Iain Rowan is doing some guestblogging over at Vandermeer’s joint, and he’s posted an overview of the work of brilliant English writer Rupert Thomson.
My buddy Julian turned me on to Rupert Thomson with one book:
Read it. The rest will follow.
A true Brutal Woman book – don’t say I didn’t warn you. Here’s an amazon.com overview:
Stepping out of his Amsterdam studio one April afternoon to buy cigarettes for his girlfriend, a dashing 29-year old Englishman reflects on their wonderful seven-year relationship, and his stellar career as an internationally acclaimed dancer and choreographer. But the nameless protagonist’s destiny takes an unthinkably horrifying turn when a trio of mysterious cloaked and hooded women kidnap him, chain him to the floor of a stark white room to keep as their sexual prisoner, and subjected him to eighteen days of humiliation, mutilation, and rape. Then, after a bizarrely public performance, he is released, only to be held captive in the purgatory of his own guilt and torment: The realization that no one will believe his strange story. Coolly revelatory, meticulously crafted, The Book of Revelation is Rupert Thomson at his imaginative best.
An incredible look at sex and power, sure, but that’s only half the book – the other half of this novel is about dealing with what’s been done to you, about breakdown, collapse, and finding the strength to live on.
Really well done.
