In-human by Anna Dusk
*** (three stars – a good book as per Bookseller+Publisher ratings system)
Published by Transit Lounge, $29.95 tpb, ISBN 9780980571738, April
Welcome to Oatlands, Tasmania, home of the femme-werewolf apocalypse. Sixteen-year-old Sally Hunter is seriously pissed off and she’s turning into a powerful ‘monster dog’, a werewolf with one hell of an appetite for flesh — human or animal and a growing se*ual appetite to match. A lot of people are disappearing, gruesomely murdered or eaten but who is responsible for all the carnage?
In what frequently reads like prose poetry, Dusk imagines herself right through every aspect of the anguish of ‘transformation’ and beyond, tackling a number of taboos as she goes — menstruation, se*ually violent women, cannibalism, nihilism — to name a few. Her paintings, featured in the book’s cover artwork, also depict a disturbing, confronting story of the awakening of what lies within. She’s been inside the guts and psyche of ‘the beast’ and portrays its heightened sensory perceptions, its lust for the kill, its pain, its joys, its dreams.
There are moments of distilled beauty and home truths here but this is no simplistic, pretty coming of age story. Horror fans accustomed to dark humour and unrelenting rampages of gore should enjoy but the squeamish, those offended by details of bodily functions, graphic violence, se* or obscenities probably won’t.
© Paula Grunseit 2010 More about Anna Dusk at her website.
This review from Bookseller+Publisher magazine (March 2010, Vol 89, No 6) was first published by Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © 2010, Thorpe-Bowker.
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