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jm_donellan's review against another edition
4.0
This was one of the weirdest books I've ever read. And that's okay, I like a little bit of weird now and then. Sometimes a lot. Revert is to be commended for the bravery of his ridiculousness. This is a fantastically surrealist tale, but the fact that it is in some parts incredibly filthy and depressing makes it hard going at times. Luckily, it's redeemed byt some simply brilliant turns of phrase, wildly inventive ideas and a biting humour. Well worth a read, but make sure you're ready to go all the way down the rabbit hole...
werdfert's review
4.0
This book is about a man who creates perfect tumors inside his gut. He may be sick, but he’s really good at it.
I don’t remember how I first heard of this book, but the title had me hooked. I was interested in the reversal: how disease and sickness could become advantages.
The book fluctuates between astute observations to absurd, bizarre shockmongering.
“The parent/child relationship, especially when the child has entered the world of adulthood, often descends into a series of practiced platitudes. The automatic drive to conduct the relationship without emotional interference enforces itself.”
versus
“I had been cooking a fart all night and I was too tired to concern myself with social etiquette. It flew from my arse like a gas dragon and circled the bedroom. … ‘It’s like a revolting rainbow!’”
If I hadn’t read the reviews of this book, I might have taken it more straight-forwardly. But descriptions such as “parody” and “allegory” made me take statements such as, “We are taught to fear disease and respond combatively toward it,” as ironic instead of subversive. I began to try to parse out what the text meant instead of just reading it.
About half way through the book I realized I was allowing other people’s reading of the book to influence me. And even if they were correct, I wanted to derive my own values and interpretations.
Revert delves into the shitty, unlooked-at portions of humanity. But he doesn’t do so cavalierly. He is aware of his putridity. He shows his hand when he writes, “So much of life is shit, piss and vomit. The waste itself is no way near as disgusting as our urge to run away from it.” He knows he is employing shock tactics, gore tactics.
As the narrative progresses, he uses more magical-realism-type prose. As the climax approaches, the shit and vomit abates (not disappearing entirely) to be replaced by a populace of police wearing xylophones riding mechanized ladders and children dressed as audio cassette tapes, etc.
This book wasn’t exactly what I thought it was going to be. I felt Revert backpedaled a little at the end with a spurt of didacticism. He tries to justify what he has just commemorated to paper by tacking on a moral. “Life is the illness,” he writes. He says other things, there, towards the end, but I don’t believe him, so I won’t repeat them here.
I believe this nugget he buried in a nostalgic memory: “I didn’t just obsess over my failures. I became the perfect embodiment of them.”
I don’t remember how I first heard of this book, but the title had me hooked. I was interested in the reversal: how disease and sickness could become advantages.
The book fluctuates between astute observations to absurd, bizarre shockmongering.
“The parent/child relationship, especially when the child has entered the world of adulthood, often descends into a series of practiced platitudes. The automatic drive to conduct the relationship without emotional interference enforces itself.”
versus
“I had been cooking a fart all night and I was too tired to concern myself with social etiquette. It flew from my arse like a gas dragon and circled the bedroom. … ‘It’s like a revolting rainbow!’”
If I hadn’t read the reviews of this book, I might have taken it more straight-forwardly. But descriptions such as “parody” and “allegory” made me take statements such as, “We are taught to fear disease and respond combatively toward it,” as ironic instead of subversive. I began to try to parse out what the text meant instead of just reading it.
About half way through the book I realized I was allowing other people’s reading of the book to influence me. And even if they were correct, I wanted to derive my own values and interpretations.
Revert delves into the shitty, unlooked-at portions of humanity. But he doesn’t do so cavalierly. He is aware of his putridity. He shows his hand when he writes, “So much of life is shit, piss and vomit. The waste itself is no way near as disgusting as our urge to run away from it.” He knows he is employing shock tactics, gore tactics.
As the narrative progresses, he uses more magical-realism-type prose. As the climax approaches, the shit and vomit abates (not disappearing entirely) to be replaced by a populace of police wearing xylophones riding mechanized ladders and children dressed as audio cassette tapes, etc.
This book wasn’t exactly what I thought it was going to be. I felt Revert backpedaled a little at the end with a spurt of didacticism. He tries to justify what he has just commemorated to paper by tacking on a moral. “Life is the illness,” he writes. He says other things, there, towards the end, but I don’t believe him, so I won’t repeat them here.
I believe this nugget he buried in a nostalgic memory: “I didn’t just obsess over my failures. I became the perfect embodiment of them.”
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