The finger’s nail and the flesh and bone just below it sat on one side of the blade, the rest of the finger on the other. The blade was sharp there was almost no resistance as it went through the joint, perhaps a slight snap as chopped through bone. He lifted the cleaver and brought it down hard and fast, as had been done to him, to his hand. In this regard, Last Days is a masterpiece: a narrative that could simultaneously be used to teach dialogue and plot in MFA programs and a text that all horror writers should refer to when trying to induce visceral reactions from their readers: These things, along with a list of cohesive elements that includes biblical violence, hilarious dialogue, and descriptive passages that will satisfy noir fans as well as fans of hardcore horror, come together to create the kind of narrative that slithers under the reader’s skin and fill his or her head with questions that can only be answered by continuing to read.Įvenson occupies a special place in contemporary fiction because he’s a giant of the literary realm who loves to produce genre fiction. The reader is dragged through all of it by the powerful, gripping prose, the speed at which the story propels forward, and a main character whose strange motivations and thirst for answers are both incredible and strangely understandable. Last Days is one of those brilliant narratives that seem very simple and straightforward and then end up having more layers than a truck full of onions. What follows is a fast-paced, tense, and very gory narrative about the search for answers, bizarre cults, mutilation, and violence.
The job, which Klein is not entirely willing to take, seems easy enough, but everyone involved seems to have a secret agenda and the way they keep him in the dark makes it look like solving the crime is the opposite of what they want.
The group wants him to find out who murdered their leader. Ripe with brutality and the kind or religious undertones that can often be found in Evenson’s work, Last Days is a noir/horror/literary hybrid that deserves to be named among the author’s best, and that in itself is truly high praise.Įx-detective Kline is still recovering from his last case when members of a dark sect that believes amputation brings you closer to God kidnap him. Furthermore, it’s a narrative that demonstrates how hilarity and snarky dialogue can be used effectively even when a story is pushing at the edges of its genre’s darkest, most emotionally gritty and grotesque boundaries. Brian Evenson’s Last Days is simultaneously one of the greatest send-ups of the hardboiled detective novel and of the best celebrations of the brutal, violent, and mysterious nature of the genre.
0 kommentar(er)
