FediversalPublicFriend reviewed Cockatiel x Chameleon by Bavitz
A powerful interrogation of identity and meaning in a post-everything world
5 stars
Emotionally harrowing, tonally bleak, relentlessly obscene, Cockatiel x Chameleon is a brutal book with much to say about many things. Creation, community, identity, purpose, meaning, politics, sex, depravity, and how all these things connect, all seen through the lens of dysfunctional and often sinister characters whose unusual minds cause them to chafe against normal, ordinary, polite society.
The book has a lot of distressing content. It crosses the line of what is socially acceptable without flinching. Cope with that, and you'll find the unique and evocative experiences of complex people with strange lives, penned in masterful prose and depicted with as much good taste as the content could possibly allow. I think it improves the experience if you have some familiarity with the internet's more debauched communities and the personalities found there, but by how much? It's hard to tell. It's a very "internet" story to me, but the internet …
Emotionally harrowing, tonally bleak, relentlessly obscene, Cockatiel x Chameleon is a brutal book with much to say about many things. Creation, community, identity, purpose, meaning, politics, sex, depravity, and how all these things connect, all seen through the lens of dysfunctional and often sinister characters whose unusual minds cause them to chafe against normal, ordinary, polite society.
The book has a lot of distressing content. It crosses the line of what is socially acceptable without flinching. Cope with that, and you'll find the unique and evocative experiences of complex people with strange lives, penned in masterful prose and depicted with as much good taste as the content could possibly allow. I think it improves the experience if you have some familiarity with the internet's more debauched communities and the personalities found there, but by how much? It's hard to tell. It's a very "internet" story to me, but the internet I grew up with may be very different to the internet of someone growing up today.