Drugs are Nice by Lisa Crystal Carver
There is no doubt that Lisa Crystal Carver has led to extraordinary life not, but necessarily extraordinary in a good way. She is an American performance artist and a very engaging writer and this book, Drugs Are Nice , Relate her often incredibly difficult path to what seems to be a relatively happy place today.
Due to an extremely complicated and ultimately highly corrosive relationship with her father, she made bad choices in relationships throughout her life. It seems like she was trying to live out Sylvia Plath’s line that “Every woman loves a fascist”. Indeed, she essentially admits to this. Then she meets up with Boyd Rice, the notorious and controversial American ‘noise’ musician who plays at being (or perhaps really is) a neo-Nazi. It is this abusive relationship that finally brings her to face up to the mistaken notions that she has held onto for so long and just what a pit of decline those notions have led her to. The bright spot of her relationship with Rice is the birth of their son Wolfgang. Although beset by tremendous physical and mental health difficulties, Wolfgang brings an important focus to his mother’s life and forces her to realise that there is more to life than art for art’s sake and living on the (sometimes very painful) edge.
A great read—I powered through it in a weekend.
***** (Five stars out of Five)
Due to an extremely complicated and ultimately highly corrosive relationship with her father, she made bad choices in relationships throughout her life. It seems like she was trying to live out Sylvia Plath’s line that “Every woman loves a fascist”. Indeed, she essentially admits to this. Then she meets up with Boyd Rice, the notorious and controversial American ‘noise’ musician who plays at being (or perhaps really is) a neo-Nazi. It is this abusive relationship that finally brings her to face up to the mistaken notions that she has held onto for so long and just what a pit of decline those notions have led her to. The bright spot of her relationship with Rice is the birth of their son Wolfgang. Although beset by tremendous physical and mental health difficulties, Wolfgang brings an important focus to his mother’s life and forces her to realise that there is more to life than art for art’s sake and living on the (sometimes very painful) edge.
A great read—I powered through it in a weekend.
***** (Five stars out of Five)
Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris
The Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris are hugely popular, as is anything even remotely related to vampires these days. These books tell the story of Sookie, an unassuming waitress in Louisiana, who encounters a wide variety of otherworldly creatures—vampires, werewolves, fairies—in her path through life. She is often right in the centre of any criminal activity that happens as a result of all these supernatural occurrences, largely due to her own powers as a telepath.
Dead as a Doornail is certainly an entertaining read—it would be ideal for a long plane flight—but perhaps I need to read more from the series. Although mostly well written, I found it to be a little bit formulaic and as the book went on, I increasingly saw Sookie in my mind’s eye as a Buffy style figure. And lo and behold, having just Googled the books, I discover “True Blood”, the tv series made from the books, Sookie casts as ... a pretty young woman with blonde hair!
Entertaining but not original.
*** (Three stars out of Five)
The Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris are hugely popular, as is anything even remotely related to vampires these days. These books tell the story of Sookie, an unassuming waitress in Louisiana, who encounters a wide variety of otherworldly creatures—vampires, werewolves, fairies—in her path through life. She is often right in the centre of any criminal activity that happens as a result of all these supernatural occurrences, largely due to her own powers as a telepath.
Dead as a Doornail is certainly an entertaining read—it would be ideal for a long plane flight—but perhaps I need to read more from the series. Although mostly well written, I found it to be a little bit formulaic and as the book went on, I increasingly saw Sookie in my mind’s eye as a Buffy style figure. And lo and behold, having just Googled the books, I discover “True Blood”, the tv series made from the books, Sookie casts as ... a pretty young woman with blonde hair!
Entertaining but not original.
*** (Three stars out of Five)
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