#the books about abuse and ventriloquism

[felixcosm]

We were all working together in the supply closet, opening boxes, pouring out the contents into a pile in the center of the room. Jerry asked, "You still got that box cutter?" "What box cutter?" "I'll take that as a no." He said.

[yourtigerlily]

jealousy, jealousy

2007. it's a rainy day when Patrick and Richie began something that they are not supposed to. (I am DelilahAndTheUnderdogs on AO3, SISSIBVG on Wattpad, I have another tumblr ff account ELIFANFICTION. This one it's just my PC account) tw: cigarettes, weed, death, verbal abuse, mental health, alcohol, swearing (and getting creative about it), toxic behaviour, blood. it's an AU and Free Form fanfiction, don't like, don't read. dead dove: don't eat.

a necessary author note 

so, ugh, usually I don't post notices/notes for fanfictions.

but this time i do because i want to be sincere with you all.

when i first was intrigued by patrichie, it was in the movies’ universe, especially the first installment of the 2017/2019 two part movies. while with henry and bill i always kind of shipped them in the book too, in the first movie i felt between Patrick and Richie a tension, much more that in the book.

as for Patrick (and Henry tbh), in the book he plays the part as the “evil homosexuals” while Richie (and Eddie) is more like scared and “in the closet” homosexual trope because let's face it: in  the book they are written as children of their time, especially IT was wrote in the 80s and for the most part set in the 50s. 

Patrick is an abusive, who deserves nothing but death, in the books. Richie, in the books, copes with the fact that his mom wanted a girl with his passion with stand up comedy and ventriloquism. the book really touch many dark human sides, that's intriguing yet disturbing, like a lot. i do not recommend reading it during classes at 15. lmao, anyway.

at that time, it was different: expressing emotions, toxic masculinity and unhealthy standards in society (and Beverly faced this issue greatly, for the pressure to fit conventionally beauty standards and what meant to be a girl, set by a machist society — i mean, Eddie’s mom in the book doesn't like the fact that his son is friends with a girl, who she think is a slut, just because Be befriended boys) and racism, most of them are racist, the Bower's Gang predominantly and are loud about that, because it was accepted and normalized (hopefully today it's less but racism is still here) and people like Eddie's mom (still her lmao) thought it was disgusting to be friends’ with a black kid like Mike which honestly is the most pure and innocent kid on earth yet people cannot get pass on his skin colour. 

in conclusion, this is an AU but disturbing things will be there, though. i set it in the early 00s which was not the brightest time in our society, or its highlight because let's face it: I was a  pre-teen in the early 00s, so many traumas for me, and it's really long to fully unpack. here we are: me channeling my experiences through those characters which are really distant yet i can relate the most (Richie in particular).

enjoy this journey with me ~

weight is on my back

September 1st, 2007

A jet-black, straight haired boy was smoking a Malboro, in Derry Middle School's empty parking lot. Patrick Hockstetter was fazed, headphones on, Teenagers by My Chemical Romance playing. Derry was still sleeping. He looked eerily calm, on the verge of mass murdering, it seemed. It was not the case but not that far from truth, most days. He was simply angry. He wanted to scream, his voice stuck in his guts. His unhappiness was in his veins.

And there he was, Richard Tozier. A chihuahua trying to imitate a bulldog, Patrick thought. 

His blue eyes wandered on Richard's face. Why is he so magnetic for? 

He repressed himself. Suddenly, Henry greeted him with his annoying voice: «what’s up, fag?» He hated that word with a passion. He could not go against Henry because yes, his voice might be annoying but he's physically aggressive. Who isn't calling people with that word, meaning it as a slur? It's 2007, not many things changed from the 90s. He was born in 1991 and was four in 1995, when, fun fact, Richard was born. He remembers things, from that time. He doesn't want to, honestly. His dad beating him up senseless. Or finding himself killing his brother. 

He shooed away these thoughts, in the distant part of his brain. When Patrick was still distracted, he acknowledged Richard Tozier, nicknamed by many students (and teachers) Trashmouth.

Richard was awkward and talkative at the same time. Richard watched SNL way to much since he memorized by heart Bill Harder’s repertoire. especially, Vinny Vedecci and his italian gibberish.

