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pbanditp's review against another edition
2.0
I tried but could not get through this book. It is nothing like what I expected. Prologue starts with some creature coming out of the ocean and preparing to go after someone but then it becomes a depressing story of Dignon, that’s the main character’s name. He was hurt by love when he was 20 and can’t get over it. Now he is in his 40’s and is desperate for someone to love him. He may have met someone when he bought a used book with a name and a phone number were written inside. He contacts her and they agree to meet and shortly after that I quit. I made it to 52% and had to stop. The writing was good and the story was sappy but interesting but I really thought I was going to be reading a horror or a thriller. It was not for me, at least not the first half of the book.
jyan's review against another edition
5.0
An examination of the decaying properties of trauma and loneliness, Blood in Electric is an emotionally devastating journey through the life of 40-something Dignon, a sad, lonely man cut off from the world after a traumatic experience, and his chance encounter with a woman who tries to pull him out. As the story goes on, we're left to question the true intentions of this woman, as well as the other figures in his past, present, and future..
A Lynchian-style deep dive into the human psyche, Blood in Electric Blue is brutal - perhaps, too brutal. That isn't to say it's a violent novel, because on the whole it's not, there are only a handful of paragraphs that contain any violence at all. Instead, it's a novel interested in experiencing emotional brutality, taking us deep into the emotional internality of its protagonist and then pulling us into the quagmire. This is only exacerbated by the fact that Gifune has an exquisite ability to make us empathize with each of its characters, making this painful journey into madness hit all the harder. It leaves ones feeling like you, not just the character, have just experienced something horrifying.
Blood in Electric Blue is an excellent novel, but it's also a hard one. It's enough to leave one emotionally drained by the last few pages, especially if you're especially sensitive. It's beautifully empathetic and well rounded, if a little loose in its final stages, and in the end it's a unique, emotionally satisfying experience.
Thanks to Netgalley and Crossroad Press for getting to experience this excellent novel.
A Lynchian-style deep dive into the human psyche, Blood in Electric Blue is brutal - perhaps, too brutal. That isn't to say it's a violent novel, because on the whole it's not, there are only a handful of paragraphs that contain any violence at all. Instead, it's a novel interested in experiencing emotional brutality, taking us deep into the emotional internality of its protagonist and then pulling us into the quagmire. This is only exacerbated by the fact that Gifune has an exquisite ability to make us empathize with each of its characters, making this painful journey into madness hit all the harder. It leaves ones feeling like you, not just the character, have just experienced something horrifying.
Blood in Electric Blue is an excellent novel, but it's also a hard one. It's enough to leave one emotionally drained by the last few pages, especially if you're especially sensitive. It's beautifully empathetic and well rounded, if a little loose in its final stages, and in the end it's a unique, emotionally satisfying experience.
Thanks to Netgalley and Crossroad Press for getting to experience this excellent novel.
xterminal's review
4.0
Greg F. Gifune, Blood in Electric Blue (Delirium Books, 2009)
I've been a huge fan of Greg Gifune's short fiction for almost a decade, since I first read Heretics. Until now, however, my experiences with Gifune had always come in the realm of short fiction; this is the first chance I've had to sample one of his novels. It was to my great delight that I found him to be equally proficient with feature-length work. Blood in Electric Blue is short (just over two hundred pages), sharp, well-drawn, and leaves just enough unanswered questions at the end to keep the reader thinking about this one for a long, long time after s/he turns the last page on it.
