Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite–ATLP Book Review

“This was how I actually did feel when they came for me: a blind, shriveling, sorrowful pain, the sort of pain a garden snail must feel when stepped on and cracked open, its spiraling home crushed to shards, now nothing more than a snotty smear of meta left to dry in harsh sunlight.”

Poppy Z Brite, Exquisite Corpse (152)

SYNOPSIS

Exquisite Corpse opens with infamous serial killer Andrew Compton, the gruesome murderer of twenty-three young boys between the years of 1977 and 1988. Stuck in prison and tortured by his inability to sate his desires, he fakes his own death to escape from prison, making his way across the nation to the United States. There, he’ll join forces with Jay Byrne, a new money New Orleanian who knows the ins and outs of the city, and the boys he photographs.

On the streets of the French Quarter, Compton and Byrne will prowl for new victims, especially the eager, fervent young hustlers, the druggies, and the lost souls. Enter Train, a young Vietnamese-American runaway pining after his radio-host HIV-positive ex-boyfriend, and the landscape of our story is complete. Exquisite Corpse takes horror to new depths combining the insatiable with disturbing brutality in esoteric prose and literary genius that extreme horror buffs will fawn over.

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REVIEW

Okay, look. I know I have a sick and twisted mind…but this is one of my favorite books I’ve EVER read.

Let me tell you why.

I came across Exquisite Corpse by complete accident in a bookstore and I was like…’hmm this sound intriguing,’ so I picked it up. As usual, this is how most of my favorite books are found. BUT. From the minute I opened the first page of this novel, I was hooked. Brite’s writing style is incredible narrative and she just pulls the reader into the story in a way that is indescribable–it’s so unique to find a book THIS well written.

We have several different perspectives happening here and different POVs but Brite blends them together seamlessly. It’s easy to tell which character we’re experiencing life through, but the author’s voice never gets lost, which is certainly a talent that any writer who’s worked with multiple POVs knows is damn near impossible to hit the mark.

I also wanted to point out how much I loved Brite’s commitment to New Orleanian culture. Her writing transports us right into the heart of the city, without glamorizing the touristy outposts that so many writers would choose to embellish. Instead, she reaches right into the heart of the streets and engages the senses in a way that makes the reader truly feel as if they are a part of the book:

“The French Quarter didn’t feel like the wicked place I had expected. I’d envisioned certain gray alleyways in Soho, furtive porno shops and peep shows, dodgy customers ducking in and out of low dark doorways. But all the sex in the French Quarter seemed cheerful, garishly lit, and highly commercial.” (145)

Then there’s the tone of the New Orleans AIDS epidemic that Brite holds as the backbone of the story. The Crescent City was hit particularly hard by AIDS in the early 1980s (you can read more about that here) and the tone of fear and anxiousness among the LGBTQ community during that time, especially in a city that touted freedom likely led to an interesting flux in culture, which holds the undertone of Exquisite Corpse. Several of the characters in the novel struggle with the disease, along with discrimination and mental health challenges, living under the shadows of their illnesses.

I don’t know that this is the most obscene or grotesque book I’ve ever read. Many of the comments on Goodreads seem to think so. I’ve read Tender is the Flesh and there was certainly *something* about A Certain Hunger and Sister, Maiden, Monster, but this book was just…different for me. There is an intimacy between the characters that delves into the unspoken horrors of our inner minds–the loneliness, and the fears we don’t speak about–and in this way, Exquisite Corpse almost became more horrific than any other book in the genre I’ve read, and more beautiful at the same time. There are still all of the elements of body horror and cannibalism, and grossness that those of us weirdos love, but there’s something else there that pushes the limit of what the genre does, and what literature in general can tell about ourselves. And that in my opinion, is what makes a great book.

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