time for a book review!
So I finished Kiss me Judas today by Will Christopher Baer. I must say that I’m very impressed. Tijs recommended the book to me but then again, Tijs and I do not always agree about books, so I was a bit apprehensive. Also because this book is written in a stream-of-consciousness sort of style, and I thought I would have to be really concentrated to get into it.
Turns out that it isn’t. It’s very accessible, once you get over the fact that the main character, who writes from first person limited point of view & present tense, has serious mental issues and not everything he thinks or says is real.
The book has this kind of ‘living on the edge’ sort of mood that I really dig. It reminded me somewhat of the movie Natural Born Killers – who has the same rough dark and morbid reality and this taste of danger throughout the whole story. Kiss me Judas has the same atmosphere, and the deranged part of my mind likes that darkness. It’s very inspiring… it tickles my writingbone, makes me want to write first person again – makes me want to write for the Fortress again. Perhaps I will, soon.
This story – it’s about a guy with serious issues who ends up in bed with what he thinks is a prostitute named Jude, but she turns out not to be: the next morning he wakes up in a bath of ice and missing one kidney. The book is about him searching her, and about madness. Phineas’ voice is very clear, cutting, his imagery is strong to the point that I sometimes found myself admiring the images and the sentence structures. That is not something that I do often… I usually get caught up in the mood of the story too much to pay attention to such things. Here the images that are sketched by Phineas’ narrative that you just HAVE to pay attention.
Very impressive. Highly recommended. 
Subscribe to the
Another salient detail of his mental issues is of course that writer does not use quotation marks to mark words that are being said. In short you cannot tell the differene between what he is thinking and what he is saying.
It made a little extra intense and intriguing for me. It made the stream of conciousness effect even stronger. Really just the personal fucked up view of one person who is not even sure if he is actually interacting with others or just making it up as he goes along.
Anyway it was well worth the 14 euros for the hardcover. As were Penny Dreadful and Hell’s Half Acre (which is my favorite) by the way.
1 DeusExMachina said this (27/5/2005 at 00:40)
Have you ever read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? I think you would like it, based on this.
2 Kat said this (27/5/2005 at 02:33)
No, always wanted to read it though. Just haven’t gotten around to it yet…
3 DeusExMachina said this (27/5/2005 at 07:08)