Brian Evenson

What I like about Evenson's stories are his commingling of cinematic sensibilities with the moodiness of weird fiction. The awareness being displayed here, with most stories being a twist on the familiar horror tale is delightful. They're all written in a way that only Evenson could've written and the callbacks to the stories within the collection and also from his other collections made me giddy.

Like a bit of Kafka mixed in with your philosophy and religion? How about an amputation or two?

Last Days is written in a plethora of genres: Crime with a hard-bitten protagonist, in a gritty, noir setting worthy of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. It's also body-horror literature that takes a surreal, amputated-toe dip into Lynchian weird. Evenson has a fantastic sense of humor, and there's a strong stripe of very funny satire cleverly wrapped around the entire story.

This is the show more central question of the novel:
“Curiosity is a terrible thing, he was thinking. How is it possible to stop oneself from needing to know?”

Curiosity can be overwhelming, and the protagonist, Kline, dares to look into an abyss. I'm fairly sure that was a monster looking back. There's a strange journey waiting for people who offer a stump to the monster as a way out of the darkness.



I loved this book. But, it is hard to describe/explain. As an odd note, I heard about an amputation calendar way back in the days of Usenet. It may have been a part of general Usenet weirdness, a true-crime group, or just a floating urban-legend, but this book isn't the first time I have encountered the concept. It's called Body Integrity Dysphoria, and it's a real thing. There's a website for sufferers — bodyintegritydysphoria.com

That's the best review I can come up with. This is my first Evenson book. There will be more. show less

Wow...where to start? Probably by saying that there will be some spoilers, so caveat lector.

Last Days begins with Kline, a former undercover cop who recently had his hand cut off by a criminal, being engaged by a cult to investigate a crime that has been committed at their compound. The Brotherhood of Mutilation takes the biblical passage " if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off" literally and believe that the more amputations one has, the closer they are to God. They have chosen Kline show more for the job specifically because of his recent amputation. As Kline investigates, he discovers that the crime he has been tasked with solving hasn't been committed and that he is meant to be the fall guy.

After fighting his way out of the compound, Kline falls in with the Pauls, a splinter group of the Brotherhood who are all called Paul and think it's only necessary to amputate one's right hand to demonstrate devotion. The leader of the Pauls convinces Kline that he will only be safe from the Brotherhood if he kills them first, thus setting the stage for a finale that makes a Tarantino film look tame in comparison.

Evenson has created a strange, twisted, and utterly compelling story. Last Days is in many ways a critique of religions taken to extremes, and the lean prose gives the book a realistic feel that makes it all the more chilling. Ultimately, this is one of the most thought-provoking books I've ever read and it will continue to haunt--in a not unwelcome way--for a long time. show less

A collection from Brian Evenson, even one with some pieces that weren't quite as welcome to me as they ordinarily are will never not be greeted with warbles of delight from me. These tales are all from other homes, but they belong together. They're Family, much as a cult is.... Last Days, a pair of odd and deeply disturbing novellas linked by one hugely upsetting premise...and this premise is the *only* one I've ever encountered whereunder I am simply delighted to be called a "one"...made me show more think and shiver in 2014, and still does today. His short fiction tends to be very, very short (see my review of Windeye from 2013 at my blog). This can render me almost mute, considering how very unreasonable the demands of reviewing collections, as opposed to anthologies of multiple writers, of short stories are. What's one meant to say? How to capture the gestalt of the collection? Is there a gestalt? If not, what the heck?! I get all verklempt and deeply verschmeckeled. But this is Brian Evenson. The peace is kept. These stories will take you, quickly, to places you're not at all sure you'd like to go.

I got a bit of a foretaste of the unease Author Evenson had in store for me when I kept thinking I should know that title, such a resonant phrase and so elegantly crafted! Is it a quote? A line from some famous poem by Milton, or permaybehaps Swinburne...turns out the author attributes it to Marguerite Young from Miss Mackintosh, My Darling! That monster hasn't been mined as thoroughly for titles as I'd've expected. I don't have any notion of where in the book it occurs, nor does he vouchsafe the information, but the sense of that exact phrase *belonging* somewhere has been answered and laid to rest. Unlike, it must be said, the science-fictional treatments of Otherness, the spooky treatments of cruelty and neglect, and the other many-sided polygons of storytelling he gets up to here. I agree that the planet's had it with us, and can even understand the more, um, arcane ways Author Evenson's come up with for it to shuffle us off. But they are as one expects from him: Unsettling, open-ended, and prettily told even when they aren't at all pretty. show less