Dead Inside

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Shamelessly, I'll admit that more than being disturbed or repulsed, I found myself laughing my lungs out while reading it. Helen, on the other hand, likes to eat dead babies and as an obstetrician at the maternity ward she is right at the source to her object of desire. It's truly hilarious how our main character is obsessed with existing outside society, but in reality he is nothing but a product of the patriarchy with thoughts and feelings just like so many pathetic men I've unfortunately known IRL.

I see a lot of people saying Morrison’s writing is brilliant and unique because all of this is intended as satire, and maybe that’s true and I’m the one who’s missing something here, but either way, Dead Inside didn’t work for me, and not for the reasons I expected. We follow two people that find each other despite their gross idiosyncrasies - so at the heart of it, it’s a love story. I feel bad giving this such a harsh review, but I have to say my piece: the main character is so focused on being as much of an antisocial edgelord as he possibly can be, it overshadows the gruesomeness of the entire plot.It’s not a long read, I did it in a couple of sittings but you could spread it further because the chapters are quite short, so you can pick it up and put it down as required without having to stop part way through a section. this book crosses many rules of morality and humanity and has on page sexual violence that’s very graphic. As they unwittingly help each other understand a world in which neither of them seems to belong, they begin to realize what it truly means to be alive…and that it might not always be a good thing. These two social outcasts’ lives intertwine taking their personal perversions to all new, unfathomable levels of extreme.

The whole story kind of feels like it has a veil of thirteen year old goth edge to it, but I’d say that’s intentional because the character narrating is one of these “strange and unusual” types who doesn’t have much in the way of social skills, after all, he doesn’t usually have to woo his ladies. It's like trying to assign a rating to some bloke breaking into your backyard while you're having a barbecue with your mates and throwing a live iguana on the grill – you can't look away, and you probably feel guilty for enjoying it. Overall, Dead Inside was a dark and disturbing read that turned out to be one of the most gripping novels I have read in a while despite its subject matter.Despite the protagonist being quite anti-social he tolerates Helen’s presence in his life even coming to enjoy her company. Honestly, DEAD INSIDE has a Tarantino-esque quality about it in the sense that it is SO over-the-top offensive, SO over-the-top disgusting that it's *almost* funny. We follow an unnamed narrator as he goes about explaining and indulging in his unconventional proclivities and then he meets a girl.