Most Disturbing Books: Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite

Subscribe and turn on notifications for a new video every day at 5pm UK time, noon Eastern, 9am Pacific
___
___
___
If you'd like to support the channel you can donate via Ko-Fi or buy me a book from my Amazon wishlist.
___
Music: Who's Afraid of Halloween by Alfred Grupstra from Pixabay

[Ahmed-gvyo]

I just read it, this is one of those books and characters that's gonna stick with me for a very long time.

Tran is a character I can unfortunately relate to alot. and there was only one thing I wanted from the plot which was to not have him die. I loved that you used the word "inevitable" to describe this book because that's what it seemed to be. Tran's death, no matter how much I didn't want it to happen, was inevitable. the last paragraphs describing what he's thinking as he realizes he's gonna die. thinking about his dad and thinking that Jay and Arthur/Andrew are his final destination. it's truly heartbreaking.

i found the book less distrubing and more just sad. i genuinely cried at the end of this book.

it's also ironic how Luke wanted to save Tran in the end. But it was also his fault that he died, his dominos that lead to this outcome. Luke groomed a 19 year old virgin Tran, taught him to like rougher and humiliating sex. He was shown to have been violent and controlling of Tran, especially after the diagnosis. This developed into Tran seeking out other dangerous and violent men. We see this from an outsider perspective, of Soren's specifically. Soren describes Jay as a creep. Tran cannot seem to accept that, even tho he himself had noticed things being not normal in Jay's house (bag of hair, super clean bathroom and kitchen). Had Luke been kinder to Tran or just not been with Tran in the first place, if he hasn't groomed him into being sumbissive, Tran could have perhaps seen the red flags in Jay and not gone to the house that night.

[johncollins]

Brite was instrumental to my desire to broaden my scope as a reader. Up until finding Lost Souls, I stuck to King, Straub and more accessible writers. Brite showed me that there was so much more to the genre and I've always owed a debt to him for that.

[IngaNoniFayJeth]

my goodness, I literally just finished this book last night and I came running on here to see if you did a review of it. I’m a little worried about myself because of how much I enjoyed this book, and I really found it hard to put down. Yes Andrew and Jay are truly reprehensible but as a reader I was intensely interested in them and couldn’t wait to see what happened next. As a child of the 80s and 90s, I vividly remember AIDS as one of the most terrifying things that could happen to someone, so that was a fascinating backdrop and definitely added to the nihilism here. I so thoroughly enjoyed Andrew especially though, he was so darkly funny at times and completely fascinating. Im glad I am not the only one wondering why this was so fascinating to me 😂

[SetAbominae]

All I’ve read by Poppy Z Bright was a collection of short stories, but Lord did it leave a mark! An expert at twisted storytelling.

[chrisgonzo]

I read Exquisite Corpse not long after it came out, and having read Poppys other books I was kinda prepared for it, but it still hit. The fact I remember so much of it after all this time that I was able to follow your review and know exactly what you were refering to in the novel, I think speaks to the quality and impact of the book. Great review.

[anahudson]

i flew through this book, i loved it so much. i don’t find much of it disturbing as much as upsetting, like you can feel the anxiety of the time. i think because of the pace i read through it, it was such an emotional whirlwind that i cried at the end (not much of a crier). i absolutely loved Tran too, Tran deserved better!

[fiberartsyreads]

I’m so glad you liked this! I loved it when I read it earlier this year and it quickly catapulted to a fave. But yeah…it’s a bit hard to describe why I loved it so much.

[warrenpope]

You taught me something. I thought Poppy was a woman. I googled him during the video and learned otherwise.