Trashmouth reminded him Harry Potter, mostly the body size, the glasses and the talk-back attitude.

His cigarette was slowly burning in his right hand while looking at the short boy, absentmindedly.

«Let’s go» said Patrick, slapping Henry’s thigh «Nelson, first period, right?» said Belch «can we just skip classes? a smoke a joint?» then asked.

Patrick replied: «why not» while eyeing Henry, seeking his approval.

Every student went to their class. The courtyard went creepily silent. They moved around the building and Patrick went straight to his favourite spot, the gym. The other three did not care were he was, they went downtown, all together. 

The rain started to pour down ferociously, a growing mud smell went to Patrick nostrils. Something dangerous this way comes, he thought. He saw Richard standing there, behind the brown wall, under the gym canopy. He was smoking a cigarette and when the shorter guy saw Patrick, panicked a: «Oh fucking shit, not you» trying to run away. Patrick bloocked him under his body and shushed his mouth with his wide chalk-like hands. 

Patrick was dead serious when he whispered: «Now, Richard, shut the fuck up or I'll will kill you.» he made a brief pause, checking if the other three boys followed him but no, the were not there «or I can spare you from humiliation. There are Henry, Belch and Vic with me. You must not make a sound. Understand?» Trashmouth nodded, eagerly. «Or I swear to that fucking God, you'll never see the light again.» Patrick felt dizzy for a moment. Richard's heat was overwhelming. He removed his hand from the shorter boy's mouth and he distanced his boy for few inches.

«You are fucking insane, you know that, right Hockstetter?» said Richard with a glim in his eyes. 

«I know, Tozier» said the older one, lighting his joint «and you know that you are not safe with me, right?»

«Call me Richie» the curly haired one said, still smoking «and I don't care, honestly. If you want to excuse me, Hockstetter, can we make this important discussion in the gym?» 

They both tossed away whatever they were smoking and Patrick broke into the structure with Richie. The latter took Patrick's hand and he dragged him into the locker room. 

«Kiss me» said Richie, straightforward.

Patrick satisfied his request with an enormous pleasure: he put his lips on Richie's and began to devour him in seconds. Hands were traveling on almost naked bodies and Patrick realised that he was into Richie and his mischievous yet magmatic gaze, all this time. He tighten his huge hands on the other boy's curly hair while still deeply kissing him, tounge and all. 

HE'S MINE, MINE, MINE, FINALLY MINE, NOT EDDIE'S BUT MINE, his brain frantically shouted. 

«We should go back» said Patrick between his breath.

«Yeah, I think so» replied Richie, stealing another kiss. 

Their faces were still red when they dressed themselves. «Where have you been, Mr. Hockstetter?» said Mrs Orson when Patrick sat down. «I left my lunch at home, Ma’am» he lied. Mrs Orson wanted to believe him and she did. Patrick didn't know what to think when he came back to class, as confused as he was yet wanted more. Richie wrong-feet him. Big time. That feeling was new and dangerous. 

Anyway, Patrick always liked the taste of blood, after all. 

[charkyzombicorn]

HEHEHEHEHEHEHE

Every part of CP9 kind of avoids Rose at first - they're not in the military to babysit, they don't have any decent medical knowledge past what they need to know and it's not like Rose makes herself easy to be around. The only one of them that takes an interest in her is Lucci, and that frightens her, because Lucci is the strongest of the group, he's tall and broad and calculating with no amount of pity that the others have. She isn't proud that her safety relies on pity, but she's a wounded child, she can't work with much else.

He goes slow while her scars heal, showing her basic forms, making her copy him, making her walk next to him with a heavy book and recite marine codes of conduct while they lapped a field over and over until all of her limbs ached. She didn't understand until she was older that it was Lucci's best untrained attempt at physical therapy so she could keep her mobility as her body healed.

It took a while for her body to heal fully, for the long, deep cuts all over to close, for her body to stop breaking out in large patches of bruising where the metal pushed to hard into her muscle, for her to stop getting sick with infection. But she got better, her pain tolerance got better. She bruises easily because her bones don't absorb any of the shock anymore, she learns to live with it, even if she hates the way bruises look on her.

