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Editorial Review Product Description
Intense and profoundly unsettling, Brian Evenson’s Last Days is a down-the-rabbit-hole detective novel set in an underground religious cult. The story follows Kline, a brutally dismembered detective forcibly recruited to solve a murder inside the cult. As Kline becomes more deeply involved with the group, he begins to realize the stakes are higher than he previously thought. Attempting to find his way through a maze of lies, threats, and misinformation, Kline discovers that his survival depends on an act of sheer will. Last Days was first published in 2003 as a limited edition novella titled The Brotherhood of Mutilation. Its success led Evenson to expand the story into a full-length novel. In doing so, he has created a work that’s disturbing, deeply satisfying, and completely original. ... Read more Customer Reviews (9) 
Focused. Gruesome. Powerful.
Last Days is a streamlined punch to the gut. There are no wasted words here, no auxiliary threads to subtract from the main thrust, nothing to prevent Evenson's ideas from shooting directly into your skull. The tone is fast and fevered throughout, events always accelerating towards a conclusion that promises to be anything but neat, the resolution of plot threads anything but surgical.
It is impossible to get over a feeling of unease while reading these two novellas, impossible not to feel dirtied with each word that passes beneath your gaze. Kline's past is heroic, but it's taken to such extremes that the reader can't read it without feeling a tad queasy, the sort of victory that the celebrants will always wonder if it might have been better for everyone involved if it had been a defeat, instead:
"[They had] read about his so-called heroism and how, even when faced with the man with the cleaver - or the "gentleman with the cleaver" as they chose to call him - he hadn't flinched, hadn't given a thing away. Was it true, they wanted to know ,that he hadn't flinched? That he had simply watched the man raise the cleaver and bring it down, his hand becoming a separate, moribund creature?" (p. 25)
In the same vein, every sympathetic character is also a monster, every simple decision a potential moral abyss, every simple task labyrinthine and difficult. The reader feels sympathy for Kline but should they? Gous is nice, companionable, even. And yet he is also depraved in their own way, caught up in the cult until it is more powerful than right or wrong, life or death, to him
That cult, The Brotherhood of Mutilation, is the center of this story. Taking Mathew 29 ("And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out...") to the extreme, they've developed a religion out of the process of self mutilation, glorifying in disfigurement to the point that their leader is nothing but a tongue-less head and a nipple-less torso. It's easy to simply classify the Brotherhood as evil, and it often seems right to do so, but they are often more alien than wrong, more amoral than immoral. The utter incomprehensibility of their mindset, held together by its unapproachable but unassailable logic, is one of the greatest strengths of the text, dictating the course of almost every conversation between Kline and the cult members:
"'You can't all be Paul,' [Kline] said.
'Why not?' said the man. 'Is this a teaching?'
'A teaching?' said Kline. 'What's that supposed to mean?'
'Should I write it down?'
'Write what down?'
'You can't all be Paul. And whatever else comes thereafter from your lips.'
'No,' said Kline, a strange dread starting to grow within him. 'I don't want you to write anything down.'
'Is this too a teaching?' said Paul. 'Write nothing down?'
'Nothing's a teaching,' said Kline." (p. 132)
The Brotherhood is a place of contradictions. On one hand, mutilations are a source of distinction approaching religious ecstasy, something that is an unbelievable honor and something to be revered above all else. At the same time, lower members of the Brotherhood often get their amputations at amputation parties, events were everyone socializes and drinks until the evening culminates with anesthesia and the bite of the knife or cleaver. That combination of reverence and irreverence colors much of Last Days.
Evenson's narrative is one of disorientation. Events move at an intentionally jerky, artificial pace, as Kline is thrown, shoved, and otherwise man handled to revelation after revelation. This is effective at subjecting the reader to Kline's confused mental state, forcing the reader to struggle to process information at the same speed as Kline. Over long periods of time, however, the technique becomes tiresome, leaving the reader with almost nothing to grasp onto as progress for the occasional long stretch. Up until the end, Kline is not the arbiter of his own destiny, and very few of the book's events are determined by him until then. Kline, though physically and mentally powerful, is not a strong character in the traditional, plot-driving sense, and it can grow annoying to have a story almost wholly directed by outside elements, though Evenson's writing and pacing are too strong for that to ever grow into a truly debilitating issue.
