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Charcoal [Kindle Edition]

Stavrogin [writing as Oli Johns] (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews) |
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Product Description

Product Description

"It's David Lynch in a hotel room with the brain of Camus guarded by Kubrick and analysed via satellite TV by Pedro Almodovar." - Sarah Melville, author of 'Beautiful thing that happen to ugly people'

Hong Kong, present day:

A man teaches children, has sex with a seventeen year old girl, and thinks himself into a dark, dark hole.

Only the recent suicide of a Korean model can pull him out.

'This is an extraordinary, haunting book...it asks questions and turns the abstractions of philosophical musing into true, visceral experience.' - Booksquawk

'It’s contemporary, erotic, noir, ironic. I can’t define it – it defies defining. JUST READ IT.' - Anne Stormont, Words With Jam

"I don't like it, and I don't know why." - Ernie Hudson, 'Winston' from 'Ghostbusters.'

Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 153 KB
  • Publisher: Zizek Press; 2 edition (21 Mar 2011)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B004TCX8XG
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #219,745 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Johan
I read the witch book by the same author, and this one was very cheap, so I gave it a shot. It's fantasy too, but it's not the same kind of fantasy as the witch book. This is no fairytale. In fact, the subject matter is very serious, and when the first few pages start talking about suicide, it did make me wonder if I wanted to continue through this journey. But I'm very glad I did.
Good points - It's amazingly easy to read. There are no paragraphs, more like single lines one after the other, a relentless kind of pace, and there were only a couple of parts where I was bored. A lot of the book is about suicide, but it's not overwhelmingly depressing. The main character actually wants to live life and hates the idea of killing himself, and there's a good story idea in the way he tries to prevent the Korean model from taking her own life.
Some of the writing in this is beautiful. It's hard to explain it exactly but there's a kind of rhythm and beauty to the words and sentences the author chooses to write.
Bad points - A lot of the ideas in this are truly challenging. I imagine there are some people who will hate what they read here. For example, the main character explains his thoughts and quite early on in the book we hear some racist remarks about the Chinese people walking past him. And then later we see him worrying that he might hit or rape a 17 year old girl. This is dark, dark, subject matter and a lot of people might not be able to handle it. However, there are other people who will think it's the most open, honest and intelligent thing they've read in a long time, and that's pretty much where I sit.
There's not a lot more to say really. Another reviewer said it right, people will either love or hate this book, but they should read it to find out where they lie.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
As you get further and further into this book, you realise that you are listening to a very powerful, individual voice. The honesty is so brutal that you cannot help but be moved by it and several times it left me close to tears.

If I have any criticism, it has to be the book's structure. The Portillo documentary was a novel and interesting way of introducing the book's theme but its content paled in comparison to the deep and imaginative writing that came later. Perhaps this was deliberate and acted as a device to emphasise the difference between realistic, media-imbued, superficial, everyday life and the rich, inner thoughts and feelings of the individual. If this was the case, it succeeded, for it left me wanting. Another viewpoint however could be that it was put in purely for structural use. If this was so, it worked less well as it was unnecessary - the author had so much to offer he didn't need superfluous 'structure' to make his point.

In my opinion, the author needs to trust more in his imagination and inner voice for they have a lot to say and are well worth listening to - he doesn't need anything more than these two things to captivate his reader and must remember that.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Oli Johns starts his books with a pile of self-critical nonsense `praise' [`Mostly miserable.' - Topher Grace] so I think I will start off with some real praise "The most exciting, naive, honest, compassionate, self-indulgent writer writing today."

I think that was praise.

Charcoal is his new book. It's a basically autobiographical story about Johns' flirtations with suicide, his love of life, his desire to avoid `abnormal success' and his trip back through time to rescue a South Korean model from hanging herself in Paris.

Here's why I rate Johns so highly. Some writers write from the heart, some from the head and others from the place where bitter laughter begins [the diaphragm?] but when I find a writer who can combine all three in the space of a single paragraph then I think I have found something worth reading.

I love this book and I offer you a non-legally-binding guarantee that you will find it unlike anything you have read for a long time and probably love it too.
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