No Longer Human

No Longer Human by Junji Ito
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ito applies his signature phantasmagoric horror style to adapting a realistic work, with some success. Most of the psychological trauma is literalised in a succession of disturbing visions that haunt the protagonist, although Ito does add more blood (and sex) than there is in the original as well. This is a grim story of addiction and self-destruction, the relentless misfortune occasionally getting a bit too much for me. I did enjoy the clever storytelling trick used as a framing device for the adaptation, however, where Osamu Dazai is inserted as a character in his own story as a way of paying tribute to the original work, and the life that inspired it.

View all my reviews

Equinox (The Tides of Lust)

The Tides of Lust by Samuel R. Delany
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A fantastically-written opening chapter devolves a bit as the book goes on. Pornography may be the last genre where you're allowed to leave scruples about consent, or racism, or sexism, at the door – and yet this is still pretty difficult to read. It feels like an indulgence rather than a treatise – and probably not to most people's tastes. Undeniable though that there are passages of striking imagery and description within.

View all my reviews