Attic

Have you ever had the radio or TV on in the background and it's some sort of talk program and you realize people are speaking, but it's like the noise is just going straight through you with almost no comprehension of what's being said? Well, that's close to what reading this was like. There were whole swaths where my eyes traveled over the letters and my brain whispered the words in my head and there was no connection whatsoever. I had to look up online what this book was about--some of it I ac [...]

Definitely not an easy book to read. The language was difficult, stream of consciousness, and did admittedly often lose me or leave me behind. But that didn't mean it wasn't still beautiful. Like an abstract work of art, you still knew what was being said to you, even if the language confused you. You still felt the same emotional response even if you weren't exactly sure why. I don't know how a story about a dragon who could shit chocolate cake could be sad and beautiful, but she was able to ma [...]

This was the most atrocious book I have ever read. It really didn't even deserve an entire star and barely half of one. I am one of those people who needs a plot, a coherent plot. I'm not even sure if this was written in an abstract manner. The synopsis explains this is an autobiographical account of Dunn when she was arrested for writing bad checks and her personal experiences that followed, but the theme of the story kept going back to sex, with who or what was questionable. The thoughts were [...]

I LOVED Geek Love and was excited to read this but couldn't even get through it. And it is a short book. It was poorly written and impossible to follow. Although I will say the scene with the marry-go-round of horses with penises that fuck the children, well, that stuck with me.

a kind of Acker / Lunch /Piercy's 'woman on the edge of time' mash up of holy hell. Abstract text that brushes up against realism in the hardest of ways, I really enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoyed 'Geek Love'

All the steel is painted at the advice of some penologist with a psychology degree. A cool pink. A deceptive pink, to make us think we are remembering the hot pinks and livid reds of the outside while chilling even those memories, embalming theming's body in the deactivated fluids of the past. This book is not like anything I've ever read before. If a defined plot is a must for you, you will hate this book. If riding along on a stream of consciousness is just good enough, then there is a lot to [...]

Katherine Dunn's masterpiece, a literary exorcism as painful and beautiful as a Gillian Welch song.

captures the thought patterns of an insane person. putting this book down felt a little like coming up for air.

I hated this but felt compelled to keep reading. Though this 1970 novel was relentlessly grotesque and usually incomprehensible, I was impressed by how modern it read, and how something so well-written could completely alienate me. However, there never was any explanation for wtf her "dogsbody" was, nor do I really want to know what it was. Probably the imaginary carcass of the puppy she killed or the dog she left chained up to die. What an awful woman. Thanks a lot, Powell's Bookstore.

Super not into the lack of structure. If you’re about that stream of consciousness life than by all means

No. I’m just not cool enough to think this is great.

I didn't understand what was happening most of the time. Was this autobiographic? rough life!

Troubling and difficult to get into.

Almost four stars.

Similar to Dunn's "Truck" in style.

one fucked up book that gave me strange dreams. me liked.

Read months ago and I still don't know what to make of it. I would to meet the author though and pick her brain.

Crazy weird! I'd follow this book with her second novel, TRUCK, if I had not read TRUCK already.

I read this after reading about it in the newspaper. I did not like the book but soldiered on through it hoping things would get better but they never did. Perhaps it was the style of writing.

Weird, weird, weird. There is no cohesiveness about it. But I still had to keep reading.