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2.71 AVERAGE
2.71 AVERAGE
Well! What can I say about this book?! From the title I knew it was going to be different! It starts with Stacy and her boyfriend Steve, while having sex, Steve hears unusual noises coming from somewhere and Stacy explains its from her vagina as if that's a normal thing!
She wants him to explore and he finds himself climbing inside her to investigate and meets Fig, a woman inside her that used to come out and play with Stacy when she was a child. The story continues when Steve finds a whole other world inside Stacy and his wonder for Fig grows and love blossoms.
For the next part, you'll have to read it for yourself!
She wants him to explore and he finds himself climbing inside her to investigate and meets Fig, a woman inside her that used to come out and play with Stacy when she was a child. The story continues when Steve finds a whole other world inside Stacy and his wonder for Fig grows and love blossoms.
For the next part, you'll have to read it for yourself!
throughout reading this book i was so confused as to why anyone would make this, then i looked up the author, and it all made sense. i didn't really like the weird asian micro aggressions, or the use of r word but ig it was made in 2006 by a sick sick person. if i hadn't have watched the human centipede trilogy, i would have been disturbed by this book. it's really good for a light read though and interesting like it's one of the most creative books i've ever read. i'm kind of sad at the ending i really hoped they would meet again
I had no clue what to expect from this... I bought it because of the title and because I needed to know what it was about.
Like the title mentions, Stacy’s vagina is haunted. However, her vagina is also a portal to another world. If that doesn’t sell you, I don’t know what will.
This story was so creative! While some parts were a little too much for me, it was fun. Sometimes it’s really nice reading something that completely takes you away from the real world. This was that book for me!
Like the title mentions, Stacy’s vagina is haunted. However, her vagina is also a portal to another world. If that doesn’t sell you, I don’t know what will.
This story was so creative! While some parts were a little too much for me, it was fun. Sometimes it’s really nice reading something that completely takes you away from the real world. This was that book for me!
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
WTF was that
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
dark
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I read a lot. I love trashy books about giant sharks, dense classics, and erotica. I read everything from Jurassic Park to Jane Eyre, from Delta of Venus to House of Holes... Austen, Shakespeare, Henry Miller, Max Brooks, Tom Stoppard, Isabel Allende, Nicholson Baker, Henry James, Kipling, Piers Anthony, Margaret Atwood, Arthur Conan Doyle, Louise Erdrich, James Baldwin, and Elizabeth Gaskell.
I mention this to give some context to my criticism: I am not easily turned off by a book.
I bought The Haunted Vagina because Bizarro fiction was a genre I had never heard of and was therefore curious about. I hoped it might be a refreshing change from the literature I was slogging through for university. Not to sound like a literary snob, but this novella was actually bad- worse than 50 Shades. That's right, 50 Shades of Gray had more proficient character development. Hell, TWILIGHT had a better plot.
I have very few limits when it comes to reading matter. I am not a prude. I know what unbirth is. And yet, I have never read anything as terrible as this book. It isn't sexy (if it was, I might forgive it). It isn't, in any sense, compelling. It is not beautifully written (style might have made up for a lack of substance). At times, the language was vaguely erotic, but more often it read like a bullet point list of unconnected sentences. I had to go back and scan pages to pull meaning from them. At other times, the writing was like a film script, with everything laid out painfully clearly, like an exposed nerve. It lacked nuance, tension, taste, humour, anything that might have given its semblance of a plot one iota of meaning.
Look, I get it. Erotica doesn't really need a plot, although the best erotica is woven so deftly that it's hard to extricate plot from porn. But this is not erotica. It isn’t even a book of raunchy smut, like House of Holes. It was just tasteless, badly written, shock-value words on a page. For context, I have read more compelling narratives on furry roleplay websites, frequently. Not to attack anyone’s writing- I am sure Carlton Mellick III works hard on his stories- but I feel like he needs a proficient editor and some actual ideas. If the book had a plot worth talking about, I would forgive the style issues. If the style was beautiful or interesting, I would forgive the awful narrative. But it isn’t.
Nothing interesting happens. The scanty explanations offered by the characters have no importance on or even inside the story because there are no stakes attached to whether the characters learn anything. For example, a discussion about the metaphysics of the world inside Stacy’s vagina is thrown in, discussed for a page, and has no consequences on anything at all. It doesn’t matter! Neither does the conjecturing about the origin of the world inside her. These are interesting questions, but they aren’t explored. Why did the skeleton try to escape her in the opening segment? Hell if I know.
This book wears the trappings of surrealism, but it is not surrealist or even absurdist. Surrealist literature is like The Metamorphosis where somebody wakes up as an insect and it's not explained WHY they wake up as an insect, but by distorting this one aspect of everyday life, it sheds light on other things within our everyday existence. This book, unless it's making some kind of weird point about cancer, it doesn't make any sense. And if it IS making a point about inherited trauma and cancer, then it handles it very insensitively indeed.
