a sandwich with mayonnaise. this is not pure story. tied up with advocacy. doesn‘t completely ruin it. bleak faux mystery.

10:30 on a Summer Night
Happening
Swallow

3.5 stars

“The great soul, meanwhile, pursued his way, using every art he knew--and his experience was not narrow--to reach the heart of the brown and ruddy nymph beside him.”

he is boarder and she is the frock wearing, golden skinned daughter of his widowed landlord. who takes “mischievous delight in teasing him.” on a lake. resulting in his death. published when nabokov was twelve.

similarities to Lolita
-fictitious editor
-book artifact of story
-pretentious narrator
-on the lamb
-addresses audience about his plight
-destroying object of desire in attempt to possess
-impossible to be loved by her, on separate planes
-when object spurns him, calls her gross
-she‘s an actress
-competing with his shadow, a filmmaker
-questions if hallucinating
-destroys himself when realizes he cannot be with her
-ends with imminent doom

sold as a novel about obsession. more about identity and morality within the institutions of hierarchy.

The Collector
Despair
The Nose

like the bleached bones of little birds

3.5 stars

amateur joyce carol oates. with lines so flowery it's shameful. the desired content is there. childhood friendship, obsession, girly mystique.

once the abducted kid returns, things get wild. jelly sandals in the locker room shower; sleepovers, tracing letters on skin; taboo, metaphysical affairs with no tummy touching. last third of this book hits the spot.

Lolita
The Virgin Suicides
You Must Remember This

3 stars

cruelty is cool. sirens are dope. themes of obsession and madness are best. her being genuinely vain adds a touch of depth. fun concept gets boring.

the installments are repetitive instead of building upon one another. his images of body horror and her homewrecker fashion of torturing people are entertaining, but halfway through i wanted to see what other writers are doing with tomie. because she has to have fan fiction.

3.5 stars

this book is bare. the narrator stating again and again that she fucks for validation. “daddy-shaped hole” like it‘s too good to only use once.

i do appreciate their drink of choice, cherry coke and vodka out of coffee mugs. very lana del rey.

1.5 stars

Yes, I‘ll have to inject you with my daughter‘s bodily fluids and other questionable substances …

My friend Tomie is dead. Pieces of her body were found everywhere.

hip girl lit takes a troma twist.

Never before has he touched her feet, and their size surprises him. The word that flits across his mind to describe them is adult.

3.5 stars

has the desolate atmosphere i came for. nothing more.

I saw the widower, long and narrow, as though in flight, sit, patiently undoing the petit point on its stretcher, that lovely harmony of a mountain landscape swept away by the man‘s reckless fingers; such was his skill (as though he‘d done little else in life) and zeal in untangling the colored threads that soon that perforated skein displayed its natural tint — of soggy snow.

2 & 1/2 stars

first 87 pages are like nabokov‘s screenplay of Lolita. a salacious, pulp-y rendition of the original. the child running across the street and kissing the limousine window is lo pulling the lipstick tube out of her bikini waistband.

after the child‘s dance with helene lagonelle, there‘s nothing more. 150 pages of incessant laughing and crying.

3 stars

Marie Anne sits in the garden pushing the pram against the wall with her foot. Then pulling it back with a piece of string.

this has gotta be where The Royal Tenenbaums comes from. boo boo‘s married name is even tannenbaum.

message at the end is good. i remember liking the bit about the reaching for ring at the end of Catcher in the Rye. the narrator of “Seymour: An Introduction” denounces endings, but salinger has a knack for them. he‘d dislike that.

4 stars

a letter to a son. shares themes with Chandelier. short. secrets. the instant. the “disarticulation” of birth. grace. binary opposition. limitation of form. god is irrelevant or a monster. freedom (in death?).

4 stars

a dab of mother‘s Chanel placed on the back of her spine just above the start of her ass crack.

tv adaptation better than the novel? much. all annotation, no style. no anya.

2 stars

Having a trash chute was one of my favorite things about my building. It made me feel important, like I was participating in the world. My trash mixed with the trash of others. The things I touched touched things other people had touched. I was contributing. I was connecting.

female American Psycho to the point that it has to be intentional. rich, disaffected, benzo-addicted youth obsessed with videotapes. they even go to the same nightclub, tunnel.

we‘re supposed to think she‘s gonna get stuffed, right? there's all this false foreshadowing. then a Ghost World ending where the protagonist comes out of a sarcastic haze to admire her friend making an effort at life -- "beautiful."

mushy for nihilistic filth.

3 stars

redux. exploitive adults create an ugly world. couple hundred pages of boring subplot. people we were not rooting for are slaughtered. the bullied child and beautiful little monster escape together.

The Bloody Chamber ("The Tiger's Bride" & "The Company of Wolves")
Fight Club
Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang
The Neon Demon

‘Theres. Do you think I‘m beautiful now?‘
‘Yes.‘
‘Would you like to kiss me?‘
‘No.‘
‘That‘s what I thought.‘

3.5

takes a bite of gender. doesn‘t chew. the objectification of children being made literal -- including turning one into a vampire so he or she doesn‘t age -- is sick rhetoric. but cutting off her penis and then he lives as a girl while the narrator switches to the use of masculine pronouns is more “what?” than “oh fuck.” the novel talks a lot about eli not being a girl, without contributing much to the topic.

3.5 stars