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A review by screamdogreads
Violent Faculties by Charlene Elsby
4.0
"It doesn't take an experiment to show that you can't take someone's humanity away from them. It's a bad faith concept all around. That's the sickening part of it. People only do it to other people. Doing it to other people is what makes it fun. The only real dehumanization is death."
Violent Faculties is a brutal, violent, stunner of a novel. It's at once both hilarious yet disturbing and entirely gross as all hell. See, this is extreme horror with substance, it never fully tips itself off the edge into gratuitous shock factor nastiness, but it balances on that edge all the same. It's a cruel and gruesome little thing, a novel that's entirely difficult to recommend, not because it isn't good, because, it's fantastic, it's riveting and brilliant - but because it's almost impossible to find Violent Faculties' intended audience, because it's so damn intense and strange. It's a brutal, perverse, sickening novel, the word horrific doesn't even begin to describe its vile and ugly nature.
How does one even begin to recommend a book such as this? It's an enrapturing and enigmatic thing despite the strangeness in its writing style. It feels oddly enough, like interlaced stories that connect to make up something bigger - a challenging and complex experience, an unflinching tale that reads like the PhD thesis of someone driven to the brink of insanity. This is extreme horror at it's finest, how it was intended to be, mind-bending and absorbing, an absolute force to be reckoned with, a high rising tide intent on sweeping away everything in its path. Violent Faculties is horrific and uncomfortable, but that's what makes it so enthralling and addictive.
Violent Faculties is a brutal, violent, stunner of a novel. It's at once both hilarious yet disturbing and entirely gross as all hell. See, this is extreme horror with substance, it never fully tips itself off the edge into gratuitous shock factor nastiness, but it balances on that edge all the same. It's a cruel and gruesome little thing, a novel that's entirely difficult to recommend, not because it isn't good, because, it's fantastic, it's riveting and brilliant - but because it's almost impossible to find Violent Faculties' intended audience, because it's so damn intense and strange. It's a brutal, perverse, sickening novel, the word horrific doesn't even begin to describe its vile and ugly nature.
How does one even begin to recommend a book such as this? It's an enrapturing and enigmatic thing despite the strangeness in its writing style. It feels oddly enough, like interlaced stories that connect to make up something bigger - a challenging and complex experience, an unflinching tale that reads like the PhD thesis of someone driven to the brink of insanity. This is extreme horror at it's finest, how it was intended to be, mind-bending and absorbing, an absolute force to be reckoned with, a high rising tide intent on sweeping away everything in its path. Violent Faculties is horrific and uncomfortable, but that's what makes it so enthralling and addictive.
"I realized something about myself that must also be true of others - the protrusion of teeth from the face is unnerving, but something we have become used to by exposure. However, as I removed Gillian's teeth and all that was visible of her became flesh and not skeleton, her physical form achieved a sort of serenity. The face was no longer confused as to which parts were inside and which were outside"
There's a real deeply personal, extremely horrific quality to this novel, it's a cynical and punishing experience but, one that's ever so rewarding providing you see it through. It, always, at all times, makes your brain feel like it's being dissolved in a vat of acid. Absolutely, without a single shred of a doubt, worth the read. All too vivid and utterly awful, Violent Faculties is a sickening yet deeply thoughtful text. It won't be for everyone, in fact, it's likely to divide opinion, but it will absolutely tick every single box for those who enjoy unhinged, deep, extremely angry works of literature. It's absolutely spectacular and horrible, it's what extreme horror always should have been, less focus on shock factor, and more focus on meaningful brutality.
"My bullet forged a path from one set of Ally's lips to the other, my divine light to shine through. The blood at each end of it tasted the same. And in the morning, when the other nuns came, they'd see that Ally had done her part to make me see the sin of it all. But I am animal become God. The condemnation of humanity."