Read: Angel Dust Apocalypse, by Jeremy Robert Johnson
This was an odd little book - it belongs to the bizarro genre of fiction, though it often crosses over into out-and-out horror, usually dealing in deep piles of viscera and psychological terror.
I used to be obsessed with bizarro fiction. It’s a genre that spawned titles like Foop!, Adolf in Wonderland, Satan Burger and Dr. Identity, and it all heavily inspired my last book. Time has sobered me a little (though I’m not sure why, in retrospect - some disgusting impulse to be taken seriously, or something), but there’s still something incredibly exciting when reading something like this.
On more than one occasion, I found myself questioning the book’s literary merit, but it’s to the collection’s credit that immediately after I found myself questioning what “literary merit” means, given that I was still sucked into each story and the imagery was coming at me like a series of punches to the gut. Maybe the key thing to take away is that at times, Angel Dust Apocalypse is not the sort of book that feels pleasant to read - it’s gripping and powerfully evocative from start to finish, but it rarely lets up.
So. Chuck Palahniuk loved this book (even stepping in to provide a blurb, which he almost never does), and that should give you an idea of who this is for. These stories still have heart, but they’re behind a screen of awful people and horrifying events. If you can’t stomach the latter, you might struggle to get a grip on the former.