When she healed, Lucci's focus shifted. Suddenly she has to fight every day, other parts of CP9 start making awkward attempts at talking to her by saying they sympathize, that Lucci is intense but he means well. Rose doesn't believe them, doesn't trust any of them, hates Lucci even if he's the only one that actually talks to her, sneaks her old pocket watches for her to take apart and learn from (though she's not sure why he does this, she's happy she has something to do when she can't sleep).

When she gets older, training gets harder, she's still fighting but now Lucci is fighting back, always telling her to take advantage of her height while she's small and she hates that advice because it just shows that Lucci doesn't notice that kids shouldn't be fighting. She even argues this once, to which Lucci freezes and stares at her for about four seconds before in the coldest voice she's heard from him, says "Being young won't keep you from being attacked, getting strong will just make the attack a fight you can win instead of abuse you can't." and then makes her train for a whole extra hour.

When Kaku joins, there's a shift in all of CP9. Kaku is friendly, assertively so. He makes their table in the dining hall full with chatter, everyone's because he knows just which buttons to push. And maybe he's interrogating them, but he's 17 and she's 12 and he says she could be his little sister and she's never been called that before. She trusts him blindly because he's the nicest permanent presence she has and she's never gotten to be a sister before - it's not like she needs to worry, if Kaku ends up a monster she can fight him off, or Lucci will just kill him. He doesn't want his pet project getting too injured - of whatever she is to Lucci.

But Kaku's presence affects Lucci as well. He still doesn't talk much, but he'll stay at the table after he's finished eating to listen to whoever is talking even though it's mundane. He shifts Rose's schedule so she gets an extra half hour to socialize, he even finally tells her the name of his pet bird. It gets even better when they go undercover in Water 7, the distance from Spandam loosens something in Lucci's shoulders. He adds ventriloquism to his character because it made her laugh. Everyone else that went undercover is skeptical, but it seemed bizzare was the way to go to win Iceberg over.

Rose fell in love with being a shipwright. She loved everything Iceberg taught them all. And Lucci softened even more. Fell from his character of a vaguely stupid and very friendly man in about a week, turning into a smarter character, less friendly but more affectionate, almost mothering the members of Galley La. It wasn't the character he was given, Rose wasn't even sure if it was a character, because Lucci wouldn't break that character ever when he was talking to any of them. Only when Spandam called were there echoes of the rigidity and coldness of the man she knew when she was six.

She wanted the undercover mission to last forever, because Galley La was her family, because Water 7 was her home.

Then Nico Robin came to Water 7, and plans changed.

@charkyzombicorn your latest reblog inspired me to write this.

She is six years old when she is presented to them. At first, they don’t know what they’re looking at. The tiny thing in front of them is covered in bandages like a mummy, only a fringe of black hair and a glistening purple eye make them realize this is a person.

it’s Jabra who realizes this is a child, with his sense of smell. It’s Kaku who asks what the bandages are for. It is Kamadori who breaks the armrest of his chair when they are told it is because they removed the bones of this little girl and replaced them with metal.

Khalifa sniffs dismissively when they’re told she is going to be the newest member of their team, but her teeth are clenched. “The silent owl” Fukuro is strangely quiet as they’re told this girl is lucky the government let her live at all, already deciphering who her parents could have been. Blueno shakes his head and crosses his arms when he’s told they’ve made her fight the older orphans on the training island until she won.

Lucci is the only one who gives no signs of anything amiss. And Spandam says “She’s the new Rob Lucci.”

He stands. “There will never be another me.”

[dwellordream]

“One of the seductions of horn logic was its power to make short work of complex and contested narratives. When Thersites reduces the Trojan War to "All the argument is a whore and a cuckold" (Troilus and Cressida 2.3.72), he slyly mocks the spectators who flocked to play after play about precisely that argument. On the street and at the theater doors, ballads aired news of local and homely adulteries, while the stage offered plays about sexual betrayal in elevations low (Johan the Husband) to middling (Arden of Feversham) to lofty (King Lear), many of them preceded by a clown's homing gibes at the audience and capped with bawdy jigs about cuckoldry. 

