Exquisite Corpse Board Game - International Edition | Party Game for Adults & Teens | Perfect for Game Nights, Gatherings & Social Events

After I finished reading Exquisite Corpse, I was struck by the thought that one could, with the benefit of hindsight, make the argument that it is a transitional work in the sense that it represents a bridge between Poppy's earlier writing in horror to her current desire to write realistically about "real life" in New Orleans, as she does in her latest novel Liquor. In other words, EC is a transitional novel in that it contains both the fantastic elements of her earlier work (in this case, sophisticated serial killers) and the realistic concerns of her present day work (in this case, the horrible reality of the AIDS epidemic). Really, the only thing that keeps EC from being a totally realistic novel is her rather romanticized portrayal of the two serial killers. I say romanticized because most serial killers are mindnumbingly prosaic as human beings, and the only thing that makes them "interesting" is the fact that they have managed to kill a lot of people before being caught. I read biographies of both Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, and I found myself depressed by the absolute banality of their lives. They, or most real life serial killers, aren't exactly the real life counterparts of Poppy's Andrew Compton or Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter.The horror in Exquisite Corpse is not derived from supernatural sources like with Poppy's earlier novels, such as the vampires as in Lost Souls, or a haunted house in Drawing Blood. Rather, the horror in EC is derived from the sources we find in real life such as violence and disease. EC reminded me of the Depeche Mode song "Fly on the Windshield":Death is everywhereThere are flies on the windshield, for a startReminding us,We could be torn apart,TonightIndeed, the spectre of death pervades the whole storyline of EC. Poppy presents a portrait of New Orleans in EC where the possibility of a painful death either from a violent psychopath or from a debilitating disease is never far away from you. More specifically, the horror in EC comes from the idea of people not only dealing with the horrible reality of knowing they would soon die in the most horribly painful fashion imaginable, but also from the horrible reality of knowing that they only had a finite time left to left-very little or even no more time to spend with friends and family, to accomplish all the goals you wanted to accomplish in life, just time to sit around regretting everything you would miss out on.It is this horrible reality of death that made it a hard novel for me to read on an emotional level. I know that some people had a problem with the gore, and I'm squeamish myself, but the gore isn't what I found the most disturbing about EC. I should mention too that the gore isn't gratuitous. Poppy isn't a hack and she uses it for a purpose. The two serial killers perversely take pride in their 'work', looking at their killing as a craft just as much as anybody else has a sense of pride in what they do. It probably sounds artsy, but Poppy really does present murder and the dead body in an aesthetic light, as other people have said. Indeed, this isn't totally dramatic license on Poppy's part-there's that famous story about how Jeffrey Dahmer (who the serial killers are obviously in part based upon) had planned to construct an altar made out of his victims' skulls and bones in an artistic piece de resistance of his serial killer activities. I should mention also that it is obvious that Poppy based one of the plot turns on what happened to one of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims. When I realized Poppy was doing this I was very uncomfortable and even horrified because I wondered if it was morally okay to use this true life episode as a plot/thematic vehicle in the book since it involved the vicious murder of a real human being. However, I realized as the scene went on that Poppy was using this real life murder to very justifiably criticize some real life idiots who really dropped the ball. Poppy also uses this scene to illustrate the corruption and racism that plagues some institutions in New Orleans. Poppy makes the serial killer subgenre her own, to explore her own interests. In other words, she is decidedly not a poor man's Thomas Harris.EC's storyline is told by shifting between the four characters. Poppy shifts from the first person narrative of serial killer Andrew Compton , to the narratives of other three main characters told in the third person. In fact, when I realized that the narrative of EC was divided pretty equally between four main characters, I worried that maybe the narrative would be spread too thin because at 240 pages EC is a relatively short novel. However, Poppy was able to successfully explore these four characters and their storylines within the novels 240 pages. Considering that Poppy is an American, she also demonstrated considerable courage in writing as an Englishman, and placing the first part of her novel in London. However, Poppy brings this off admirably, even cleverly using British spelling when writing in his voice (i.e., "colour"). Poppy is undoubtedly a very gifted prose stylist. Check this passage out where Compton talks about his victims: "I gave them good food, strong tea, a warm place in my bed, what few pleasures my body could provide. In return, all I asked was their lives." Not bad, huh?EC is a very good novel. My only real "criticism" is that because Poppy is so successful in depicting the horrible reality of death, I'm not sure that it is a novel I'll want to read again any time soon just because it is too emotionally painful to read. Nonetheless, EC is a very interesting and exciting read, and I would recommend it highly.