rather than 300, or if Cave expanded the focus from Eucrow to other characters in this lush and intriguing world he built more than he did, my feelings would be different. Something also to note is the discrepancy in the editions of the book. The edition I read is the 20th anniversary special, which apparently has been “completely revised...cut down and reorganized by the author so the plot is clarified and the characters stand out more clearly”.
Ultimately, I would still recommend this book with the prerequisite of being a Nick Cave fan first-and-foremost. It is a sensory gut-punch that will make your skin crawl and give you anxiety. For the reasons that I disliked it, some may love it. It is simply that, in my opinion, Cave’s experimental genius lends itself better to music than a 300 page novel.
kvoet's review against another edition
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75