If sated playgoers decided to pick up an Arthurian romance or a volume of English history, they would find more monitory examples of infidelity, male and female. In the Arthurian legends and in chronicles by Speed and Holinshed, "the king's adultery is an immediately familiar emblem for the defilement of the purity of the state and the abdication of responsible government." In accounts of Edward II's homing and murder, Henry VIII's fatal accusations against his queens, or the explosive rumor of Lord Darnley's horning and murder by Mary Stuart, chroniclers and popular authors warned princes to beware the love of women. 

As Phyllis Rackin observes, "the patrilineal genealogy" that organized both history and society "required the repression of women, and of heteroerotic passion as well, because the invisible, putative connection between fathers and sons that formed the basis of patriarchal authority was-as Shakespeare's cuckold jokes endlessly insist-always dubious, always vulnerable to subversion by an adulterous wife." Not even religion was free of the horn. During Queen Mary's reign, Catholics bewhored English nuns who had converted to Protestantism under Edward and married. In taking the veil, they had espoused themselves to Christ; wouldn't he be "stirred up to wrathe and indignation" like any other cuckold?

Pageant drama, too, had its share of horn jokes. In the "N-Town" Joseph's Doubt, spectators have a good laugh at the expense of Joseph, who moans that he'll be ridiculed back in Bethlehem as an "old cokwold" whose "howe is bent." When Mary explains that the Holy Spirit impregnated her, he angrily cuts her short: "It was sum boy began [th]is game." It takes a miracle for him to believe her: a cherry tree bows down to give Mary its fruit, finally satisfying him that he is not horned but holy. Like Joseph, many critics who have considered early modern cuckoldry suspect it was "sum boy began this game" and that the prime mover behind the age's obsession was intense male concern about "the other man." 

Relying on analyses of property transfer in marriage derived from the work of Marcel Mauss and Claude Levi-Strauss (theories that Gayle Rubin drew on in "The Traffic in Women"), critics as diverse as Coppelia Kahn, Katherine Eisaman Maus, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgiwick forward the proposition that cuckoldry narratives focus chielfy on the flow of homoerotic and political power "between men," in Sedgwick's famous phrase. Douglas Bruster asserts that only the male lover, never the wife, is "the one who cuckolds" and that women are "helpless counters" in a transfer between males.

While the cuckoldry paradigm is certainly about male-male economies of desire, it seems futile to deny that it is also about female pleasure and will. In some tales the "helpless counter" is not the wife at all but the lover, who is hidden, coached, and directed by the wife. Many tales name the wife as "the one who cuckolds," while the husband is the object. One lame jest puns on this relationship: Q. Why doth the man weare the hornes whereas the woman doth make them? A. Because the man is the head. More often than not, the merry books feature women who act on their desires for revenge, love, or sexual satisfaction using the weapons of allies, wit, daring, and timing. 

A surprising number of tales direct no criticism at the wife or lover but instead upbraid the husband and his faults: impotence, jealousy, brutality. Finally, some comic narratives give prominent play to a husband's lechery as the cause of his wife's infidelity or her threat to give him horns. The author of Jane Anger, her Protection for Women (1589) certainly thought her readers would enjoy hearing why skirt chasers so often became cuckolds: "some of them will follow the smocke as Tom Bull will runne after a town Cow. But, lest they should running slip and breake their pates, the Gods, provident of their welfare, set a paire of tooters on their foreheads, to keepe it from the ground."

To explain all such narratives by recourse to the theory that women are counters passed from male to male is to accept a monolithic, one-sex model of drama and social power. This is unwarranted in light of the abundant popular materials that dwell on women's abilities to manipulate and subvert, if only in fantasy, a sexual marketplace that urged them to be pliant commodities. Too many stories show the commodity striking back, besting husbands described as deserving cuckolds or proving them hypocrites. More important, the favored genres of the horn-ballad, jig, novella, and jest-often portray women as storytellers and performers, which is not so surprising given that real women engaged in precisely these forms of popular mimesis.

