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jordanfister's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Drug abuse, Pedophilia, Child abuse, Sexual content, Rape, Sexual assault, and Drug use
noahfence2007's review
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? No
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Sexual violence, and Pedophilia
futurama1979's review
5.0
try has been the hardest and most heartbreaking book of the cycle that i’ve read. somehow impossibly it is also the most hopeful. while frisk really got into the psychosexual side of cooper’s themes, this book dealt with the emotional. the character of ziggy spoke to me the strongest of any of the georges he’s shown us, and this, probably not coincidentally, is the closest he has let us in to any of his georges’ heads. and jesus, he doesn’t spare detail. ziggy is exaggerated but so carefully and intentionally written. the character of calhoun also stood out beyond the average cooper side character insofar. everything in it is really painful. there was almost a stark lack of structure in this compared to the past two books in the cycle; it took a bit for me to adjust but worked better and better for me the further along i got. this was also the first book in the cycle with slight breaks of the fourth wall, which i thought was just a cool touch and done so effortlessly. and then the hope element; unlike the others, there is in try a thread beneath the horror that’s not thematic but a secondary plot. the quasiplatonic love story of a listless, mostly empty teen heroin addict and the deeply traumatised bipolar artist who thinks he hung the sun.
i nearly never do this in reviews, but this passage stood out to me more than any singular bit of prose has, not just in the cycle so far but in a long time. this is some of calhoun’s conjecture as he’s starting to nod:
ziggy just winds up praying in private like calhoun is god, feeling helpless and too idealistic. because… what could he say? calhoun, your incapacitation is frightening me, or… if you o.d., i’ll be completely destroyed, meanwhile crossing his fingers in hopes his well-being still counts for anything with the guy. it does and it doesn’t. certainly calhoun can’t tell him so. luckily, ziggy’s half-learned how to sidestep his friend’s generalized behavior, decode contracted eyes, sift through that fuzz, overvalue the warmth of their rare outbound flickers. they’ve become the most beautiful things in the world, like the muffled cries of hikers trapped in landslides in the middle of nowhere. he’s learned to let them spark his imagination. still, pray and daydream as ziggy might, he can’t quite reconfigure what’s here. here: a skinny blonde teenager pickled in heroin, slack-faced, fallen limp as a corpse, brain discarding his lovers and friends for a half-life in decorous seclusion, unconcerned how it looks, or who he’s upset along the way, figuring nobody else will ever wander this far, check.
i nearly never do this in reviews, but this passage stood out to me more than any singular bit of prose has, not just in the cycle so far but in a long time. this is some of calhoun’s conjecture as he’s starting to nod:
ziggy just winds up praying in private like calhoun is god, feeling helpless and too idealistic. because… what could he say? calhoun, your incapacitation is frightening me, or… if you o.d., i’ll be completely destroyed, meanwhile crossing his fingers in hopes his well-being still counts for anything with the guy. it does and it doesn’t. certainly calhoun can’t tell him so. luckily, ziggy’s half-learned how to sidestep his friend’s generalized behavior, decode contracted eyes, sift through that fuzz, overvalue the warmth of their rare outbound flickers. they’ve become the most beautiful things in the world, like the muffled cries of hikers trapped in landslides in the middle of nowhere. he’s learned to let them spark his imagination. still, pray and daydream as ziggy might, he can’t quite reconfigure what’s here. here: a skinny blonde teenager pickled in heroin, slack-faced, fallen limp as a corpse, brain discarding his lovers and friends for a half-life in decorous seclusion, unconcerned how it looks, or who he’s upset along the way, figuring nobody else will ever wander this far, check.
tendermarimo's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
ladyhawke's review
2.0
The writing style and dialogue was incredibly annoying and just not written well which is too bad because I could see this story having real substance if it wasn’t written so terribly! Ultimately I DNF.
aiden_e_messer's review
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Honestly I don't know how to rate this. It's exhausting to read, it's all foggy and blurry and everything is creepy as hell. But I love the way it's written, and how pretty much every character is unhinged, fucked up, and/or completely out of touch with reality. Somehow, it makes them more human, more touching. (Well, some of them at least)
On an unrelated note, I really liked the parallels between Slayer lyrics and what was happening in the book during some passages.
