Afbeelding van de auteur.

Katherine Faw Morris

Auteur van Young God

2 Werken 132 Leden 11 Besprekingen

Over de Auteur

Werken van Katherine Faw Morris

Young God (2014) 83 exemplaren
Ultraluminous (2017) 49 exemplaren

Tagged

Algemene kennis

Geboortedatum
1983
Geslacht
female
Nationaliteit
USA
Land (voor op de kaart)
USA
Geboorteplaats
Wilkesboro, North Carolina, USA
Woonplaatsen
Brooklyn, New York, USA

Leden

Besprekingen

This book took a little over an hour to read.
It was recommended because of the other gritty southern noir books I have read. All of those books were written by authors with talent, this is like a scattershot stream of consciousness, of an illiterate white trash 13 year old. I think this book is supposed to be shocking, but the only shocking thing is, that it ever got published! A Bazooka Joe comic has more depth and a fortune cookie exhibits more writing skills than this book.
 
Gemarkeerd
zmagic69 | 5 andere besprekingen | Mar 31, 2023 |
Sparsely written, entertaining, and disturbing novel about sex, money, politics, and human relationships in the grand pattern of life.
 
Gemarkeerd
AngelaLam | 4 andere besprekingen | Feb 8, 2022 |
fantastic, the great emptiness flayed bare.
 
Gemarkeerd
ThomasPluck | 4 andere besprekingen | Apr 27, 2020 |
Now that my brain has settled down a bit, I'm ready to review this novel for real. In some ways my relationship to the story has shifted a lot since I first read it, even though my admiration for it hasn't changed.

Reading Ultraluminous is like being thrown into a tornado of dissonance that resolves in a morally ambiguous and yet somehow completely satisfying way. I imagine it takes quite a lot out of a writer, to write so ruthlessly. It's a disturbing book, and it breaks so many taboos, and part of what i love about it is that it proves to me that words still retain the power to shock.

This is a book written for women, by a woman, and its conclusions are bleak. I feel happy for the men who can read it and enjoy it but in some ways this feels more than anything like a #me-too reflection, where the male-on-female abuse is dialed up to its last possible ear-splitting amplitude. Throughout the novel the reader is invited, by the narrative tone, to consider the protagonist an empowered woman, a sex industry worker at the top of her game, even as she is being demeaned and abused in every way possible. It's okay to her if her johns break a finger or blacks an eye because they pay her extra for it. She comes across as the one in control. Her bravura was seductive to me as a reader. I could easily fall into the notion of her as heroic. I could talk myself into thinking she is in charge of her own life, making big money and living the good life even as she is dehumanized in every possible way.

The violence and objectification that the protagonist experiences don't escalate from start to finish so I've been trying to puzzle through why it reads like a thriller. It could be because the protagonist is trapped in a repeating space where the most horrible objectifications become mind-numbing routine, and as a reader you know this level of nihilism can't go on forever; that this level of sexual violence eventually won't stick to a schedule and will begin to bleed out in unexpected ways. So you're just waiting for some wire to trip. For something to change the equilibrium. It's a hellish stasis, where the repetition of the protagonist's scheduled weekly meetings with men becomes a terribly tense read.

Even though the nihilism in the novel is relentless, and even though neither the protagonist nor the author ever gives any hints about what we readers are meant to think about any of it, the novel somehow left me feeling uplifted and hopeful. I'm still trying to work out why. In the meantime though I'm a fan of Katherine Faw, and i'm happy I read her brave relentless and very risky book.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
poingu | 4 andere besprekingen | Feb 22, 2020 |

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Statistieken

Werken
2
Leden
132
Populariteit
#153,555
Waardering
½ 3.6
Besprekingen
11
ISBNs
9
Talen
1

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