Why would women enjoy these tales? First, many tales assert that women possess a satiric weapon in a world that continually denies them agency and wit. They offer harsh judgment fitting to the harsh conditions of most women's lives, inviting readers to mock abusive, alcoholic, or philandering husbands, all of which were in ample supply. Second, within the jesting literature, poverty and beatings at home are cited as motives behind many extramarital encounters. The narrator in Cornu-Copiae (1612) reasons that, by taking lovers, women may be looking for something more than sexual pleasure: 

Sometimes the golden prey doth make the theife, And women yeeld for further maintenance: Sometimes short commons makes them seeke reliefe: And stubborn usage and sterne countenance, Perforce constraine a woman now and than To seeke for comfort of a kinder man; And sometimes want of heartes, when hands are married, Is one great cause, that many have miscarried. It is remarkable how often such passages occur in texts that are otherwise crudely antifeminist. (Cornu-Copiae goes on to show a man trapped into marriage, with her family's collusion, by a woman impregnated by another man.) 

Other jests and ballads target hard-handed husbands who drink to excess. Narratives about tavern-haunting, foul-mouthed husbands sometimes show a bias toward the female reader. These may function as ripostes to the more misogynist specimens of the gossips' literature, in which drunken shrews plot how to beat and cuckold their husbands. Pasquils Palinodia's "Muse of Sack" warns men that a husband's brutality can drive a wife to adultery: 

And blame her not for shee is not of steele, Nor made of iron, brasse, or such hard mettle, Neither so senseless that she cannot feele But she is us'd as tinker doe his kettle .... Then straight he calls her half a dozen whores, And to the Taverne gets him out of doores .... Then druncke, at midnight, home the knave doth creepe, And beats his wife, and spues, and falls asleep. Shall a vast unthrift with a false pretence Wrong his poore wife, and be exempt from blame? And shall a woman, who hath a just offence And forc'd by dogged usage to her shame, If she another friend doth entertaine, To give her some content, and ease her paine, Shall she be censur'd with disgraceful speeches, And he stand deere because he wares the breeches?

The answer goes without saying-she'll be censured, and he'll" stand cleere"-but at least the text identifies and questions the double standard, an example of the counterhegemonic articulation that is sometimes audible in popular texts. Such a passage does not offer up the ventriloquized voice of a female subject. Rather, it is a beckoning slot in discourse, an invitation to debate that may be taken up by multiple voices, including women's. Frances Dolan argues that popular representations of cuckoldry "constitute the wife as a subject only to the extent that they qualify [the] husband's claim to subject status by silencing and immobilizing him and casting doubt on his authority and potency."”

- Pamela Allen Brown, “Between Women, or All Is Fair at Horn Fair.” in Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama, and the Culture of Jest in Early Modern England

[thecomicsnexus]

Superman Declares War on Reckless Drivers

ACTION COMICS #12 MAY 1939 BY JERRY SIEGEL, JOE SHUSTER, FRED GUARDINEER AND PAUL CASSIDY

SYNOPSIS (FROM DC WIKIA)

Clark Kent finds a friend of his, Charlie Martin, has been hit by a reckless driver. As Superman, he busts into the studio of radio station WVUX and issues a warning: Homicidal drivers will have to answer to him!

He starts a many-pronged attack on the causes of bad driving. He destroys all the impounded cars of traffic violators. He destroys unsafe used cars. He scares a drunk driver and a hit-and-run driver into changing their ways. He destroys the equipment of the Bates Motor Company, who made inferior cars that were involved in many accidents. He stops a police officer from taking a bribe. He straightens a road that has dangerous curves. Finally, he catches the mayor speeding and shows the mayor all the deaths he's responsible for by failing to enforce the traffic laws.

The next day, the editor of the Daily Star tells Clark Kent of the new reforms the mayor is introducing. As Kent goes to his car, he is given a ticket for parking in an improper place. While he's outwardly annoyed at the ticket, Kent is happy to see the law get enforced.

Zatara is spending the day relaxing at San Francisco's Explorer's Club, when he is approached by an older gentleman asking for him by name. Zatara recognizes the man as Professor Susswill, an old friend of his. Glad to see him well, Zatara listens as the professor tells him about an experiment of his, that he believes the magician would be interested in. His curiosity piqued, Zatara follows Professor Susswill back to his personal lab, the professor all the while explaining his theory on different dimensions in space. When they reach his apartment, Susswill exclaims that he invented a machine that can create a gateway into the fourth dimension. Being too nervous and afraid to enter, himself, Susswill wished for Zatara to explore it in his stead. Besides, someone needed to stay behind to work the device, after all. The great magician is always up for a new thrill, so once the machine is activated and the gateway opens up, Zatara leaps through to a brand new land!

