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A review by vaunpilled
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Start was amazing. The author has such a fascinating writing style. One piece of praise I'll give the book is it was an extremely easy read in that the prose flowed super smoothly. Completely shameless about how shlocky and disgusting it is, which you have to respect. Heavy focus on the AIDS epidemic to the point the disease feels personified into a character in itself. It feels very well represented how hopeless it all felt on the onset of the story. There is a yandere who threatens to inject his 10-years-younger boyfriend with his AIDS needle so they can die of AIDS together. On reading this I thought I would be getting peak fiction. Very Dahmer inspired to the point the opening page has a quote about him. I thought it was a really interesting idea to have what we know about Dahmer's psychology and ideals surrounding murder split into two people, the sadistic vs necrophilic appeal to murder. The author seperates the conscious of a notorious figure like Dahmer into two seperate pieces that , after meeting and falling in love, synthesise their depravity into one slurrious depraved faggot AIDS riddled goop pile that's overall representative of the vices that allowed AIDS to become such an epidemic within the queer community. That's probably the most unique way I've seen true crime phenomena dissected within a fictional story. There's my favorite little pookie bear, Tran, who's the novel's version of a straightman (No pun, he is actually a very Gay Man): someone the target reader can easily relate to, a wannabe writer, someone 'normal' yet enticed by the dark and taboo and murderous on a conceptual level. He's by far my favorite character and I really enjoyed seeing from his perspective. He feels so grounded and real, so I know the author has it in him to make good characters.
And that more or less is why it's rated so low despite my glaze. While I love all fujoshis (I have learned the author is a fudanshi now), I feel like the focus on being super duper gay was detrimental to the themes presented in the book. I don't think there's a single female character. Not that every story has to be a girl power story but this story really needed at least one (1) woman that speaks for longer than one line to be compelling outside of just being a Dahmer retelling. Splatterpunk depravity and constant sex is very awesome and I'm a fan usually but what makes it truly sparkle is its creativity which, in this case, drastically tapered off in the second half of the book. At some point the author starts just actually copying events throughout the Jeffrey Dahmer case with no attempt to make something original out of it which feels cringeworthy. It only proves my theory true crime and its derivatives is lame as fuck. I knew it was Dahmer RPF yaoi going into it, I hoped it would offer something new despite this , it didn't really. Just fizzles out into self indulgent bullshit.
Another thing that ruined it for me is the extreme racial fetishization. If i read honey skinned one more time I will kill myself. I thought Tran's identity as an 2nd gen immigrant torn between two identities (tied to family and a history he doesn't fully understand vs his Voluntary identity as a hedonistic gay druggie). His family loves him but condemns him for being gay, the gay community gives him gay sex and drugs and all the partying and community a 20something year old could want but condemns him for ever expecting to find substantial love. Luke, the author's self insert, is obviously written to have a fetish for asian people and I'm not going to lie his character is actually kind of hilarious. All this stuff is happening as the A-Plot then it cuts to Luke ranting on the radio about how much he hates breeders and he misses his jailbait boyfriend and he has so much AIDS and he wishes everyone else had AIDS too and by the way his co-star likes to have gay incest with his brother that groomed him and kills himself and gets eaten by a crocodile after revealing that and also he only sleeps with a white person when he learns he actually Bleached his hair and it's naturally brown LIKE AN ASIAN PERSONS!!!. That all happens in the span of five pages. Like is that not really funny. I was hoping this fetishization would be a negative trait of his but by the mysticism the author treats Tran, and other ethnic characters, with I can tell it's something that compels the author. There's also a scene with poorly written AAVE depicting police brutality where the n word hard r is written and I would've dropped the book right there if I hadn't spent twenty bucks on it. Dahmer's intentional act to target POC in his depraved murders since the police wouldn't care to investigate their disappearances was an unambiguously evil act. This novel depicts it as something that makes sense because asians are just soooo beautiful I cannot stand it. There was nothing of substance that came from this plot thread.
The pacing is also really dodgy. I feel like Jay and Andrew's love story was rushed as fuck for how built up it was. There is a whole page about how yummy Vietnamese food is. I feel like there's ALOT to be gleaned from this book , some things more interesting/nuanced than others. I mostly see it as a fractal of a true crime fan's mind and creative process which is really interesting to me because I abhor true crime. Hmm... Mid book. Serious weakness better
And that more or less is why it's rated so low despite my glaze. While I love all fujoshis (I have learned the author is a fudanshi now), I feel like the focus on being super duper gay was detrimental to the themes presented in the book. I don't think there's a single female character. Not that every story has to be a girl power story but this story really needed at least one (1) woman that speaks for longer than one line to be compelling outside of just being a Dahmer retelling. Splatterpunk depravity and constant sex is very awesome and I'm a fan usually but what makes it truly sparkle is its creativity which, in this case, drastically tapered off in the second half of the book. At some point the author starts just actually copying events throughout the Jeffrey Dahmer case with no attempt to make something original out of it which feels cringeworthy. It only proves my theory true crime and its derivatives is lame as fuck. I knew it was Dahmer RPF yaoi going into it, I hoped it would offer something new despite this , it didn't really. Just fizzles out into self indulgent bullshit.
Another thing that ruined it for me is the extreme racial fetishization. If i read honey skinned one more time I will kill myself. I thought Tran's identity as an 2nd gen immigrant torn between two identities (tied to family and a history he doesn't fully understand vs his Voluntary identity as a hedonistic gay druggie). His family loves him but condemns him for being gay, the gay community gives him gay sex and drugs and all the partying and community a 20something year old could want but condemns him for ever expecting to find substantial love. Luke, the author's self insert, is obviously written to have a fetish for asian people and I'm not going to lie his character is actually kind of hilarious. All this stuff is happening as the A-Plot then it cuts to Luke ranting on the radio about how much he hates breeders and he misses his jailbait boyfriend and he has so much AIDS and he wishes everyone else had AIDS too and by the way his co-star likes to have gay incest with his brother that groomed him and kills himself and gets eaten by a crocodile after revealing that and also he only sleeps with a white person when he learns he actually Bleached his hair and it's naturally brown LIKE AN ASIAN PERSONS!!!. That all happens in the span of five pages. Like is that not really funny. I was hoping this fetishization would be a negative trait of his but by the mysticism the author treats Tran, and other ethnic characters, with I can tell it's something that compels the author. There's also a scene with poorly written AAVE depicting police brutality where the n word hard r is written and I would've dropped the book right there if I hadn't spent twenty bucks on it. Dahmer's intentional act to target POC in his depraved murders since the police wouldn't care to investigate their disappearances was an unambiguously evil act. This novel depicts it as something that makes sense because asians are just soooo beautiful I cannot stand it. There was nothing of substance that came from this plot thread.
The pacing is also really dodgy. I feel like Jay and Andrew's love story was rushed as fuck for how built up it was. There is a whole page about how yummy Vietnamese food is. I feel like there's ALOT to be gleaned from this book , some things more interesting/nuanced than others. I mostly see it as a fractal of a true crime fan's mind and creative process which is really interesting to me because I abhor true crime. Hmm... Mid book. Serious weakness better