Intense and profoundly unsettling, Last Days is a down-the-rabbit-hole detective novel set in an underground religious cult. Still reeeling from his brutal dismemberment, detective Kline is forcibly recruited to solve a murder inside of a secret society of fundamentalist self-mutilators. As Kline becomes more deeply involved with the group, he begins to realize the stakes are higher than he previously realized. Armed only with his gun, his wits, and a gift for self-preservation, Kline must navigate a gauntlet of lies, threats, and misinformation, discovering that his survival depends on an act of sheer will.
For information about the limited edition hardback of Last Days, go here.
"[T]he author creates a deeply literary space, a bureaucratic nightmare complete with subtle reflections on belief, community, prophets, power and reality itself. The deceptively simple prose keeps the book brisk and even gripping as its puzzles grow more craggy and complex. This is Evenson’s singular, Poe-like gift: He writes with intelligence and a steady hand, even when his characters decide to lop their own limbs off.'"
—Michael Miller in Time Out New York
"[So intense is Evenson's focus on the admittedly extreme reality he sets out to explore that a kind of numinous evil comes to pervade the setting, the characters and events of the tale.... [O]ne of the most relentlessly disturbing pieces of horror fiction I've read since Joe Hill's remarkable short story 'Best New Horror.'"
—Paul Witcover in Locus
"[Evenson is an extremely skilled and precise stylist... [a] spare, bleak, and remorseless short novel, which in its own way is as minimal as something like Cormac McCarthy's The Road... what makes it really scary is its portrayal of the dynamics of obsessive group behavior, the cost of maintaining an identity in opposition to such groups, and the price of freedom."
—Gary K. Wolfe in Locus
"Brian Evenson may not yet be a household name, but if you are a fan of horror or transgressive or even just contemporary fiction, you NEED to get yourself acquainted with him pronto. Remember discovering Thomas Ligotti? Or, closer, that first brush with Dennis Cooper or Chuck
Pahlniuk? You ain't seen nothing yet."
—Linda Marotta in Fangoria
"By shearing off extraneous elements Evenson removes all but the most necessary and important elements of mystery novels (the quest and sacrifice for truth) and reveals the horror at the core of the hunt."
—Paul Constant in The Stranger
"[A] grim, darkly hilarious riff on blind obedience and pointless self-sacrifice, often reading like the twisted offspring of Raymond Chandler and David Cronenberg... B+."
—Zack Handlen in The Onion's AV Club
"Evenson is a rigorous stylist, writing sentences that remain clear and stunning even when they’re conveying absolute terror." [four stars]
—Michael Miller at TONY Blog
"The horror of the grotesque is always fundamentally the horror of empathy, which is to say a confusion of bodies. Evenson's achievement lies in intensifying and exploring the power and mystery of that experience."
—Mike Meginnis in Puerto del Sol
"Often times crime fiction is billed and blurbed as being 'dark' and too often it fails to live up; flinching first and crying uncle when the story gets tough. In this unique detective novel Brian Evenson is willing to hold the gaze of the abyss and the result is a novel that isn’t likely to be forgotten anytime soon."
—Brian Lindenmuth in Crimespree magazine and at Bookspot Central
"[T]he book careens past biblical satire into full-on, blood-soaked, Beckettian absurdity."
—Zach Baron in The Village Voice
"The prose is reminiscent of a more twisted Don DeLillo... Evenson does well in putting together a compelling narrative that drags the kicking and screaming reader along until the reader has no choice but to run and keep up. It’s quite a ride."
—Joe Sherry at Adventures in Reading
"Even as you are aware of the fact that you are reading, that you are being told, as things progress you can’t quite stop your body from having the same response you would have had if these things were indeed actually occurring on your body.... Brian Evenson is a true revelator, a blacksmith of the nightmare and the tongues, and ‘Last Days’ is his post-noir bloodcurdler...."
—Blake Butler at <HTMLGIANT>
"[A] cross between hard-boiled crime noir and surreal horror—think Charlie Huston meets Chuck Palahniuk by way of David Lynch... an incredibly demented and intensely unforgettable ride."
—Robert Thompson at Fantasy Book Critic
"Combining the wry humor of Neil Gaiman, detective prose à la Mickey Spillane and Grand Guignol set pieces reminiscent of Clive Barker, Brian Evenson mixes the varied elements into two interconnected novellas that pack a wallop..." Kline is "the Mike Hammer of amputees."
—Hellnotes
"[A] sterling example of paranoid fiction... Last Days is gruesome, perplexing, reprehensible, cruel, and freaking marvelous."
—Shelf Monkey
"Last Days definitely ticks all those boxes and is one that I think will be worth keeping an eye out for when it is published in February next year...Eight and Three Quarters out of Ten." Also see an interview that Graeme Flory did with me on his site here.
—Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
"Last Days is a dark, dark novel. At times, I'd say it's brutal, even. That's not to say it's gratuitous though. The narrative is highly calculated and well-paced.... What matters is the story, the words on the page. Every single one matters."
—The Velvet
"The ultimate dismemberment-mutilation book... Evenson gives us a bizarre milieu, yet it’s couched in such fine hard-boiled matter of fact language, that it’s a page turner."
—Chazz W. on Wordpress
"Dark, violent, and full of some of the best writing around. I've enjoyed everything of Evenson's I've read so far, and this book might just beat them all."
—Matt Bell
"[R]eferences to St. Paul, to his visions of how to lead a holy life and especially to his views on the coming end to the world, abound. Today in this world, there are those who take the words of prophets and other religious men so literally that we see such a self-effacement taking place as to make outsiders wonder what could move them to inflict such pain and suffering upon themselves and upon others. Evenson addresses some of those questions in Last Days, but as it is with trying to grasp the mentalité of those whose very world-views are so alien to ours, there are times where the narrative falters and the reader is left confronted with the raw, visceral "otherness" that has fallen across adherents to such extreme manifestations of religious faith."
—OF Blog of the Fallen
"Last Days is reminiscent of a modern Kafka with its inclusion of the hero's 'other-ness', frustrating scenarios, and ludicrous circumstances."
—Bibliophile Stalker
«Un roman noir à tendence gothique, la recontre de Jim Thompson et de Franz Kafka... L'écriture épurée, la tension, la force des images font de ce fantastique roman un oeuvre obsédante et vertigineuse.» [4 étoiles]
—Christine Ferniot, Télérama
«Polar tendance hard-boiled, cette enquête d'un détective privé dans une secte adepte de la mutilation comme rituel religieux est, pour le coup, une véritable et jubilatoire attaque en règle des religions, de leur absurdité, de leur violence intrinsèque et des luttes de pouvoir qui se jouent en leur sein.»
—Raphaëlle Leyris, Les Inrockuptibles
«Qui aime le style cadancé sans détester les flots d'hémoglobine, qui apprécie une fable poussée à l'extrême dans un bel humour dénonciateur des tares de notre societé, se laissera aller au talent de cet exceptionnel romancier.»
—Pierre-Robert Leclercq, Le Monde des Livres
«L'un des textes les plus dérangeants de la rentrée littéraire.»
—Nicolas D'Esteinne D'Orves, Le Figaro
«Brian Evenson utilise l'horreur sadomasochiste avec humour et une distance absurde à la Kafka. Le récit prend dès lors des airs de parabole politique, personnelle et réjouissante.»
—Baptiste Liger, Lire
«Fouillant plus ardemment que jamais la matière du langage et ses innombrables crevasses et paradoxes sémantiques, Evenson multiplie les faux-semblants et les fausses pistes, notamment dans les très nombreux dialogues, beckettiens en diable, qui oscillent sans cesse entre dialogues de sourd hilarants et humour noir bas du front presque réjouissant... [S]on écriture, comme magnétisée par la puissance d'évocation de son projet, accède à un niveau de précision et de décision inédit, proprement redoutable.» [5 sur 5]
—Olivier Lamm, Chronic'art
«On rit beaucoup, mais derrière l'humour noir et le grand-guignol, c'est la métaphore évidente d'une Amérique malade qui s'automutile, avec des individus divisés, diminués.»
—Valérie Lapierre, UpStreet
«Une course-poursuite sous les auspices de Shylock et Jésus, deux spécialistes du prix de la viande humaine.»
—Libération
«Evenson ne craint pas de prendre les mots au pied de la lettre, et de les passer au hachoir.»
—Sandrine Mariette, Elle
«Un oeuvre aussi étrange que fascinante... Ames sensibles s'abstenir, au risque de défaillir devant tant d'hémoglobine!»
—Livres Hebdo
«Imaginez un curieux croisement entre Franz Kafka et Quentin Tarantino... un impeccable choix de la part des responsables de cette collection particulière qu'est le 'Lot 49'.»
—Le Magazine des Livres
«...si précis, méticuleux dans les descriptions, ingénieux dans la narration qu'il transcende le genre pour basculer dans un genre nouveau qui serait de philosopher à coups de bistouri, de hachoir et de revolver.»
—Jean-Bernard Vuillème, Le Temps
«Brian Evenson dévoile de nouveau sa singularité dans le paysage de la littérature américaine transgressive, réunissant autour de se roman amateurs de romans de genre comme ceux de la littérature borderline.»
—Critiques Libres
«Evenson distille un subtil mélange de métaphores métaphysiques à la Beckett dans ses récits dépourvus de sens mais pleins d’images inoubliables, d’objets étranges et de personnes cassées.»
—Michel Schneider, Le Point
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