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A review by megapolisomancy
Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler
2.0
Less a collection of short stories than a litany of vignettes and lists (that's right, a litany of lists) of things crumbling, rotting, molding, falling from the sky, drowning, vomiting, dripping, disintegrating, breaking down, melting, bubbling, decaying, putrefying, stinking, degenerating, deteriorating, and dissolving. This physical decrepitude (of humans, animals, buildings, Earth, everything) is mirrored in all of these stories by familial breakdowns between parents and sons (there's a kind-of daughter in one story, but the father is the protagonist in that one) or siblings, which is a nice technique, but when it's the only technique present in every single story...
The language, furthermore, veers wildly between lofty and poetic and oddly pedestrian. This might be a conscious choice, but if it is, I hate it.
With a lot of editing and condensing and combining, these 13 mediocre-or-worse stories could have been condensed down to like 2-3 really great ones ("The Ruined Child" being, I think, the closest to a great work here as is). There was a lot of potential under the grime and shit and mess of this book, but Butler got too caught up in... well, the grime and shit and mess of this book, and never polished anything enough to really deliver on that potential.
The language, furthermore, veers wildly between lofty and poetic and oddly pedestrian. This might be a conscious choice, but if it is, I hate it.
With a lot of editing and condensing and combining, these 13 mediocre-or-worse stories could have been condensed down to like 2-3 really great ones ("The Ruined Child" being, I think, the closest to a great work here as is). There was a lot of potential under the grime and shit and mess of this book, but Butler got too caught up in... well, the grime and shit and mess of this book, and never polished anything enough to really deliver on that potential.