THE DISTANT SOUND OF VIOLENCE by Jason Greensides — A Review

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BOOK | FICTION | LITERARY
THE DISTANT SOUND OF VIOLENCE
JASON GREENSIDES
RATING: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Do we ever escape the decisions we make when we’re fifteen?

Nathan Dawes, the loser from school, an outsider, street philosopher and member of The Grove Runners gang, needs Ryan’s help to get Stephanie to fall for him. When Ryan’s lawnmower is stolen, Nathan sees this as his chance to enlist Ryan in his plan. 

Although Ryan knows becoming friends with Nathan could lead to trouble, he reluctantly agrees to help.

Stephanie wants nothing to do with either of them. Besides, she’s more interested in the one guy in the world she really shouldn’t be.

As Nathan continues his pursuit of Stephanie, and Ryan gets mixed up with The Grove Runners, soon events overtake them all, haunting their lives for years to come.

Part coming of age, part mystery story, The Distant Sound of Violence is a heartbreaking tale of bad decisions and love gone wrong. It’s about choices that lead to violence, loss and tragedy.

Amazon Book Description
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THE DISTANT SOUND OF VIOLENCE by Jason Greensides is a hauntingly atmospheric tour de force with its stark and captivating descriptions of English life during the Nineties and beyond set in, on, and around the mean streets of London, its fully-fleshed characters as flawed and true-to-life as any character on a page can be, and its ringing dialogue that is at times achingly smart, witty, and/or sad, and that is always cut with just the right amount of a pleasingly rhythmic patios.

Not to say that I didn’t have some quibbles with this masterwork. At over 500 pages, I thought the narrator interjecting his personal story from time to time, while interesting enough to some extent, didn’t add enough value to the overall arc and purpose of the story to merit the lengthy interjections. Specifically, there is one part of the book where the narrator again interjects himself and becomes oddly obsessive in trying to track down and map out the locations of mysterious graffiti tags left by Nathan Dawes, our also oddly obsessive (but oddly obsessive with clear purpose) protagonist; where, in the end, all the time and effort spent in the narrator’s mapping of the tags served no revealing purpose that I can tell except to further highlight something that we already knew — that our protagonist is oddly obsessive to a life-wrecking fault.

But again, these are mere quibbles and ones not nearly severe enough to lower this grateful reader’s overall five-star ranking of this highly intriguing and highly recommended epic of a read.

We Should Be Dancing… Not Dying

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With all the constant blood and violence in this constantly bloody and violent nation of mine, a la yesterday’s insane mass killing after a gun-toting asshole goes off his nutty handle during a routine traffic stop, I hardly feel like getting my groove on.

But get my groove on I must or else I will become completely consumed by the constant blood and violence and do nothing more than wallow in a constant state of misery and fear…

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Arthouse Films in general are nutty…

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But Arthouse Horror Films are, if you’ll excuse the vernacular…

Off the mother fn nutty hook, yo.

And thank god for that.

Been on an arthouse horror film binge lately from a dire and desperate need (yeah, I like redundancies so what of it?) to clear the palate of that rancid franchise aftertaste.

Watched this lovely gem last night and I hope someday when I grow up I will be able to create something so horror(-fully?)(-ibly?) masterful…

#amwatching
#offthehooknuttygemsofarthousehorroryo

THE LESSER DEAD by Christopher Buehlman — A Review

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BOOK | FICTION | HORROR
THE LESSER DEAD
CHRISTOPHER BUEHLMAN
AUDIOBOOK
RATING: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The secret is, vampires are real and I am one.
The secret is, I’m stealing from you what is most truly yours and I’m not sorry… 

New York City in 1978 is a dirty, dangerous place to live. And die. Joey Peacock knows this as well as anybody—he has spent the last forty years as an adolescent vampire, perfecting the routine he now enjoys: womanizing in punk clubs and discotheques, feeding by night, and sleeping by day with others of his kind in the macabre labyrinth under the city’s sidewalks.

The subways are his playground and his highway, shuttling him throughout Manhattan to bleed the unsuspecting in the Sheep Meadow of Central Park or in the backseats of Checker cabs, or even those in their own apartments who are too hypnotized by sitcoms to notice him opening their windows. It’s almost too easy.

Until one night he sees them hunting on his beloved subway. The children with the merry eyes. Vampires, like him…or not like him. Whatever they are, whatever their appearance means, the undead in the tunnels of Manhattan are not as safe as they once were.

And neither are the rest of us.

Amazon Book Description
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Except for the originals — Shelley’s Monster; Stoker’s Dracula; Stevenson’s Mr. Hyde, etc. — when it comes to horror, regardless the medium, whether it be movies or books (although, nightmares get a pass — nothing like a good monster trying to chase me down and rip me to shreds in my dreams), I typically will give a hard pass to any story with a monster in it. Not sure why… maybe because I find that most are just too goofy to suspend reality enough for me to enjoy them.

But I tell you what, I love Christopher Buehlman’s monsters like no man should ever love a monster.

THE LESSER DEAD is my third book by Buelhman — THOSE ACROSS THE RIVER and SUICIDE MOTORCYCLE CLUB are the other two and both are outstanding reads in their own right. However, by comparison, TLD is a completely exceptional read, a pure literary masterwork, not just as a genre novel, but as a true literary novel. But even regarding it just as a horror novel, by comparison with its angsty and vulgar (vampire) coming of age vibe to it, I would say it ranks as the THE CATCHER IN THE RYE of its genre if I didn’t think TCITR was so grossly over rated. But regardless, to me TLD, although a much more complete body of work than TCITR in my opinion, deserves such similar acclaim among its contemporaries as TCITR enjoys among its. Not to mention TLD has an ending that is pure literary genius.

As if that weren’t enough, Buehlman himself narrates the audiobook and his skills as a voice actor are equal to his skills as an author.

The dude’s for real folks.

#whythefhaventanyofthisdudesbooksbeenmadeintoamovie

Featured image courtesy of Goodreads

 

Alter

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Yeah, I DNF most horror films because, let’s face it, most horror films are crap…

But last night I watched a rather decent one written and directed by Irish/Welsh film maker Liam Gavin called A DARK SONG.

A determined young woman and a damaged occultist risk their lives and souls to perform a dangerous ritual that will grant them what they want.

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Memories Like a Dream

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My father and I are struggling to mount his just purchased used dirt bike to the back of our black VW bug and I’m giddy as a child because I am a child and then as a family we’re out in the field that runs past the yard with scythes hacking out trails that run past and around the old sagging barn and then beyond into and out of the wood as we sweat under the intense mid-summer sun but I don’t care because I know the reason why we’re all out there and I had never worked so hard and with such purpose and then finally I’m on the back of that bike with my arms tight around my mother’s waist as we fly through and around those trails that I had helped to lay as spiteful thorn bushes strive futilely to slow us down and thick burrs glom onto our pants and socks and hang on for their own lives as I hang on for mine and when we finish the ride that seemed to have lasted only seconds and mom powers the down the motorcycle in the driveway and I holler out jeez that sure was fun! she whips her helmeted head around and fires off one of her patented scolding looks at me thinking that I had just taken the lord’s name in vain…

#fromoutoftheblue
#amdreaming