“The Book of a Thousand Sins” is, like many story collections, a mixed bag, ranging from a couple excellent stories to a few I found a complete waste of time.
White wants to enlighten us with his extreme horror takes on God and religion and by the fifth of the fifteen stories it is obvious he has nothing but contempt for conventional religion. In that story, a priest is a vigilante providing a terrorist with an arguably deserved comeuppance. His motive is clear, but we are provided no back story as to how he can kill so callously. We’re just supposed to believe it because it’s a shocking idea White wants to depict.
The world of these stories is anarchy where sexual perversion and murder are commonplace. There are NO characters you care about. His tone, imagery and word choice from one story to the next are often repetitive. An example. He uses the phrase “pornographically large silicone breasts” in one story and in the very next one: “pornographically large breasts.” Can’t he think of another way to say it?
“He Who Increases Knowledge” has a very shocking and original premise (which I won’t give away) and develops it masterfully and to a satisfying conclusion. Though it is pornographic in its details, they are appropriate to the subject matter. In another well-executed tale, “Don’t Scream,” a husband kills his sexually frigid wife, burying her in his back yard. She comes back as a nymphomaniac zombie who forces him to engage in extreme sexual abandon involving self genital mutilation. Again, it fits the story.
But in other stories which could have been told another way, White never changes the formula. In his world, all killers are also automatically rapists with a preference for anal penetration. There’s little variation from one to the next. In “My Very Own,” you figure out the killer’s M.O. by the end of the first paragraph. The plot of “Fly,” the very next story is: meet serial killer—graphic sex scene—murder—repeat the same pattern but killer gets comeuppance. Déjà vu.
Then you finally arrive at the title novella–the story of a dominatrix who discovers a forbidden book of extreme and violent sex acts. Her disappearance compels her mentor to delve into the fetish club scene to make his dream of becoming a god real. Another interesting concept but delivered in the same extreme fashion as all the shorter works, a kind of literary equivalent of “A Serbian Film.”
White is capable of some strong writing and serious philosophic thought but frustratingly, with only a couple of exceptions, he is incapable of narrating a story without coming off as an angry and bitter man who hates everybody and everything. The only redemption he seems to feel exists in the world is revenge.
There are some good stories but overall to read this book is to become numb from overkill. Nothing is shocking when half way through the experience you have already been exposed to utter depravity and hopelessness.
White is good writer–he just seems a little short on ideas.
One star is generous for the Scare Factor. I may have been disgusted and frustrated reading this, but never scared.
– George Wilhite
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
