This was excellent and totally outside my comfort zone (shit-eating and snuff films), but I'll wait and actually review the entire 5-book cycle at once. Maybe. ( )

Closer: A Novel (Cooper, Dennis) is pornography in my opinion. I like some pornography but this was scatalogical. Over the top for me without redeeming features in the story. ( )

An extremely disturbing portrayal of gay men, especially teenagers. Given that it was written after the discovery of HIV, its portrayal of various forms of unsafe sex among teens is unfortunate. Gay men killing other gay men and taking a power saw to behinds for sexual satisfaction is way beyond the pale. ( )

Boring, gross, etc. I mainly read it because of Cooper's Paris Review interview and I wanted have a transgressive-lit marathon of Cooper/Bataille/Acker, but this is sort of disappointing. I was hoping for something similar to that perfectly structured hallucination that is The Marbled Swarm, but this reads more like a gay teenager's acid-induced nightmares that he decided to novelize for his intro to creative writing class. I should be kinder, since this was his very first book, but I think I'll pass on future Cooper, or at least on the rest of the George Miles cycle. ( )

I found it boring. Pretentious. Any and all characters completely unrelatable and unrealistic. Not worth my time. ( )