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A review by jdhacker
Are You Loathsome Tonight?: A Collection of Short Stories by Popy Z. Brite, Poppy Z. Brite
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
I've read that this is probably not the best volume of Poppy Z. Brite's work, and while I'm not extensively familiar I can certainly see that being the case. This is a pretty scattershot collection of (I believe) all previously published short stories without much in the way of unifying theme. Oh, the lackluster and frankly confusing introduction by Peter Straub rattles off a few themes he felt the collection focused on, but as far as I'm aware those are over-arching themes of (at a minimum) all of Brite's horror genre work.
I don't wish to mislead though, the writing here as one might expect is amazing. The subject matter, however, my not be to everyone's tastes. That's actually the reason for my relatively low rating compared to quality of the writing itself, a lot of the stories were just not what I was looking for.
So one knows what to expect, though this isn't necessarily what turned me off the stories, there is a lot of sexual and sexualized violence. I would classify it as erotica myself in a number of cases, though I don't know that Brite would. For fans, there are some characters recurring from previous stories, which should be a solid hook. I know some readers have been put off by "Self Made Man" being too similar to Dahmer, but the fun Dahmer-meets-Night of the Living dead tale was probably my penultimate pick from from the collection. My favorite story, which came as a surprise to me because I expected it to be much more mundane and less to my liking, was "Mussolini and the Axeman's Jazz". A great supernatural spin on early 20th century history, serial killers, and one of America's favorite sweaty noir settings. You've everything here from Armstrong to Cagliostro in a few short pages.
All in all I'd say more of a collection for true fans, rather than for casual readers, although Gauntlet Press does a great job pulling together books.
I don't wish to mislead though, the writing here as one might expect is amazing. The subject matter, however, my not be to everyone's tastes. That's actually the reason for my relatively low rating compared to quality of the writing itself, a lot of the stories were just not what I was looking for.
So one knows what to expect, though this isn't necessarily what turned me off the stories, there is a lot of sexual and sexualized violence. I would classify it as erotica myself in a number of cases, though I don't know that Brite would. For fans, there are some characters recurring from previous stories, which should be a solid hook. I know some readers have been put off by "Self Made Man" being too similar to Dahmer, but the fun Dahmer-meets-Night of the Living dead tale was probably my penultimate pick from from the collection. My favorite story, which came as a surprise to me because I expected it to be much more mundane and less to my liking, was "Mussolini and the Axeman's Jazz". A great supernatural spin on early 20th century history, serial killers, and one of America's favorite sweaty noir settings. You've everything here from Armstrong to Cagliostro in a few short pages.
All in all I'd say more of a collection for true fans, rather than for casual readers, although Gauntlet Press does a great job pulling together books.