Saturday, April 22, 2006

Mid-Read Review: Lust for Life

Previously, I mentioned that I fully expected "Lust for Life" (edited by Claude Lalumiere and Elise Moser) to be weird and twisted. Well, I was right.
I'm halfway through the collection of short stories and so far I've read about a woman who prefers her nymphomaniacal, schizophrenic hallucination to her girlfriend; about a group of guys who cross-dress to catch a would-be serial kisser; and about a support group for suck sluts. I dunno about you, but I think those are some pretty weird topics.

But aside from the novelty of the odd story topics, I'm not sure if I like the collection. On the one hand, the stories make for fairly decent leisure-time reading, but they seem a bit unfinished. Like the story of the nymphomaniacal schizophrenic hallucination really felt unresolved, and it had really piss-poor character development. And the story of the suck sluts seemed like random porn disguised with a thin veneer of art. Only the story about the cross-dressing youth was insightful and had real character development.

So far the book is just a collection of random, mostly mediocre stories that deal, in varying degrees, with sex and/or sexuality. The collection doesn't have the cohesion of "Island Dreams" (also edited by Claude Lalumiere). I'm actually a touch disappointed. But I'm only halfway through, so it might get better.