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xterminal's review
3.0
Monica J. O'Rourke, Suffer the Flesh (Prime, 2002)
The first thing I noticed about Suffer the Flesh, unfortunately, has nothing to do with Monica O'Rourke's novel; it has to do with the fact that the novel is peppered with typos. Not an insane amount, maybe one every ten pages or so, but enough to be in stark contrast to Prime's more recent offerings, which are obsessive about typos in a way the big houses used to be. Makes me understand why some authors I know who have a disdain for the press might feel the way they do; that said, I'd urge them to give it a second chance, because their recent work is sterling.
That said, how's the book itself? I was quite surprised by it, to tell the truth. O'Rourke is one of those who's been held up recently as one of the poster kids for the new extreme horror movement, and I've read the odd short story or two that's piqued my interest. So perhaps my surprise at finding her first full-length to be a somewhat run-of-the-mill S&M porn novel. Don't get me wrong, it's good S&M porn, far more Pan Pantziarka than Jeremy Reed (or, god help us, Anne Rice), but it's not really horror. At least, not if you've previously read S&M porn, and have the two in separate categories in your head already. Instead, it comes across as a survival-thriller type book with lots of sex involved-- sex of the nonconsensual, ugly, brutal kind that it would probably be a good idea if some folks who are easily triggered didn't read.
One of the things that distinguishes literate porn from the type one gets from Beeline Press (do they even still exist?) is that good porn's got a plot, however thin it may be, and a hook into that plot, no pun intended. Suffer the Flesh has both in spades. Zoey is a programmer for a large, faceless corporation, another anonymous New York City denizen who hangs around in the bookstore drinking coffee and reading in lieu of having a social life. Kind of overweight, perhaps (and the kind of person who believes that "kind of overweight" is actually "monstrously fat"), but not morbidly obese. She is approached in the stacks at Barnes and Noble one day by one of those thin, pretty types of girls, and an odd conversation ensues, the end result of which is Zoey being kidnapped and inducted into the world's most extreme weight loss plan. (If you've got "Quitters, Inc." in the back of your mind, you're not far off, but O'Rourke goes places within thirty pages that King would have been justifiably scared to even allude to.) From there, ugliness ensues. There is a major plot twist about halfway through the novel, but it's impossible to hint at what it might be without major spoilers.
I had a combination of "Quitters, Inc." and Pantziarka's House of Pain playing a refrain through my head while reading this; if you've read both works, you've probably got a good idea of what to expect. The brevity of the book (at just a hundred forty-three pages, it almost seems like it should be called a novella) tends to make it more plot-focused than I usually like, but O'Rourke draws her major characters, at least, in more than two dimensions. This allows her to get farther under her skin than she normally could (and there's a great illustration of how this works about halfway through the novel, when a minor character comes to great harm; it's my guess the reader will not care less, because we know almost nothing about the character, while a more three-dimensional character is in some peril at the same time, and this one we care about more).
If you're seeking a straight horror novel, you'll likely find this somewhat disappointing. If you go into it with an open mind (and an empty stomach), however, you may well find yourself with a good deal to like from an author with a great deal of potential. ***
The first thing I noticed about Suffer the Flesh, unfortunately, has nothing to do with Monica O'Rourke's novel; it has to do with the fact that the novel is peppered with typos. Not an insane amount, maybe one every ten pages or so, but enough to be in stark contrast to Prime's more recent offerings, which are obsessive about typos in a way the big houses used to be. Makes me understand why some authors I know who have a disdain for the press might feel the way they do; that said, I'd urge them to give it a second chance, because their recent work is sterling.
That said, how's the book itself? I was quite surprised by it, to tell the truth. O'Rourke is one of those who's been held up recently as one of the poster kids for the new extreme horror movement, and I've read the odd short story or two that's piqued my interest. So perhaps my surprise at finding her first full-length to be a somewhat run-of-the-mill S&M porn novel. Don't get me wrong, it's good S&M porn, far more Pan Pantziarka than Jeremy Reed (or, god help us, Anne Rice), but it's not really horror. At least, not if you've previously read S&M porn, and have the two in separate categories in your head already. Instead, it comes across as a survival-thriller type book with lots of sex involved-- sex of the nonconsensual, ugly, brutal kind that it would probably be a good idea if some folks who are easily triggered didn't read.
One of the things that distinguishes literate porn from the type one gets from Beeline Press (do they even still exist?) is that good porn's got a plot, however thin it may be, and a hook into that plot, no pun intended. Suffer the Flesh has both in spades. Zoey is a programmer for a large, faceless corporation, another anonymous New York City denizen who hangs around in the bookstore drinking coffee and reading in lieu of having a social life. Kind of overweight, perhaps (and the kind of person who believes that "kind of overweight" is actually "monstrously fat"), but not morbidly obese. She is approached in the stacks at Barnes and Noble one day by one of those thin, pretty types of girls, and an odd conversation ensues, the end result of which is Zoey being kidnapped and inducted into the world's most extreme weight loss plan. (If you've got "Quitters, Inc." in the back of your mind, you're not far off, but O'Rourke goes places within thirty pages that King would have been justifiably scared to even allude to.) From there, ugliness ensues. There is a major plot twist about halfway through the novel, but it's impossible to hint at what it might be without major spoilers.
I had a combination of "Quitters, Inc." and Pantziarka's House of Pain playing a refrain through my head while reading this; if you've read both works, you've probably got a good idea of what to expect. The brevity of the book (at just a hundred forty-three pages, it almost seems like it should be called a novella) tends to make it more plot-focused than I usually like, but O'Rourke draws her major characters, at least, in more than two dimensions. This allows her to get farther under her skin than she normally could (and there's a great illustration of how this works about halfway through the novel, when a minor character comes to great harm; it's my guess the reader will not care less, because we know almost nothing about the character, while a more three-dimensional character is in some peril at the same time, and this one we care about more).
If you're seeking a straight horror novel, you'll likely find this somewhat disappointing. If you go into it with an open mind (and an empty stomach), however, you may well find yourself with a good deal to like from an author with a great deal of potential. ***
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