This is depressing AF. ( )

Deeply unpleasant but ultimately satisfying read. I can’t imagine that folks would go straight to Nineteen Seventy-Seven without reading Nineteen Seventy-Four first, so prospective readers would already be familiar with Peace prose:

The clipped, staccato rhythms.

Hypnotic in their repetition.

In their repetition.

The refusal to connect the narrative dots for the reader.

Words spat out like bullets from a machine gun etc.

Unpleasant: the torrents of profanity, the racism and misogyny, not to mention explicit violence, are relentless and punishing and not for the squeamish.

But satisfying: it's nonetheless a hell of a page-turning read. Peace packs tension in between the lines, even in the most ordinary sequences (like in the many scenes of copious drinking). The reader's patience for the damaged and obsessive protagonists is arguably tested by their tendency towards melodramatic torment -- there's an awful lot of drunken tears and suicidal self-pity, even more than characters in a James Ellroy novel -- but the book on the whole is well worth the effort. Just don't be surprised if you want to start viewing cute puppy videos on YouTube after reading the book just to shake the bleakness and grime off. ( )

Peace's poetry-as-prose style is certainly distinctive but it gets a bit much at times and distracts me because it feels like "author showing off" rather than "character baring their soul". That style gets more and more intrusive as the book goes on and that, combined with the struggle to find one of the protagonists sympathetic, makes this a 3 rather than a 4 star. ( )

I'm not really sure what to make of this book. Gripping, I couldn't put it down but....
Every man in the book is misogynist and racist (apart from the men who aren't white and they don't play very big roles). Rape and pornography are accepted norms. The women are ciphers - there to be raped and abused. I kept hoping that there would be some redemptive quality shown by somebody, but there never was. Yet the novel stank of reality and maybe that's why I can't make up my mind whether this is just a misogynist rant or a commentary on a very sick and corrupt world. ( )

This was a DNF. Much as I like David Peace, I can't help but agree with the decision to skip this one when the Red Riding quartet was adapted for television. This was much too sordid and grimy-feeling, and confusing to boot. The dual narrators originally alternated, and I was able to tell who it was based on the number of the chapter, but then I think they switched toward the end and confused me even further. It also didn't help that I went on vacation and didn't take it with me, so by the time I came back, I'd lost the impetus to keep going. I peeked at the end to get some of the loose threads tied up, but even then I'm not sure I got the whole story. Ah well. Thanks anyway, interlibrary loan. I appreciate the opportunity to have tried this. ( )