Review of Misery Loves Company
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mkclaire659
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- Latest Review: Misery Loves Company by Paul Marino
Review of Misery Loves Company
[Following is a volunteer review of "Misery Loves Company" by Paul Marino.]
Despite the short length of this text, I found it incredibly difficult to read through until the end. My problem, however, is not the writing itself--in fact, I found it to actually quite well written. I noted no grammatical errors, structural errors, or otherwise, and could tell this book is professionally edited. My issues with this piece are entirely in the content, which I found shockingly distasteful, and the marketing of this book as a dark retelling of Orpheus. That said, I am giving this book a 2/4 and 2/5, respectively, due to the fact that I find the writing good despite my intense dislike of the actual content.
The piece begins with our narrator entering a hidden room he found reference to from word of mouth. The scene is set: the chairs are arranged in a circle, the reader is aware of the perplexing and usual nature of the group from the first paragraph, and we quickly learn the reason for this: “I’m the group leader, Jason. Welcome to Serial Killers Anonymous!” We follow the narrator from this meeting, through his conversations with other attendants, to the scene of a murder he commits himself, and back to another meeting of the same Serial Killers Anonymous group. I find the text largely descriptive and reliant on visual impact and conversation, so the most direct summary is as follows: the reader will follow the narrator as he engages with the other members of this group, and further follow how this group reflects his life outside of the group. I find Marino's writing style very engaging, and I would go as far to say the style is reminiscent of Beatnik unconventionality and black humor. Throughout the short story, the narration is incredibly vivid, and the conversations between characters are easy to follow. Marino's writing is descriptive in a way that is almost poetic.
Despite enjoying the writing style, however, the piece has two glaring issues. The first is the lack of obvious or implicit parallel to the myth it claims to retell. The cover page of this piece claims it to be a modern retelling of Orpheus, but the only convincing argument I can think of here is that the group (Serial Killers Anonymous) is Hades (in other words, or in the modern Judaeo-Christian conception, Hell), and the narrator can either be led out by the sheer absurdity of accepting this group as his reality, or he can be drawn in and lost in it forever. However, I find this interpretation unlikely, as the readers quickly find out our narrator has not been led to this group by accident, but that he is also a serial killer. Furthermore, the piece begins by captioning the sections with "Jason and the Argonauts" and "The Golden Fleece." Not only did I have to double check which Greek myth Marino sought to retell--given that the ending is reminiscent of the violence of Medea--but the actual sections captioned as stated have little parallel, even in the most modern sense.
Content wise, I do not feel as though this book is adequately marked in accordance to the vulgarity it contains. While I have no problem with vulgarity itself, I found this story to be not black humor, but rather a sudden and unexpected litany full of "furious masturbation," violence against women, and male inadequacy and melodrama. A story marketed as a modern retelling of Orpheus that spends most of it's content discussing the murdered corpses of ugly women, or (in the latter stages) masturbating over the corpse of a beautiful woman, is not artistically jarring but instead pretentious in it's lack of actual thematic content or plot and overwrought as it attempts to connect well known mythologies and theater to bleak violence and nihilism.
I generally enjoy psychological thrillers, but the sheer amount of profanity and sexual vulgarity, combined with the unnecessary and forced connections to Greek myth and theater make me rating this book a two out of five.
******
Misery Loves Company
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Despite the short length of this text, I found it incredibly difficult to read through until the end. My problem, however, is not the writing itself--in fact, I found it to actually quite well written. I noted no grammatical errors, structural errors, or otherwise, and could tell this book is professionally edited. My issues with this piece are entirely in the content, which I found shockingly distasteful, and the marketing of this book as a dark retelling of Orpheus. That said, I am giving this book a 2/4 and 2/5, respectively, due to the fact that I find the writing good despite my intense dislike of the actual content.
The piece begins with our narrator entering a hidden room he found reference to from word of mouth. The scene is set: the chairs are arranged in a circle, the reader is aware of the perplexing and usual nature of the group from the first paragraph, and we quickly learn the reason for this: “I’m the group leader, Jason. Welcome to Serial Killers Anonymous!” We follow the narrator from this meeting, through his conversations with other attendants, to the scene of a murder he commits himself, and back to another meeting of the same Serial Killers Anonymous group. I find the text largely descriptive and reliant on visual impact and conversation, so the most direct summary is as follows: the reader will follow the narrator as he engages with the other members of this group, and further follow how this group reflects his life outside of the group. I find Marino's writing style very engaging, and I would go as far to say the style is reminiscent of Beatnik unconventionality and black humor. Throughout the short story, the narration is incredibly vivid, and the conversations between characters are easy to follow. Marino's writing is descriptive in a way that is almost poetic.
Despite enjoying the writing style, however, the piece has two glaring issues. The first is the lack of obvious or implicit parallel to the myth it claims to retell. The cover page of this piece claims it to be a modern retelling of Orpheus, but the only convincing argument I can think of here is that the group (Serial Killers Anonymous) is Hades (in other words, or in the modern Judaeo-Christian conception, Hell), and the narrator can either be led out by the sheer absurdity of accepting this group as his reality, or he can be drawn in and lost in it forever. However, I find this interpretation unlikely, as the readers quickly find out our narrator has not been led to this group by accident, but that he is also a serial killer. Furthermore, the piece begins by captioning the sections with "Jason and the Argonauts" and "The Golden Fleece." Not only did I have to double check which Greek myth Marino sought to retell--given that the ending is reminiscent of the violence of Medea--but the actual sections captioned as stated have little parallel, even in the most modern sense.
Content wise, I do not feel as though this book is adequately marked in accordance to the vulgarity it contains. While I have no problem with vulgarity itself, I found this story to be not black humor, but rather a sudden and unexpected litany full of "furious masturbation," violence against women, and male inadequacy and melodrama. A story marketed as a modern retelling of Orpheus that spends most of it's content discussing the murdered corpses of ugly women, or (in the latter stages) masturbating over the corpse of a beautiful woman, is not artistically jarring but instead pretentious in it's lack of actual thematic content or plot and overwrought as it attempts to connect well known mythologies and theater to bleak violence and nihilism.
I generally enjoy psychological thrillers, but the sheer amount of profanity and sexual vulgarity, combined with the unnecessary and forced connections to Greek myth and theater make me rating this book a two out of five.
******
Misery Loves Company
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Latest Review: Misery Loves Company by Paul Marino
