Books › Exquisite Corpse
Exquisite Corpse
First published 1996 · 336 pages
A feverish, blood-soaked descent into the darkest extremes of desire, rendered in prose so beautiful it feels like a trap.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like wandering through a fever dream in the sweltering heat of the New Orleans French Quarter, where the air is thick with the scent of jasmine and decay. It is a propulsive, deeply transgressive experience that drags you into the minds of monsters, forcing you to confront the terrifying intersection of eroticism and absolute brutality. The prose is the real trap here—lush, poetic, and hypnotic, it paints the most grotesque, stomach-churning acts with a disturbing, decadent beauty. It is a dread-soaked, claustrophobic journey that refuses to look away from the darkest corners of human obsession. This is a book for readers who crave extreme horror that is as emotionally devastating as it is viscerally shocking.
- Mood
- feverish
- dread-soaked
- claustrophobic
- grotesque
- erotic
- Tone
- decadent
- transgressive
- macabre
- lyrical
- unapologetic
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- the aesthetics of death · obsessive desire · queer alienation · the intersection of love and violence · the ravages of illness
- The writing
- Lush, poetic, and unapologetically visceral, rendering horrific acts with disturbing, hypnotic beauty.
- The arc
- A seductive descent into a nightmarish underworld that culminates in a devastating, blood-soaked crescendo.
- Who it's for
- Readers with iron stomachs who crave extreme, transgressive horror that marries gorgeous prose with taboo, stomach-churning subject matter.
Content notes
- graphic violence
- cannibalism
- sexual violence
- necrophilia
- torture
- terminal illness
- homophobia
About the book
To serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the sole ambition of bringing his "art" to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires, and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his "art" to limits even Compton hadn't previously imagined.
Together, Compton and Byrne set their sights on an exquisite young Vietnamese-American runaway. Tran, whom they deem to be the perfect victim.
Swiftly moving from the grimy streets of London's Piccadilly Circus to the decadence of the New Orleans French Quarter, and punctuated by rants from radio talk show host Lush Rimbaud, a.k.a. Luke Ransom, Tran's ex-lover, who is dying of AIDS and who intends to wreak ultimate havoc before leaving this world, Exquisite Corpse unfolds into a labyrinth of murder and love. Ultimately all four characters converge on a singular bloody night after which their lives will be irrevocably changed - or terminated.
Description from Open Library.
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