Requiem for a Dream

I've just been blown away by another Hubert Selby novel, reading this you can see why it is considered one of the best books on substance abuse. He has the ability to make you feel for the main characters and then slowly destroy them whilst you sit there and helplessly watch. As Sara's life unfolds I was almost reduced to tears, luckily I am a real man and managed to push them to the back of my mind to fester into some later violence.

A beautifully written book but with his usual take on grammar that for some reason is so easy to follow. I am now going to try and watch the film followed by the documentary about it.

To everybody who has read this gimme 5 baby!

This is a book that starts dark and descends all the way into black. All the characters start out flawed and difficult, make nothing but terrible choices, and end up meeting terrible ends. This is a dark, dark, dark book.

But the writing: the writing is magnificent. Selby's style breaks most of the rules for conventional narrative technique: grammar, punctuation, dialog tags, paragraph structure, point of view. It took some getting used to, but the disorienting and deeply immersive style is part of the reason the book feels so raw and emotional. It's a style that carries you along with the character's experiences, with all the loss of control and time and fear and frustration that the characters feel.

It's just astonishingly well done.

I need a light and cheerful break after reading this book, but I'll be coming back to Selby's work.