The author… he can't write very well. No wonder bizarro authors have to have their own publishing firm! The amount of minor sentences in this book. Made it seem. Really disjointed. Most of the sentences were simple declarative sentences, which got repetitive and boring quickly. It seemed like nothing was done for effect, or with care or thought. There are arbitrary breaks marked by asterisks, but not at a point in the story where it would be sensible to put a break. Maybe this is a feature of bizarro fiction. Guess what? It’s also a feature of bad writing.
The Guardian described Mellick as a “true artist” of Bizarro fiction. I just don’t think that’s true. Okay, I will give him props: he can tell a story in a sort of basic way. But there's no art to his writing, there is no lyricalness. It is just not good. For all the vaguely entertaining descriptions of sex, the book lacks any punch that isn’t solely made up of shock value. OOOooooOo, a man being consumed by a vagina????? Oh my, how bizarre is that! So revolutionary! Oh wait, no it isn’t; Neil Gaiman did it in American Gods in 2001, a decade before Carlton Mellick III, and it’s been a thing in fetish circles since, like, the Edo era.
I think there is something of value in every book, just by dint of someone sitting down and writing it, spending time with words on a page, smoothing out the edges and presenting the reader with information. This book is no exception. Clearly, I'm able to criticise it so there is something in it that is… something. But it is absolutely dreadful, absolutely pointless and I didn't get anything out of it other than a headache and significant annoyance.
The book also contains a throwaway segment about a black homeless man that left a bad taste in my mouth because the author does nothing with it. If you want to write about a black homeless man and present him as unsympathetic and “racist against generous whites, actually,” then you need to do something with that discussion. Otherwise, it is tasteless and pointless. I get that there may have been a nutshell of an idea about learned helplessness and victimhood, or lack of personal responsibility. In and of itself, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Coming in a nuanced, longer text that deals with race in other ways, that would be a perfectly acceptable thing to discuss. Maybe he's making a point about victim culture! But coming in in a book that's like 90 pages long and in which this is the only treatment of race you get? What are you saying, Mr Author? What is your point? What are you trying to imply?
I am reading into the text very, very generously and drawing an extremely implicit point out by saying Mellick may have had a point. It’s so implicit that one might even conclude that the author didn’t intend such a generous interpretation. If you want to criticise liberals, comedians who deal with politics, and black people in general, go for it. I am all ears, if you put the effort in and make a valid point. But don’t be lazy and disingenuous.
Mellick’s characterization is awful. It’s so flat and two dimensional. I guess in a short novella, a novella that's like 90 pages long and could probably be written in a smaller font in about 50 pages or so, it is hard to write really deep characters. But a skilled author is more than capable of giving the reader some meat to chew on. Mellick manages to demonstrate that Stacy… is quirky. And Fig? Fig is quirky. And that’s it. And even that is accomplished through the protagonist telling us this rather than the text showing it.
Overall, if you take away Stacy’s vagina containing a world, the plot is boring. Nothing changes. It’s just cheap, shoddy, shock-value literature that relies on a pornographic trope. It isn’t sexy. It isn’t fun. If it was ten pages longer, I wouldn’t have finished it. I’m ashamed I wasted my time reading it and I can only hope Mellick thinks hard before he wastes paper writing another book. Write me something good, or save the resources and brainpower it takes to produce something as lax as The Haunted Vagina.
I mention this to give some context to my criticism: I am not easily turned off by a book.
I bought The Haunted Vagina because Bizarro fiction was a genre I had never heard of and was therefore curious about. I hoped it might be a refreshing change from the literature I was slogging through for university. Not to sound like a literary snob, but this novella was actually bad- worse than 50 Shades. That's right, 50 Shades of Gray had more proficient character development. Hell, TWILIGHT had a better plot.
I have very few limits when it comes to reading matter. I am not a prude. I know what unbirth is. And yet, I have never read anything as terrible as this book. It isn't sexy (if it was, I might forgive it). It isn't, in any sense, compelling. It is not beautifully written (style might have made up for a lack of substance). At times, the language was vaguely erotic, but more often it read like a bullet point list of unconnected sentences. I had to go back and scan pages to pull meaning from them. At other times, the writing was like a film script, with everything laid out painfully clearly, like an exposed nerve. It lacked nuance, tension, taste, humour, anything that might have given its semblance of a plot one iota of meaning.
