2008-08-14 A ride through hell...

To start this off with a comparison, let me tell you this: Patrick Bateman is a nice guy from next door in comparison to this Peter Crumb, who is, by all means deeply psychotic, and by far the more grotesque maniac. He seems to exist in different layers, talking to himself quasi as being a different person too. Peter Crumb, who has 7 days to live and who has decided (or has his other I) to go for it in a definitive kind of way, knowing there is no life afterwards anyway. Peter Crumb, who takes his suggestions from newspaper headers, i.e. Monday said: MURDER. A sort of conscious Jekyll & Hyde syndrome, with the main difference, that there is no good and bad, but bad (and a spineless jerk at the same time) and very bad, to put it mildly. There are coming-throughs of consciousness, or moral, but they get swept away by "him" more or less immediately. Yes, this book is definetely sick, it's ugly, it's disgusting, it's a real ride through bloody hell. On the other hand though, it's extremely absorbing (Jonny Glynn also deliberately plays with the reader's- at least my- permanent question, "why does Peter Crumb have only 7 days to live", which actually is resolved only at the end...), you just can't put the damned thing down after you've started, which made me read until I finished the book really early morning...