Frisk

I don't think I can rate this exactly. Everything except the 2nd to last chapter is really good - pretty fucking dark but a serious examination of fucked up fantasies, how we see The Body, male sexuality, the sick way young boys are fetishised, self destructive behaviour and passivity, the start of fetishes and fixations... it's clever and the fucked up ness is used judiciously. Then the 2nd to last chapter is just a long, incredibly graphic description of raping and murdering some boys. I could not do more than skim it after the first couple of pages. Regardless of artistic intent, it's unbearable and sickening. And I Get It! But I never want to read anything like that again, you know? I should have checked going in but I thought I'd show more at least try one "extreme" work before not reading them. And yeah, it's not for me. If that chapter was excised, at least 3.5 stars. But yeah. show less

The narrator of Frisk revels in murderous desire with potentially horrific consequences, and he implicates the reader in imagination, while Cooper himself shows us its power. This novel is a stunning and necessary example within the canon of the transgressive literature of the body. If you think this book is nothing but vapid snuff literature, you miss the point entirely. This novel builds on the themes of Cooper's first novel Closer: the religiosity of viscera, the implications of violence, and the particular expression of alienation expressed by the apathetic yet seeking characters that Cooper creates in an arresting landscape of emotion and intestines. I am excited to read the rest of the George Miles Cycle and see how these themes show more are further developed and explored. show less

The only disturbing thing about this book is the dull and dreadful writing.

A gay man, haunted by a pornographic photo he saw many years ago, has gone on a psychosexual killing spree. Or has he? I read this at the time I read American Psycho and both are similar in plot and intent, if not in style.

Frisk, upon initial reading didn't seem to hold my interest. It repelled me more than Brite's Exquisite Corpse. The ending leaves something to be desired, but the road there is full of sex and violence you'll be drawn in.

This is not really a novel. Maybe a novella, but not a novel. It's not even a real story. It's just excerpts from someone's so-called life. Mostly normal, gay sex scenes. I mean, a little kink here and there, sure. But, for the most part, it's boring-as-shit gay sex scenes. Big-fucking-deal.

Then, for some reason, this guy turns into a serial killer. Just because he can, apparently. I guess the Dutch just ask for it or something. He finds it just so easy to kill, so he does it, and continues to do it, in graphic detail. He picks up guys, and takes them to a deserted factory and kills and rapes them.

Or does he? This fictional character narrates these detailed killing scenes as a letter he's writing to a friend back in the states. But, its show more just a fantasy, he tells his friend, after the friend actually comes to Amsterdam to visit this crazy serial killer. It wasn't real, was it?

No, it wasn't real. So, I just read about an 11 year old boy getting skull fucked and disemboweled with a swiss army knife (at the same time, mind you), and it wasn't even anything I could pretend to have happened. Because, it was fiction within fiction. Even the goddamn fiction was fiction! What the fuck? show less

Hard to know if this book is good or bad. Certainly violent and gross. Fantasy murder letter the grossest part. Lots of shit and blood.