Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Way out of your comfort zone., 22 Sep 2008
Moore and Gebbie have presented us with a gift and a challenge. First off, this is a beautifully presented artefact. The three volumes in their slip-case look and feel wonderful. Melinda Gebbie's art is enchanting, almost dreamlike. She presents the images suggested by Moore with real beauty and honesty. Moore, in turn, asks more of his artistic collaborator than many would be able or comfortable to provide. Just about every kind of human-on-human sexual activity is here. It's erotic, yes. It's pornographic, yes. It's graphic, yes. However, because of its beauty and intelligence, none of the situations or images are utterly repellent. Moore and Gebbie force us to ask very difficult questions of ourselves. We see and read and understand these things on these pages, and we realise that we must make moral choices. We recognise that we do make moral choices. We reflect on why we make those moral choices. We're prodded to think about our own sexuality, to think about when that sexuality awakened, to wonder at when and what and why we lusted over the things we desire. As a parent this can be occasionally uncomfortable, but it's absolutely compelling.
The retrospective retellings of the girls' tales is fascinating and astonishingly inventive. History, imagination, psychotherapy, art, myth, magic and a million other things collide in these volumes. There are messages and truths locked deep inside these pages that further rereadings may uncover. My first impression is that Moore and Gebbie point a finger of blame for a lost innocence and the experience we, concomitantly, never have the pleasure of achieving. It identifies the cheapening, commodification and vulgarisation of the erotic. Of sex. Of the simple innocent fun in f*cking. It's a dirty business, now. And ubiquitous. Furtive, sleazy and sick. This book isn't about paedophilia, or homosexuality, or masturbation. It's about (among many other things) how desire is born, what it means to lust, about sexual release, the part imagination plays in our desires... The culprits may be Modernism, mechanized war, industrialism...
This is the most startling and provocative thing I've read since Lord Horror. We should be grateful that people like Moore and Gebbie and Top Shelf are producing stuff like this, because precious few others are.
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29 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Below Par Moore, 23 Oct 2007
After Eagerly awaiting Moore's latest oddessy I have to say that I was somewhat dissapointed by Lost Girls, this feeling may not have been so if Moore had concluded following Book One:
In the first Book of Lost Girls all of Moore's writing techniques are evident, subtle nods to the era, other works and juxtapositions of two different events happening concurrently, added to this there is the very smart premise that the fantasy stories of Wendy, Dorothy and Alice are formed through the repression of their first sexual experiences. I would therefore give the first book 4stars.
Unfortunately I cannot say the same for the following 2 books, book 2 being the one of least merit (2 Stars), Moore continues to sexualise the fantasy stories of Neverland, Oz and Wonderland for no other reason than he can. This is also probably the most graphic of the three books, so may be seen as 100% erotica which has been bookended by the set up and justification.
The final book of Lost Girls then justifies the series (as another reviewer has mentioned) by stating that the events in the series should cause no offence as they are ficticious and are purely intended to entertain. This justification along with the resolutions to the Lost Girls stories raises this book above book 2 to 3stars.
As Lost Girls is still an overtly Alan Moore collection (as described above) I fans may still enjoy the collection, however I personally feel that this is way below the quality of Watchmen and League of Extrodinary Gentlemen etc.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Simply stunning., 28 Jul 2008
In some ways this book is a dark delve into repressed and sometimes disturbing memories, in others it's a celebration of raw sexuality. The Dialogue is superb as each character is clearly recognisable as one of the three famous young girls. Alice in particular is very well realised. (It's great to see an older woman drawn so seductively)
I don't feel it is neccesary to decide if this is Pornography or Art, it falls into both categories.
I gave this 4 stars because I feel it may satisfy more Women than Men with it's softly drawn styles.
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