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bookwormy614's review against another edition
2.0
I couldn't finish this. I'd heard great reviews about it and the writing style and decided to give it a try. It's raw and unapologetic writing but it has no plot line (at least not one I could follow). It read more like poetry than a novel and I've never been into poetry. It's definitely different but not my kind of different. I need a plot. I need a resolution. This was just writing for writing sake. Not for me.
mallegar's review against another edition
challenging
dark
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
2.75
kitsuneheart's review against another edition
1.0
I just...I can't? What even was that? I picked this book for Halloween, figuring "hobo vampires" was good for the season, but what I got was this rambling muddle of a story. I honestly didn't even know what the over-arching plot was until I read the summary after having finished.
I suppose this might work if you're a fan of experimental fiction--it does have the feel of some poorly planned mad science--but if you need some sort of narrative that makes sense, just pass.
I suppose this might work if you're a fan of experimental fiction--it does have the feel of some poorly planned mad science--but if you need some sort of narrative that makes sense, just pass.
adriana_chlad's review against another edition
painfully slow paced, and the writing style wasnt worth all the stagnation for me :/
nationofkim's review against another edition
2.0
ummm...not impressed. i think my brows were furrowed the entire time i was reading this.
a_r_e_l_i_c's review against another edition
3.0
22 sweet charred flavor of burnt baked beans & rust
23 fecund air conditioning & freshly burst bags of chips
27 coffee burning on a stove
28 bleach
35 a gust of Hell from inside a lemon & black ash
54 DM syrup fumes
55 taxidermist’s workbench
61 death & fresh, urgent things
67 rotting piles of berries & clover
76 chocolate & blackberry
77 wax or caulking
86 plastic vomit
88 wet bear fur
94 wet paper bag
99 wet gaping embers
106 sugar-medicine smells
125 corpse’s breath
139 dryer sheets
147 polluted coffee
148 salt & laundry detergent
154 fat burning on the stove
155 spent fires
158 blood
23 fecund air conditioning & freshly burst bags of chips
27 coffee burning on a stove
28 bleach
35 a gust of Hell from inside a lemon & black ash
54 DM syrup fumes
55 taxidermist’s workbench
61 death & fresh, urgent things
67 rotting piles of berries & clover
76 chocolate & blackberry
77 wax or caulking
86 plastic vomit
88 wet bear fur
94 wet paper bag
99 wet gaping embers
106 sugar-medicine smells
125 corpse’s breath
139 dryer sheets
147 polluted coffee
148 salt & laundry detergent
154 fat burning on the stove
155 spent fires
158 blood
djflippy's review against another edition
3.0
Best vampire book I've read...I don't read vampire books.
briandice's review against another edition
5.0
Envision the largest stained glass scene from the church of your choosing, shattered into pieces no larger than a Kennedy half-dollar and given to you on soiled butcher paper with the instructions to recreate the image with a Slipknot album cover as a guide. That is the equivalent of this masterful, mindfuck of a novel.
This book isn’t for everyone, and I won’t argue with the Goodreads community that pitched it after fifty pages. I experienced long sections of 20-30 pages that I had to reread to keep up with Grace Krilanovich’s frenetic sentences that lay on the page like tattered standards of a defeated army. But the yield for this particular reader was more than worth the investment. It saddens me, the inevitability; this wheel must turn, return. There is no end, only endless endings surrounding us all opines our slutty teenage hobo vampire junky. She haunts the environs of greater Portland, reeling from loss and gain in equal measure.
If heroin-addled William S. Burroughs attempted to write Twilight it might feel something like this book. I like reading fiction that makes me think this gum I’m chewing is tinfoil. I’ll also say that The Believer was really onto something when they shortlisted this book and Dutton’s S P R A W L as two of the three Best Books of 2010. Ideally, these two novels should be read within a short span of the other – they exist as the other’s antipode in a fractured mirror sense; Dutton’s world creates a sense of agoraphobia in its limitless external nothingness while Krilanovich’s teens kick against the goads of their birth town that encases them in “miniature graves” and yields an endless desperation of feckless depravity.
This book isn’t for everyone, and I won’t argue with the Goodreads community that pitched it after fifty pages. I experienced long sections of 20-30 pages that I had to reread to keep up with Grace Krilanovich’s frenetic sentences that lay on the page like tattered standards of a defeated army. But the yield for this particular reader was more than worth the investment. It saddens me, the inevitability; this wheel must turn, return. There is no end, only endless endings surrounding us all opines our slutty teenage hobo vampire junky. She haunts the environs of greater Portland, reeling from loss and gain in equal measure.
If heroin-addled William S. Burroughs attempted to write Twilight it might feel something like this book. I like reading fiction that makes me think this gum I’m chewing is tinfoil. I’ll also say that The Believer was really onto something when they shortlisted this book and Dutton’s S P R A W L as two of the three Best Books of 2010. Ideally, these two novels should be read within a short span of the other – they exist as the other’s antipode in a fractured mirror sense; Dutton’s world creates a sense of agoraphobia in its limitless external nothingness while Krilanovich’s teens kick against the goads of their birth town that encases them in “miniature graves” and yields an endless desperation of feckless depravity.
andrea_c's review
3.0
Finishing this book it was as though I woke up after spending days bedridden with fever.