Category Archives: Dark/Sordid/Bizarre
The Glorious Heresies – Lisa McInerney
(Reviewed by JD Jung) “I don’t spend every second social occasion fantasising about enormous inanimate objects that one time used to mean something to me. But I’ve been fucked these past three weeks. I’ve been sick, and tired, and dizzy, … Continue reading
Posted in Dark/Sordid/Bizarre, Irish Literature
Tagged book reviews, drugs, gritty
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Bunyan’s Guide To The Great American Wildlife- Quentin Canterel
(Reviewed by JD Jung) “I don’t want to be weak. I want to have a voice like everyone else…Without a voice, I am nothing.” That’s how many of us feel. However for some, this sentiment is monumental. Take John, for … Continue reading
Posted in Dark/Sordid/Bizarre
Tagged book reviews, Bunyan, fiction, strange, weird
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Eve Out of Her Ruins – Ananda Devi (translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman)
(Reviewed by JD Jung) “Night makes its way into our bodies and refuses to leave. Night and our hormones gone wild. We boys are bundles of frustration. We start following girls to the shuttered factory that devoured our mothers’ dreams. … Continue reading
Posted in African Literature, Culture, Dark/Sordid/Bizarre, World Issues, World Literature
Tagged book reviews, poverty, teenagers, translated literature
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Shadowboxing With Bukowski – Darrell Kastin
(Reviewed by JD Jung) “The universe shrank daily around me, the bookstore itself was the center, the black hole, the very bottomless hell that would consume me in the end. ..the bookstore was insatiable, a structure of otherworldly forces. It … Continue reading
Posted in Dark/Sordid/Bizarre, Modern Literary Fiction
Tagged book reviews, Charles Bukowski, memoir
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In the Dark – Chris Patchell
(Reviewed by Ishita RC) What does a single mom, a fifteen year old teenager and a diabetic college student have in common? A past that has decided to hold them captive. If only teenage angst and a horrible boss were … Continue reading
Posted in Crime, Mystery and Thrillers, Dark/Sordid/Bizarre
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Hades – Candice Fox
(Reviewed by JD Jung) “Hades had fallen in love with two chimeras, two monsters in disguise, incapable of feeling the way he felt, of loving the way he loved. The horror they had experienced had cut a hole in them … Continue reading
Posted in Australian Literature, Crime, Mystery and Thrillers, Dark/Sordid/Bizarre
Tagged mystery, thrillers
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Eden – Candice Fox
(Reviewed by JD Jung) “I’d let things slip since Martina died. Since I’d been shot and Eden had saved my life. It had locked me to her, silencing me forever on the true nature of her being, the nights she … Continue reading
Coming Through Slaughter – Michael Ondaatje
(Reviewed by JD Jung) “…and you like a weather bird arcing round in the middle of your life to exact opposites and burning your brains out so that from June 5 1907 till 1931 you were dropped into amber in … Continue reading
Posted in Dark/Sordid/Bizarre, Historical Fiction, Jazz & Blues, Lost and almost forgotten
Tagged Buddy Bolden, Historical fiction, jazz, New Orleans
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Rupert: A Confession – Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, (Translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison )
(Reviewed by JD Jung) “She was my martyrdom, my masochism, and my sugar-sweet, shimmering Mira. She appeared like a reflection before my eyes the first time I saw her, she killed me when she was mine, and she finally brought … Continue reading
Posted in Dark/Sordid/Bizarre, Modern Literary Fiction, World Literature
Tagged Dutch literature
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The Black Spider – Jeremias Gotthelf (Translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky)
(Reviewed by JD Jung) “And now the people where gripped by the ancient fear that the spider might carry off an unbaptized infant, the pledge of their old pact. The woman was beside herself, she had no trust in God, … Continue reading
Posted in Dark/Sordid/Bizarre, Lost and almost forgotten, Skinny reads, World Literature
Tagged German literature, horror
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