Saturday, November 1, 2008

Lowlife Underdogs - Dustin LaValley

Lowlife Underdogs is a short story book in the strictest sense of the word. Many of these stories are one page, with some only being a paragraph long. There are a total of 32 stories the longest being the title story which is the last in the book coming in at 23 pages long. With there being no Author information in the book, I couldn't gauge the age of the author, though I would guess at between 18-23 based off of what I read. The stories in this book are short, and very familiar, it is easy to guess where they are going to end up almost from the first couple of sentences. The writing style and tone is reminiscent of something that a depressed emo would write while spending a month in the local inpatient "happy house." There are several stories about suicide, murder, and difficulty having children. If the writer is actually very young, then we have a lot to look forward to, because the actual writing is very good. My main complaint is that the execution in each of the stories actually undoes the terror that they should induce. Also most of these stories are tales we've heard before, either urban legends, or scenes we've all viewed in various "B" horror movies. I'm not sure if they were meant to be tributes, but if we all know what is going to happen, then they cease to have the ability to shock and horrify.

This book would be most highly entertaining for the 15-18 year old group, 12 and up would enjoy it, but the language and sexual matter is far to harsh for me to suggest handing it over to a 12 year old.
Contains: Murder, Suicide, Violence, Profanity, Sex, Low level Gore (predominantly aftermath).

No comments: