I have now completed my lightening war on the various texts that I must study for my course. Here is a series of bite-sized easily-digestible reviews of the hallowed texts – a sort of literary version of one of those tinfoil hedgehogs you used to get with spines made of cocktail sticks with cubes of cheese and pineapple or very small sausages on:
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Bleak little moral fable about how it’s really not such a good idea to go messing about with science. No female characters except an unnamed domestic, and so stuffed full with what can only properly be referred to as a homoerotic subtext of the filthiest kind.
Memoirs of a Survivor.
Post-apocalyptic distopian horror of a kind inferior to Mad Max. Main characters either women or indeterminate canine/feline mutants, so stuffed full of what can only properly be referred to as a Sapphic subtext of the filthiest kind.
The Wasp Factory.
Creature of indeterminate gender kills things, devises bizarre rituals, kills people and generally does the whole insane Scottish islander routine. All about suppressed lust, plasticine willies and hormone pills.
Hard Times.
All about a girl who’ll do anything for her brother and a woman of reduced circumstance who’ll do anything for her master. Is it really necessary for me to elaborate what that all might mean?
The Metamorphosis.
Man turns into beetle and writhes around in filth whilst meditating on how much his sister hates him. Probably about incestuous onanism.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
Taught me my current favourite word – rondelet. A long book about love – mostly about how much John “of course, you realise none of this is real” Fowles loves himself (onanism again, see).
Brave New World.
Douglas Adams meets George Orwell in a distopian nightmare that crosses Nazi eugenics with Trojan society. Confusing. Stuffed chock-full of phallic symbols, pneumatic women and men that just want to be alone (onanism AGAIN).
The Bloody Chamber.
Straightforward horror. Nothing to do with sex.
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