The Fourth Dimension is a world unlike any Zatara has yet seen. A garden surrounds him with large blooming flowers and other plant life that hadn't been seen on our world for millions of years. As he wanders, Zatara hears a rustle from the bushes, and when he turns, he is face to face with a creature that looks like a saber-toothed tiger. It snarls at him, but is suddenly held back by a green-skinned young woman who notices right away that Zatara is not from around here. She calls the land they are on "Thrule", and asks Zatara if he might be from "Arren", a rival country. He replies that he's from another world entirely, a place that she's never heard of, yet that exists all around them.

Introducing herself as Duoro, she takes him to see their leader, Xataral. The place they were in now, she explains as they walk, is a large biochemistry laboratory, where they create life as it existed billions of years ago. It was her pet saber tooth tiger that startled him earlier. She invites him into an odd looking vehicle on rails that takes them directly to the palace. Two vicious dogs leap at Zatara on sight. A quickly uttered spell, and the pooches remain suspended in mid-air. Xataral, the ruler of Thrule, steps out and demands that his hounds be released! Zatara notes that he'd rather not, since they'd bite him once free. The mighty Xataral looks over the master magician, deciding that he may be of some use to his country. Thrule and Arren have been in a continuous war, that Thrule is losing. But if Zatara would use his great powers to steal the Necklace of Baya, an important symbol to Arren's rulers, Xataral believes the country of Arren would finally be his! Zatara refuses to use his magic to help them win a war. Angered by his decision, Xataral attacks him with throwing knives! With a wave of his hand and a few magic words, Zatara turns the knives back on their owner, pinning Xataral to the wall! He is left there to calm down, while Zatara allows Duoro to show him to the viewer to see what the war has cost them. Images appear on the screen, horrible images of men being vaporized by the high-tech weapons of Arren. Zatara has seen enough. He will help, if only to stop the senseless carnage.

A winged horse flies over the land of Arren, carrying Zatara on its back. Once the watchtowers are in view, Zatara transforms himself and his mount into a vulture and swoops down to the ground. He turns invisible and heads for the castle of Queen Mulano. Within the throne room, Zatara watches as the young queen dismisses her guards' claims, of a flying horse in the sky, sending them to the dungeon for their foolishness. Queen Mulano then retires to the sacred room where the Necklace of Baya is kept. Zatara follows, when he sees the necklace lying on its pedestal, an idea strikes him. When she prays to the necklace, asking for its guidance, Zatara goes into his act. Through ventriloquism, he speaks through the necklace, telling the queen to end the war, or else the necklace will depart this land forever! Though shocked at its response, Mulano is stubborn. She insists that the war must continue until Thrule is under her rule. Zatara will have to change tactics. He reveals himself to Her Majesty, and curses her so that she turns into a hideous old hag. She finally relents, promising to cease the war and destroy all of Arren's weapons of war, if only Zatara would give her back her youth!

A treaty is signed back on the grounds of Thrule. Xataral was killed during an attack, leaving Duoro in charge of things, with Mulano now ruling at her side. The kingdoms unite under a new name thought up by Zatara: Duomal! And now the time has come for him to return to his own dimension. He bids the two rulers farewell as he steps through the gateway back to his home.

Professor Susswill awaits Zatara on the other side, eager to hear all about the adventure that was had! Zatara remarks that someday he would like to return, and find out how the new kingdom is making out.

REVIEW

This is the golden age Superman. For him, inaction is even worse than inaction. So even if he has to break laws, he will make people do the right thing. Writers have forgotten this personality trait of Superman, mostly because it would be seen as too authoritative and an abuse of power. But seems quite effective to be honest. I can understand that after World War II, Superman shouldn’t have a dictator-like attitude and that part of the character was lost forever in comics limbo. It’s even shocking for readers of today’s comics, because this Superman is too cocky and does whatever he wants (now go read Action Comics #1006 and cry).

