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A review by stolencompass
Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs by Lina Wolff
3.0
I have spent most of my adult life on the road, listening to people's stories. This book felt akin to such an experience. It was snowing outside when I finished this book, underneath a duvet in Strasbourg, France. Where madness feels brushed to the side - not entirely invisible, but as a backstage prop.
It took three days to work through this book. A few hours a night, cosy, intrigued, passively shocked. I have read, or watched, or lived things to startle most, so I was not particularly disturbed through the more grizzly scenes in this book. Oddly enough, it is almost as a homage to Bret Easton Ellis, who I devoured entirely as a fourteen or fifteen-year-old and refuse to touch ever since. The nihilism there managed to bore its way into me and refused to leave for a good while. I don't need that. Who does? Lindsay Lohan, perhaps.
I came across this book just after reading Stonehouse's Mountain Poems - an almost millennia-old Chinese hermit. Needless to say, there's quite the clash there in writing styles and contemplation. However, what I really enjoyed with Bret Easton Ellis and Other Dogs is its edibility. I could read and read and read. While its content gave me very little, I felt as if I was reading a real writer. Which is to say- someone who has worked on their craft and has not given into the whims of cliché or sensibility. I can well see how it can be likened, as on the back cover, to Bolaño, though no one will ever get close. In fact, it's quite disturbing, and always disappointing to read these comparisons, however they can be good marker sticks on the style. What would my dear friend Stonehouse have said of such work of Lina Wolff?
Oh, and what of the living? These humans, detached from the land they live in.
A mirror. I'll head back to the wilderness, now. But cheers for the meal,
It took three days to work through this book. A few hours a night, cosy, intrigued, passively shocked. I have read, or watched, or lived things to startle most, so I was not particularly disturbed through the more grizzly scenes in this book. Oddly enough, it is almost as a homage to Bret Easton Ellis, who I devoured entirely as a fourteen or fifteen-year-old and refuse to touch ever since. The nihilism there managed to bore its way into me and refused to leave for a good while. I don't need that. Who does? Lindsay Lohan, perhaps.
I came across this book just after reading Stonehouse's Mountain Poems - an almost millennia-old Chinese hermit. Needless to say, there's quite the clash there in writing styles and contemplation. However, what I really enjoyed with Bret Easton Ellis and Other Dogs is its edibility. I could read and read and read. While its content gave me very little, I felt as if I was reading a real writer. Which is to say- someone who has worked on their craft and has not given into the whims of cliché or sensibility. I can well see how it can be likened, as on the back cover, to Bolaño, though no one will ever get close. In fact, it's quite disturbing, and always disappointing to read these comparisons, however they can be good marker sticks on the style. What would my dear friend Stonehouse have said of such work of Lina Wolff?
Oh, and what of the living? These humans, detached from the land they live in.
A mirror. I'll head back to the wilderness, now. But cheers for the meal,