Look, I get it. Erotica doesn't really need a plot, although the best erotica is woven so deftly that it's hard to extricate plot from porn. But this is not erotica. It isn’t even a book of raunchy smut, like House of Holes. It was just tasteless, badly written, shock-value words on a page. For context, I have read more compelling narratives on furry roleplay websites, frequently. Not to attack anyone’s writing- I am sure Carlton Mellick III works hard on his stories- but I feel like he needs a proficient editor and some actual ideas. If the book had a plot worth talking about, I would forgive the style issues. If the style was beautiful or interesting, I would forgive the awful narrative. But it isn’t.
Nothing interesting happens. The scanty explanations offered by the characters have no importance on or even inside the story because there are no stakes attached to whether the characters learn anything. For example, a discussion about the metaphysics of the world inside Stacy’s vagina is thrown in, discussed for a page, and has no consequences on anything at all. It doesn’t matter! Neither does the conjecturing about the origin of the world inside her. These are interesting questions, but they aren’t explored. Why did the skeleton try to escape her in the opening segment? Hell if I know.
This book wears the trappings of surrealism, but it is not surrealist or even absurdist. Surrealist literature is like The Metamorphosis where somebody wakes up as an insect and it's not explained WHY they wake up as an insect, but by distorting this one aspect of everyday life, it sheds light on other things within our everyday existence. This book, unless it's making some kind of weird point about cancer, it doesn't make any sense. And if it IS making a point about inherited trauma and cancer, then it handles it very insensitively indeed.
The author… he can't write very well. No wonder bizarro authors have to have their own publishing firm! The amount of minor sentences in this book. Made it seem. Really disjointed. Most of the sentences were simple declarative sentences, which got repetitive and boring quickly. It seemed like nothing was done for effect, or with care or thought. There are arbitrary breaks marked by asterisks, but not at a point in the story where it would be sensible to put a break. Maybe this is a feature of bizarro fiction. Guess what? It’s also a feature of bad writing.
The Guardian described Mellick as a “true artist” of Bizarro fiction. I just don’t think that’s true. Okay, I will give him props: he can tell a story in a sort of basic way. But there's no art to his writing, there is no lyricalness. It is just not good. For all the vaguely entertaining descriptions of sex, the book lacks any punch that isn’t solely made up of shock value. OOOooooOo, a man being consumed by a vagina????? Oh my, how bizarre is that! So revolutionary! Oh wait, no it isn’t; Neil Gaiman did it in American Gods in 2001, a decade before Carlton Mellick III, and it’s been a thing in fetish circles since, like, the Edo era.
I think there is something of value in every book, just by dint of someone sitting down and writing it, spending time with words on a page, smoothing out the edges and presenting the reader with information. This book is no exception. Clearly, I'm able to criticise it so there is something in it that is… something. But it is absolutely dreadful, absolutely pointless and I didn't get anything out of it other than a headache and significant annoyance.
The book also contains a throwaway segment about a black homeless man that left a bad taste in my mouth because the author does nothing with it. If you want to write about a black homeless man and present him as unsympathetic and “racist against generous whites, actually,” then you need to do something with that discussion. Otherwise, it is tasteless and pointless. I get that there may have been a nutshell of an idea about learned helplessness and victimhood, or lack of personal responsibility. In and of itself, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Coming in a nuanced, longer text that deals with race in other ways, that would be a perfectly acceptable thing to discuss. Maybe he's making a point about victim culture! But coming in in a book that's like 90 pages long and in which this is the only treatment of race you get? What are you saying, Mr Author? What is your point? What are you trying to imply?
I am reading into the text very, very generously and drawing an extremely implicit point out by saying Mellick may have had a point. It’s so implicit that one might even conclude that the author didn’t intend such a generous interpretation. If you want to criticise liberals, comedians who deal with politics, and black people in general, go for it. I am all ears, if you put the effort in and make a valid point. But don’t be lazy and disingenuous.
Mellick’s characterization is awful. It’s so flat and two dimensional. I guess in a short novella, a novella that's like 90 pages long and could probably be written in a smaller font in about 50 pages or so, it is hard to write really deep characters. But a skilled author is more than capable of giving the reader some meat to chew on. Mellick manages to demonstrate that Stacy… is quirky. And Fig? Fig is quirky. And that’s it. And even that is accomplished through the protagonist telling us this rather than the text showing it.
Overall, if you take away Stacy’s vagina containing a world, the plot is boring. Nothing changes. It’s just cheap, shoddy, shock-value literature that relies on a pornographic trope. It isn’t sexy. It isn’t fun. If it was ten pages longer, I wouldn’t have finished it. I’m ashamed I wasted my time reading it and I can only hope Mellick thinks hard before he wastes paper writing another book. Write me something good, or save the resources and brainpower it takes to produce something as lax as The Haunted Vagina.
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
That was bizarre....and I loved it! Kinda made me think too. I've barely stepped into bizarro book land but i've noticed the best bizarre stories also can make you think, while they also have you going "what the fuck?"