[BartelsBookshelf]

There isn't much I can add that I haven't said time and time again and that you didn't cover wonderfully in this video. Suffice to say that I 100% agree with all of your points. This is a book that means a lot to me because I read it when I was in my early 20s, and I'd never encountered anything like it before. So violent and cruel and nihilistic, but also with moments of poetic beauty and eroticism, and that was so very, very gay. I didn't even know books like this were possible, lol. It really kind of blew my head open. Brite's prose is sumptuous and, as you said, incredibly readable. I hope you dig into more of his bibliography. :) I highly recommend Lost Souls and Drawing Blood, as well as his short story collection Wormwood, aka Swamp Foetus.

[myneighbourjohnturturro]

Legit one of my favourite novels. I read it as a teenager and wasn’t prepared for it, but it made such a deep impression. If you dug this, maybe try Frisk by Dennis Cooper, his style is more experimental than Poppy but deals with similar themes and ideas. (Plus the prose is superb)

[BelialHexed]

I think you should check out Poppy's short story collection Swamp Fetus, I think it may be published under a different title now, it has a great story for cat lovers if I remember correctly. Exquisite Corpse and Zombie were two titles I wrote my English dissertation on, the other was Red Dragon. Poppy's later books involving two gay cooks in New Orleans are also worth reading, Liquor is the first in the series

[davidbrian]

Glad you enjoyed this, Olly. It's certainly an absorbing read, and the first person narrative is particularly chilling. Wonderfully written; it's almost like observing someone stepping on to a motorway and not being able to look away, even though you know it'll end badly.

[eriebeverly]

When Brite started getting a lot of attention on BookTube recently I did the Publisher's Weekly check. Contemporaneous reactions always interest me. Brite was described as "Gen X's answer to Anne Rice" which makes me think whoever came up with the description had never read Brite and only the biography.

[johnsmith]

I went into this book back in the late 90's when I was into my Anne Rice phase thinking: "Horror in New Orleans, this must be like Anne Rice!"
I was wrong about that...
Brite (Billy Martin) has been threatening a new book for years, but I am hopeful. It's meant to be a non fiction analysis of spirituality in Stephen King, which sounds interesting.

Check out Drawing Blood and Lost Souls...but be warned they are very early 90's goth, especially the later.

[jamessmithfitness]

I highly recommend reading If You Tell by Gregg Olsen. This is actually a true crime book, but the book has statements and quotes from the main perpetrators' children, so it feels like the reader is with the victims the whole way. This is a page turner. This book is about Shelly Knotek who abused and manipulated her whole family including her 3 children. The three girls all have different fathers, but eventually live with Dave Knotek as their stepfather. Very disturbing. 5/5

[kotatsubooks]

Exquisite Corpse is the only book I've ever unintentional DNFed. I put it down because I needed a breather and I just never picked it back up. I've read Lost Souls so I thought I knew what I was getting into but nope. This video has given me the push to try to reread and finish it this time.

[anotherbibliophilereads]

I’ll have to wait until my Read What You Challenge is over. I think I read story by Brite in the 90s, but I remember nothing about it.

[milkmoonlight]

This book is a monument of horror littérature ! One of the best American writer alive 😊

[BookStopsHere]

Exquisite Corpse was my first Brite, which I plucked off a shelf in the library back in the late nineties. I was quick to go on and read Lost Souls and Drawing Blood, as well as the short story collections from around the time. Swamp Foetus and Self-Made Man. I think there was another. While I liked Exquisite Corpse a great deal, I hadn't long read Don Davis's 'The Milwaukee Murders', a true crime book on Jeffrey Dahmer who, along with, as you say, Nilsen, was clearly a model for the American killer. I think my only true disappointment was that the scene with Tran, the Vietnamese kid, was almost a verbatim account of what happened between Dahmer, Konerak Sinthasomphone, and the police, that I felt it lacked imagination regardless of the way it was told. But years later, on reflection, that it should have happened at all, real life echoed in fiction, is disturbing whichever may you experience it - with fore knowledge or purely as a dark entertainment.

[troytradup]

I think my Poppy Z. Brite days are behind me, but yay for the Holes shoutout! Holes is a very fun read-aloud book if you have kids.