This is of course a dangerous personality for a super-hero. When I started reading this story in particular it felt a bit too much, but then when he makes the mayor see the bodies of the victims of “inaction”, and things change, I understand what he is doing. His means are wrong, but for the most part justify the ends.

Now that Zatara story. It really feels like he is going to Super Mario World, doesn’t it?

And the ending may be perhaps the first same-sex kiss in comic books? Let me know!

I give these stories a score of 7

[jjkirbs]

BOOK REVIEW - I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan

Three books in and Glen Duncan has created yet another beautiful and believable character with exquisite prose and personalisation through his writing style Hope in 1997 he demonstrated the maturity required when dealing with the dark themes of sex, porn and addiction and in 2000 he amazingly captured the persona of a truly believable female character and dealt again with love, regret and sorrow in Love Remains.

It comes as no surprise then that I, LUCIFER is an extraordinary piece of literary fiction, a piece of dark humour written from the point of view of the eponymous fallen angel; who is offered one last chance at redemption as the end of the world approaches. However, being the old deal-maker that he is, manages to negotiate a month in the body of hapless, suicidal writer Declan Gunn who exits the mortal coil upon slitting his wrists in a grotty London flat bathtub, and this is where Lucifer steps into both his life and body.

The novel, of about 260 pages is an enjoyable read that never really causes offence, simply poking fun at established beliefs in Christianity. Lucifer recounts Biblical events from his side and just why God had to be rebelled against – "...one day… a thought came unbidden into my head, one minute it wasn’t there, the next it was." Lucifer eventually makes his decision and it’s ultimately an amusing and frustrating conclusion – trust me, try as you might you’ll end up feeling for the poor old guy.

The overall read is very entertaining and you will find yourself liking this act of ventriloquism, the dark prince comes across as a very funny, witty, even charming gentleman albeit using and abusing the corporeal delights he otherwise misses out on – sleeping around, using Class-A drugs, eating lavishly and drinking copiously. If you come away from reading this and don’t find yourself actually questioning set beliefs then the purpose of the read is lost on you, many times I found myself pondering what was being said; in regards to his name being taken from him, that it was "...ironic that they stripped me of my angelic name at the very moment I began to be worthy it." Just one example of the thought provoking nature of Duncan's writing.

However the novel does suffer from irony and parody, further to this is the fact that the wit and cliches are quickly overused, such as constant blasphemy and vulgarity. There are many instances of ‘Jesus H. Christ’ and common swear words, Duncan unfortunately misses the bat on Lucifer’s personality, as intelligent as he comes across with a wide vocabulary and lexis it is undermined with such annoyances.

Despite the fact we are reading the memoirs of Satan, it feels forced and simply excused given we are reading him. Be this as it may credit must be given to Duncan who crafts a believable story, he is a talented writer and perhaps he was just constrained as a mere mortal man attempting to capture the fallen angel’s pathos. It’s been pointed out that the Lucifer in this novel comes across as funny, rock and roll but he isn’t quite authentic, it doesn’t match up to what we would expect of you know, the prince of lies, he’s more of a flirty and naughty cherub.

Verbose, arrogant and perhaps used even as a platform of satire Glen Duncan’s third novel creates an amusing, original and entertaining story that plays on the desire we all share to just get some idea of what being Lucifer means, Duncan captures this romanticism very well.

Do not read this expecting top tier literature or you’re an easily offended Daily Mail reader, if you aren’t hooked by the amazing introduction that just teases and begs you to carry on; “I, Lucifer, Fallen Angel, Prince of Darkness, Bringer of Light, Lord of the Flies, Father of Lies…” and another nine aliases he has adopted over the millennia, then you shouldn’t be reading this review, you should already have the book in your hands.

I was laughing the first page in, in a Waterstones store, with people giving me strange looks like a man possessed... If you enjoy a laugh from a story that doesn't take itself seriously pick this up.

[felixcosm]

Hey, do you remember all those hand related deaths in TFTGS?

Do you remember when Jack's lawyer died in a hotel room, eating his own hands?

Remember when Karl's body was found with one hand sawed off and the other partially chewed?

It didn't click for me until Jack and Jerry were snooping around in Karl's house and Jack found two important books on Karl's shelf.

One of them was a book on leaving abusive relationships. The other one was a book about ventriloquism.