Poppy Z. Brite - Wormwood: A Collection of Short Stories

Pros: The writing.
Cons: The characters.

I’m on the fence with Poppy Z. Brite. On the one hand from what I’ve seen of her publicly (on message boards or her online journal) she’s a bit of a pretentious twit. Too cool for school, if you know what I’m saying. But you open her books and you’re ...

Pros: rich and vivid; short stories
Cons: not for the weak of heart or stomach

Poppy Z. Brite's horrific short stories are nothing if not unusual. They are lush and vivid. Her world is not that much different from our own on the surface, which makes these stories all the more frightening. The stories in this book take place in the...

Pros: Powerful language, poetic prose, strong stories.
Cons: Gross out moments aplenty, weak female protagonists.

Poppy Z Brite can write. Her eerie, decadent tales are like a sharper-edged Anne Rice who’s not afraid to experiment. In “Wormwood” she paints with words so poetic you can smell and taste her worlds. She writes like Lovecraft would if ...

Pros: Brilliant use of the English Language.
Cons: Much of the homoerotic nature will turn many off.

Every once in a while you stumble across an artist who is in the wrong time... Poppy is one of those authors, and artist who seems as if she was born too late to be happy. From reading her stories you can envision her walking with the likes of Lovecraft ...