Many of the local women belong to the Mystic Order of the Royal Polka Dots, which does good things on the sly, like fixing up unattached men. Turns out that the people of Lost River are a colorful bunch: Roy Grimmit, the strapping owner of the grocery/bait/beer store, hand-feeds a rescued fledgling named Jack (the redbird of the title) and doesn’t care who thinks he’s a sissy. Lost River seems as good a place as any to spend his last Christmas on earth and Oswald, a cheerful loser all his life, believes in going with the flow. Campbell leaves wintry Chicago for a friendly little town in Alabama recommended by his doctor.
Stomach-churning horror that takes a bit too much joy in its diabolic machinations.ĭiagnosed with terminal emphysema, Oswald T. And while a number of the stories here are ingenious, in a devilish sort of way, the constant barrage of wicked sadism soon palls.
As usual, Palahniuk drops us right into a nasty, vile core of base desire where all good deeds are punished and nobody escapes unscathed (let’s just say that cannibalism pops up about a third of the way in, and things get worse from there on). The characters’ back-stories, which make up the bulk of the novel, also show them to be a uniformly selfish, grubby and, more often than not, murderous lot, so when the bloodletting starts, few tears will be shed. Palahniuk ( Diary, 2003, etc.) ensures that we have little sympathy for the characters-known for the most part by the sarcastic noms de plume they give each other, like Comrade Snarky, Miss Sneezy and Chef Assassin-by showing how they continually sabotage themselves. It’s quickly obvious, however, that we’re far from the land of Shelley with this band of losers, who seem more interested in heightening their own suffering in order to have a better sell for the movie or memoir rights they will assuredly be offered once rescued. Whittier, wants them to use their isolation to create some sort of masterpiece, invoking the Villa Diodati, where Lord Byron, Shelley, among others, produced their classics of gothic horror.
The willing participants all answered an ad for a three-month retreat that would allow them to cut off all contact with the outside world (they all leave in a bus before dawn, telling no one), only to find themselves locked in an old theater with no way out and a limited supply of food. A writers’ retreat turns out to be more hellish than its participants would have imagined.
0 kommentar(er)
