Exquisite Corpse

Poppy Z. Brite

I've read Poppy Z. Brite's two other full-length novels, Lost Souls and Drawing Blood, so I am familiar with the powerful and dark prose she has become so widely known for, however, in Exquisite Corpse she takes "powerful and dark" to a whole new depth.

On the surface it is a horror novel of graphic intensity. We are given a no holds bar pass into the secrets, motives, thoughts and acts of two serial killers (loosely and blatantly based on the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nilsen). Jay and Andrew are two of the same animals. Andrew has escaped prison in London where he was incarcerated for the torture, killing, rape, and mutilation (in that order) of 23 young men. Jay lives in New Orleans, supported by old family money he hunts and feasts on the ample supply of transients. Andrew flees to America and after seeing a travel ad boasting that New Orleans has one bar per 175 people he decides that it is the perfect place to prey. Upon meeting in a bar where initially they both approach the other seeing him as a potential victim, their inherent almost psychic recognition of what they both are leads Jay and Andrew into joining each other in exploring deeper into depravity.

The novel is set in a world where the fulfillment of desire is all that fuels the characters within it. Brite has a gift for giving the characters in her books deeply drawn and fully developed emotional qualities. Her victims are rarely unknowing, innocents and her monsters are rarely unfeeling robotic killing machines that other novels of this genre typify. You find yourself alternately loving and hating the multifaceted aspects of all the characters in this book. Even her minor characters are so well fleshed out that they are given some of the most powerful scenes in the book.

Set within the gay community in New Orleans’ French Quarter, this book has unique look into the AIDS epidemic. In today’s world the reckless pursuit to fulfill all of ones desires carries with it the possibility of its own gruesome and torturous death. From within this context Brite delves into the frustrating lack of research and development into the care and cure for those suffering from this devastating disease as well as the lack of understanding and compassion from the straight community. Using Luke an out of control writer who has AIDS, and his alter ego Lush Rimbaud, a DJ on the pirate radio station WHIV, she gives a harsh, compelling voice to the deep seed of anger many must feel.

Also permeating the book is the desperation people can feel when faced with the fear of being alone. Through Luke’s obsessive and abusive relationship with the young Vietnamese boy Tran, through Jay and Andrews closeness to corpses since “they don’t leave”, and Trans desperate searching for powerful dangerous men we see the dangerous positions people will place themselves in order to feel and be wanted and loved.

Brite takes us on a ride that is at once repulsive and seductive. This novel is not for the easily squeamish, or even for the average horror reader. With poetic gothic style Poppy Z. Brite delves into the slaughter of a human being in what can only be described as excruciating and exquisite detail. She has written scenes of horrid acts of ritualistic torture, necrophilia and cannibalism delivered with an unflinching eye and sensual erotic prose. She has taken the serial killer stereotype and smashed it. Her killers, Jay and Andrew, are offered to you “as is”. No explanation as to why or how they became the monsters they are, they just are, they know what they are, and they revel in it.

This book is an exquisite corpse, ravaged, ripped open to raw nerves. Horror and depravity served up with gothic melancholy.