All in all, this was completely depressing
ezrasupremacy's review
5.0
4.5 ⭐️ rounded up
book 8/18 for my october horror reading challenge (still pretending!)
i loved this book. gross/fun/nauseating in the usual way, but even more deeply emotional. i very much hate to say this, but i related a lot to both ziggy and calhoun, and i felt incredibly attached to the two of them and both their individual stories and their joined one. being honest, i was a little teary eyed towards the end, which is a little crazy to me, but i really wished the two of them would get a happy ending together — not that i would ever expect to get that in a cooper novel.
anyway, this was my favourite of the george miles cycle so far, but i still have two more left to go, so we shall see if that impression still changes.
book 8/18 for my october horror reading challenge (still pretending!)
i loved this book. gross/fun/nauseating in the usual way, but even more deeply emotional. i very much hate to say this, but i related a lot to both ziggy and calhoun, and i felt incredibly attached to the two of them and both their individual stories and their joined one. being honest, i was a little teary eyed towards the end, which is a little crazy to me, but i really wished the two of them would get a happy ending together — not that i would ever expect to get that in a cooper novel.
anyway, this was my favourite of the george miles cycle so far, but i still have two more left to go, so we shall see if that impression still changes.
loki_the_gnome's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Dennis Cooper's "emotional" deconstruction of closer is as patently devastating as one could imagine. Every bit of coldness that marks his earlier work is destroyed in service of pure emotional turmoil. Idea's of people become people, violence has consequences outside of the physical, and every moment and interwoven storyline is somehow more devastating than the last.
Cooper's final lines have a tendency to make me cry, every one has so far. Try's not only made me cry, but totally gutted me. Every tiny bit of safety I somehow felt I could hold onto in Cooper's worlds was torn away from me - which is entirely by design. Fiction like Cooper's should never and could never be safe. It was never designed to comfort or placate, and it never has, but Try, somehow, manages to pierce one's heart even more in totality than anything the Cycle has offered before.
A patently gutting portrait of abuse and its after-effects. Highly empathetic and immensely human, in all it's ugly, ugly depravity in its contents and beautiful care in its construction.
Cooper's final lines have a tendency to make me cry, every one has so far. Try's not only made me cry, but totally gutted me. Every tiny bit of safety I somehow felt I could hold onto in Cooper's worlds was torn away from me - which is entirely by design. Fiction like Cooper's should never and could never be safe. It was never designed to comfort or placate, and it never has, but Try, somehow, manages to pierce one's heart even more in totality than anything the Cycle has offered before.
A patently gutting portrait of abuse and its after-effects. Highly empathetic and immensely human, in all it's ugly, ugly depravity in its contents and beautiful care in its construction.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Death, Physical abuse, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Blood, Incest, Rape, Sexual assault, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Child death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Excrement, Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, Pedophilia, Abandonment, and Domestic abuse
boomlight's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Whereas in Closer and Frisk Cooper took an analytical approach to his construction and deconstruction of image, Try grounds itself in an emotional reality that feels directly commentative on the fantasys that are built and deconstructed in the earlier cycle books. Theres a Cooper quote (cant remember it exactly) where he says Try is where he shows why he wouldn't act on his fantasies, thats a great way to explain it. Because this novel is much more grounded in an emotional realiry of the main characrer, with the same explorations we have seen of trauma, fetishization of murder, sex, drugs, etc. In Try we discover the real psychological damage thats inflicted upon each character. Its formalism is some of Cooper s best ive read, feeling like a much more explosive and loose (while also being more tightly constructed) version of Closer. Where we cut between different characters and their thoughts/reasonings and emotional struggles. With all that in mind it does make Try a much more difficult read (on the basis of its content). Because everything is real, when looking at Frisk, we have sections that are difficult, but exist to be deconstructed. Whereas in Try it feels as if every action has a direct influence on each amd every character, warped dynamics and their direct harm to the psychological health of our main character. Both the internal and external factors of addiction, both the construction of fantasy and deconstruction (through showing its external harm) by way of cutting between the 2. So we have a constant parallel of construction and deconstruction that sits along side the emotional outbursts of the entire novel which all leads up to its final catharsis/release in friendship/love/someone who even cares. Fuck Everything Else. Better than both Frisk and Closer in its pure honesty, Cooper still manages to be one of the best.
Its also interesting how this novel directly parallels closer (the structures are identical--while try is still much more frantic with it--they both cut between different characters), hiwever where in closer others built their image of george (which was deconstructed), George himself was an empty slate. The same happens in Try (though a tad bit more subtle) where others idolize and build their imahe of Ziggy, which is later deconstruxted. However, Ziggy is the polar opposite of an empty slate. Pure emotion, and images are deconstructed through this emotion. Genius
Its also interesting how this novel directly parallels closer (the structures are identical--while try is still much more frantic with it--they both cut between different characters), hiwever where in closer others built their image of george (which was deconstructed), George himself was an empty slate. The same happens in Try (though a tad bit more subtle) where others idolize and build their imahe of Ziggy, which is later deconstruxted. However, Ziggy is the polar opposite of an empty slate. Pure emotion, and images are deconstructed through this emotion. Genius
reubenlb's review
3.0
less overtly explicit but deeper and darker - reaches emotional points that the previous two don’t quite achieve