Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Lost Souls
Book Review: Absolutely amazing.
Summary: 5 Stars
There have been very few times I have set down with a book and been totally blown away.
This was one of those times. The prose, the characters, everything about the book
makes you feel like you've opened a doorway into another world
every bit as real as this one. That is what made this book so
terrifying for me. I loved every bit of it...Poppy Z. Brite will
be around for a long, long time on the strength of this book
aloneBook Review: Absolutely beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars
I read Lost Souls almost 2 years ago and read it 4 times. I read a lot and this was only 1 of 2 books that I loved so much that I read again. The other was Drawing Blood. I felt that Ghost was just an incredible person, even if he is fictional. The story was beautifully written, the characters so incredibly developed, it's like they're your friends or at least people you know. I highly recommend to it anyone, I even got my friends hooked to this and Poppy's other novels.Book Review: Addicting
Summary: 5 Stars
Lost Souls is the best book I have ever read... When I read Courtney Love: The Real Story, I really liked how she wrote and I had never read one of her books before. So I went and bought Lost Souls and I absolutely could not believe how good it was. I could not put it down at all. I didnt want it to end. You really become attached to the characters. I fell in love with Ghost and Nothing. As soon as I finished it I had to go buy another of her books because I became instantly addicted to her writing. Im now reading Drawing Blood which is really good too, but I dont think an book could live up to Lost Souls. I've let 2 of my friends read it and they both said it was the best book theyve ever read too.Book Review: Addictive...absorbant...
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book in under a day...it's characters have such rich stories...it sucks you in and makes you really feel for the characters...it makes you wish you were in the story and living their lives...definitely recommended for everyone...Book Review: Agree with the other reviewers but deviate in rating
Summary: 3 Stars
I agree with the other reviews about lost innocence and teen angst and the "horrible beauty" of the vampires but I thought the books kind of played to that. There's this whole young sub-culture fixated on death, personal ruin, anarchy self-mutilation of teh physical and emotional kind and this book kind of speaks to it, I can see it being the "Bible" of some fool who lives for dark clothes, clove cigarettes, vampire drama, play multi-sexuality and a profound feeling of loss. I thought that Ghost, the psychic lead singer of Lost Souls was interesting, an interestign blend of the aware and the confessor and keeper of secrets. Agood characterization there. His friend Steve, while complex, angry, a rapist and downright terrified of all his friend Ghost represents was well drawn too. Nothing, Zillah, Twig, Christian and Mollachi were kind of too decadent, too aimlessly dark and self-destructive. I thought that the final confrontation was way too easy---I can't believe that a drunken Steve could get the drop on these old vampires who were faster and stronger. Teh book keeps churning at itself, almost eating at itself in a way between believability and creating a sense of why care? about these characters. I think there was maybe another hundred pages, some development, some more intermingling of these characters who are never quite good enough to be heroes. There's a brief moment when all of the lead characters come together halfway through and a kind of charge leaps off the page but then they disperse again. While I understood the threat of Ann, Steve's ex being pregnant with a vampire baby I never really cared because everyone was so pathetic that you kindof wonder should they even be alive. It was a nice twist though that the vampires can't pass on vampirism and that there were other kinds of vampires lurking around. Like I said before there's stuff here to be mined, that needed to be explored further---especially the finally expressed then quickly repressed homosexual relationship between Ghost and Steve. Ghost came off so asexual or above sexuality that it would have been interesting to see what a relationship would do to him. Nothing and Zillah being child and parent and lovers, finding out the truth and continuing was kind of unique but the older vampires were kind of heavily labelled the bad guys, Nothing and teh rest are caught inbetween but despise the light of being good so there's kind of no place for sympathy to fall. It's not often in a book when I know that the final battle is coming and realize that it's kind of okay with me whoever dies does---there's no one to root for. Even in experimental fiction, in plot, if not form there needs to be a clear victim. Okay, Ann got really used (which is an interesting theme concerning women---I also read Drawing Blood)---I mean really used and abused by just about everyone in the book (the irony of her one murder is a nice touch but it doesn't get the play it deserves and kind of plays as too much of an Antigone/Elektra complex). There is also an overabundance of kudzu, a Southern plant, in this and other Brite books, the mention of it, the growing of it, the smell of it, look lets get in the car---next to the kudzu, let's walk up the stairs where there's kudzu, they're outside---near the kudzu, they were having breakfast by the kudzu---I started playing a game with each chapter waiting for kudzu to arrive. It gets so mawkish at a point that I was hoping that it would be revealed that kudzu was Brite's child's name and a clever way of saying hello like Carol Burnett---see you can forgive the ear tugging when you found out it was for her grandmother and daughters, right? And for books so heavily set in the South (Cajun, Creole, Gullah, North Carolina, New Orleans, hoodoo, etc.), it's weird that there are no Black people (two peripheral characters in the books I read). What's that about? The South is a little darker than that even under a hot sun. And if it's not, then Brite shoudl address why certain kinds of people don't show up in certain sub-cultures---now that would be daring and provocative. Also the proliferation of supposed gay fantasy boy/men who all have this skinny, taunt bodies, barely out of puberty-somewhere between boys and men grows old when two books in you realize you're in some dirty old man's porn fantasy. It reeks of pandering to a certain "marketing target audience demographic" after awhile. It would be nice to see a breadth of characters, of ages, of nationalities, of body types, of beliefs. I think Brite is a good writer, excellent in some places with description, I will read a few more books but I think that there's a point when you're playing to the sub-masses the song they want to hear knowing that the screeching will upset the above ground masses. There's dangerous writing, writing that pushes the envelope of concepts and plot to go somewhere new, then there's self-aware writing that pushes it for pushing sake. There's a difference in being a great performer and a great artist. Think Madonna versus Billie Holiday. Brite has to make up her mind which she'll grow into being. One is hailed as the creme de la creme but the other simply is and has no target group, only a feeling that touches us all. Think 'Solitude'.