Bruna

2019 Terry Pratchett reread.

Consumed is the debut novel by director David Cronenberg. Once crowned King of Venereal Horror, Cronenberg seems to return to the roots of his early film career with this novel. This is not the current Cronenberg who has directed The Map to The Stars, but the Cronenberg of The Fly, Videodrome, eXistenZ and Scanners. The novel is not only about being consumed in the most literal sense, but also about being consumers. With gadgets being an object of fetish and obsession; iPhones being part of sex play. Photos of patients on the operating table decorating the walls of a restaurant. Cronenberg's thesis is made quite clear throughout the book, with a couple of French philosopher characters acting as spokespeople.

Cronenberg delights in descriptions of deviant behaviours. His world is filled with an abundance of sexual encounters, self-mutilation, sexual diseases, psychopathology and cannibalism and the characters who inhabit it seem perfectly at home in it. Naomi and Nathan, writers, photographers, journalists and filmmakers (it is made quite clear that it is necessary to adapt and be a multimedia professional to thrive, a sentiment the might echo Cronenberg's own experiences in the film industry) do not have any boundaries when it comes to getting emotionally and sexually involved with their subjects. There is no such thing as objective reporting and research and they are willing to offer their bodies in exchange for gaining trust and intimacy and having access to their research subjects.

For full review, please go to The Ballycumbers Review

This book was fun and entertaining, it would be 10x better without the juvenile humour and over emphasis on sex and/or how sexually attractive a character is, boobs, balls and etc.

Also, on a minor note, the main character is ‘raven haired' and ‘pale', how completely original.

Having said that, I might give the other books in the series a try as I am a bit curious.

I must be missing a trick here. This novel has received glowing reviews everywhere and I was truly excited to finally read a book by Jonathan Carroll, who is often recommended to me due to my reading preferences. However, I was left disappointed. It is by no means a terrible book, but it did not resonate with me at all. The characters fall flat and the plot seems to be cut off abruptly in the middle. There are signs of interesting concepts and greater meanings, but they are never fully developed, so we are left with an inoffensive and passable novel, but not much more. There are some beautiful passages and powerful imagery, indicative of an underlying creative imagination, but these are not given enough room to bloom. The novel often feels underdeveloped. I have no problem suspending logic, I am a declared fan of magical realism and fantasy, but this is a shy and colourless addition to the canon.

In Bathing the Lion, unassuming main characters find themselves sharing a dream and must discover the reasons behind it. Two of these characters, Dean and Vanessa, have just decided to get a divorce. Dean's best friend and business partner, who was having an affair with Vanessa, is also present. These mundane events seem to not matter when reality is turned on its head, but the first half of the book is dedicated to their history and the falling apart of their marriage (which does not make for a very enticing read). But, more importantly, it makes their behaviour after the shared dream seem quite implausible. Call me a cynic, but I believe that even when faced with impossible facts, a petty couple that was bickering previously will continue bickering (or even more, in fact, to try to stabilise their sense of reality).

For full review, please visit The Ballycumbers Review.

This book was entertaining at first, but then it got progressively worse and more unlikely. The characters are all paper thin and cliché. The fat one, the jock, the nerd, and a very textbook description of a psycho.

What is the likelihood that you are both stuck with someone who escaped a facility carrying a deadly and incurable parasite and a psycho at the same time? Also, Shelly's character was highly annoying, basically a caricature of a psycho who gets hard ons for drowning kittens. And by the way, I do NOT need to hear about a child's erection, thank you. And what was that I am a father, I need to take care of my worm children shtick? Makes no sense considering it had been established that he gives zero fucks about anyone or anything being a psychopath and all that.Also the ending was very 'uh look at this twist that makes no sense, the horror is not over tun tun tun' that horror movies love so much.

All in all, it just feels like the author combined several ‘scary' things and put them in a contained space (the island) like an offcut of Cabin in The Woods. It was completely cartoonish and unrealistic, thus undermining anything of value that it might have had to say about boys stuck in a dire situation and isolated from civilisation (as in Lord of the Flies).