Plot: Dignon Malloy and his transgendered sister, Willie (it's never mentioned whether Willie is pre- or post-op, but I always got the feeling she is the latter), grew up in a household that can kindly be called “horrifically abusive”, and both have major problems as a result; Willie is drawn into relationships that mirror those the children had with their father, while Dignon has spent the past two decades mourning the loss of his first, and only, true love. Now Willie lives in a fleabag apartment building in the bad part of town with her newest nasty boyfriend, while Dignon has a small apartment in a slightly nicer section, with a view of the local chemical plant. On indefinite leave from his job after a traumatic event landed him in the arms of the PTSD crowd, Dignon mostly spends his days watching his pretty, punky neighbor Nikki through the bathroom window and haunting used bookstores. It is in the latter pursuit that he happens upon the book Mythical Beings in a Mortal World, which once belonged to a woman named Bree Harper, who wrote her name and phone number inside the front cover. Dignon uses the book as a ruse to meet her, and she turns out to be the epitome of “all this and brains too”. But Bree, as well, comes with baggage, in the form of jealous ex-boyfriend Kyle. Kyle, in one of his confrontations with Dignon, insinuates that Bree is not exactly what she seems to be—and Dignon, when he starts thinking about it, realizes Kyle may in fact not be crazy after all.
To me, the mark of a truly great mystery is not that it keeps you guessing until the end, but that once you get there, you realize you were trying to guess the answers to the wrong questions after all. Gifune doesn't get quite that far here; the setup for the main mystery is a little too obvious, so you know from the beginning what questions you're supposed to be asking. But he does manage to keep things interesting by not giving you all the necessary details; not so much that you have to fill in huge pieces of the puzzle, but some of the minor details are left just obscure enough to have you wondering which of the possible answers Gifune had in his head by the time you turn the last page (or if he kept himself from asking those questions in order to be able to truthfully say “I don't know” if ever asked). This is very good stuff from first page to last. Gifune, it turns out, is equally skilled writing short stories and novels, and I hope I'll be reading a lot more of both from him in the future. ****
I've been a huge fan of Greg Gifune's short fiction for almost a decade, since I first read Heretics. Until now, however, my experiences with Gifune had always come in the realm of short fiction; this is the first chance I've had to sample one of his novels. It was to my great delight that I found him to be equally proficient with feature-length work. Blood in Electric Blue is short (just over two hundred pages), sharp, well-drawn, and leaves just enough unanswered questions at the end to keep the reader thinking about this one for a long, long time after s/he turns the last page on it.
Plot: Dignon Malloy and his transgendered sister, Willie (it's never mentioned whether Willie is pre- or post-op, but I always got the feeling she is the latter), grew up in a household that can kindly be called “horrifically abusive”, and both have major problems as a result; Willie is drawn into relationships that mirror those the children had with their father, while Dignon has spent the past two decades mourning the loss of his first, and only, true love. Now Willie lives in a fleabag apartment building in the bad part of town with her newest nasty boyfriend, while Dignon has a small apartment in a slightly nicer section, with a view of the local chemical plant. On indefinite leave from his job after a traumatic event landed him in the arms of the PTSD crowd, Dignon mostly spends his days watching his pretty, punky neighbor Nikki through the bathroom window and haunting used bookstores. It is in the latter pursuit that he happens upon the book Mythical Beings in a Mortal World, which once belonged to a woman named Bree Harper, who wrote her name and phone number inside the front cover. Dignon uses the book as a ruse to meet her, and she turns out to be the epitome of “all this and brains too”. But Bree, as well, comes with baggage, in the form of jealous ex-boyfriend Kyle. Kyle, in one of his confrontations with Dignon, insinuates that Bree is not exactly what she seems to be—and Dignon, when he starts thinking about it, realizes Kyle may in fact not be crazy after all.
To me, the mark of a truly great mystery is not that it keeps you guessing until the end, but that once you get there, you realize you were trying to guess the answers to the wrong questions after all. Gifune doesn't get quite that far here; the setup for the main mystery is a little too obvious, so you know from the beginning what questions you're supposed to be asking. But he does manage to keep things interesting by not giving you all the necessary details; not so much that you have to fill in huge pieces of the puzzle, but some of the minor details are left just obscure enough to have you wondering which of the possible answers Gifune had in his head by the time you turn the last page (or if he kept himself from asking those questions in order to be able to truthfully say “I don't know” if ever asked). This is very good stuff from first page to last. Gifune, it turns out, is equally skilled writing short stories and novels, and I hope I'll be reading a lot more of both from him in the future. ****
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