Combining with the tautness of the story, Evenson's prose is so bare as to be effectively invisible for most of the book, simply dragging the reader along by the throat and standing aside to let them see the events looming up above them. Motivations are rarely shared, and the dialogue is almost always declarative, often in fragments. Character's seem to talk at one another far more often than to one another, leaving whole aspects of story and mysteries open to be connected, if there even is a connection, by the reader. Every once in a while, Evenson will display the same irreverence that he does to mutilation and matters of faith to the characters' conversations and the book's mysteries:
"'I'm here because of Aline.'
'Who's either dead or not dead.'
'Exactly,' said Kline.
'There's a big difference,' said Gous. 'That's what we intend to find out.'
'What?' said Ramse.
'That,' said Gous.
'What?' said Ramse, looking around. 'What's going on?'
'Exactly,' said Kline. 'That's what I want to know.'" (p. 84)
Much has been made of how terrifying Last Days is. Now, fear is obviously a fairly personal thing, and it's unlikely that the same section will affect two different readers in the same way, but I have to say that, for the most part, I did not find Last Days frightening. Grotesque, yes. Disturbing, yes. Terrifying, no... Except for one scene in the beginning of the second novella, that is, where the powerlessness of the narrator is rammed home so hard that I was almost falling off my chair I was so freaked out while reading it. So I guess I'll take it back, Last Days can be pretty frightening when it really wants to be.
The first novella here, Brotherhood of Mutilation, is the tighter of the two. The concepts are at their freshest and the disorientation at its most acute, yet least forced. In addition, the novella twists its central scene and throws it back at us again and again, in dreams and memories and recurrences, until we feel as haunted as Kline, turning the pages in order to escape his past.
By contrast, the first while of Last Days feels like the reader's treading water in a shifting sea; they may be moving, but it's by no action of their own. Once that part concludes, however, Last Days begins to pick up speed and never stops doing so. Despite a few mishaps, it becomes almost the equal of the first novella and in many ways that book's inverse. Brotherhood of Mutilation was all about Kline being controlled, about Kline being powerless in his own destiny, but that theme was so much a part of the story's structure and foundations that it was never questioned. In this novella, on the other hand, Kline lashes out at the ties that bind him, the novella concluding in him asserting his own dominance to the detriment of everyone around him.
The differences between the two novels are what gives the collection as a whole its identity, the overall tale managing to take the strengths of its two halves, with each novella generally balancing out the other's weaknesses. Last Days is an immersing and a disturbing read.
Great!
This grabbed me from the get-go and kept me entertained the whole way through.I will look for more works by this author.
Amazing body horror detective work - but DON'T READ THE INTRO FIRST
How do you begin to describe Last Days? Ostensibly, it's a detective novel about a private eye named Kline, who is just beginning to recover from the violent loss of his hand when he is pulled into a bizarre investigation at the compound of a unique religious cult. But while Last Days plays with a lot of detective story tropes, it's as much visceral body horror and pitch-black satire of religious fanaticism as noir - imagine The Maltese Falcon crossed with The Ruling Class - Criterion Collection as directed by David Cronenberg, and you approach the uniqueness of what Evenson's created here. The book will inspire any number of reactions from a reader - there are parts of fascinating depth, and some parts that play as some surreal twisted joke that only the sickest will laugh at, while others are pure farce - and that says nothing of the violence and horror that permeate the book's pages. Last Days moves like an absolute rocket, and if you think things are strange in the first half, just wait until Paul shows up. Or, you could wait until the cleavers start coming back out. To know too much is to ruin the fun, which is why I beg you to avoid Peter Straub's introduction until after you finish the book - it's a fascinating discussion, but it discusses the entire story, including the ending. So let me just say this about how good Last Days is: I barrelled through it last night, went to bed, woke up this morning, and restarted it. It's that good, and I can't wait to get my hands on more of Evenson's work.
Once More Down the Rabbit Hole
Last night I did something I rarely ever do: I decided to read before I went to bed. This backfired, of course, when I decided to stay up until I finished the book and then talk about it with a friend, which then put me to bed a few short hours before I had to be up for work. This is why I do not read before bed. The book was Last Days by Brian Evenson, which is actually two novellas placed together to form a book. This is important, because though they have a lot of similarities, they differ in quality.
The Brotherhood of Mutilation (henceforth referred to merely as Brotherhood because I don't want to type that out over and over again) is the first novella and it also the weakest. The beginning starts out fine, fine enough that I bought the book based on the excerpt. From there it gets a bit wonky.
I am not the biggest fan of third person limited, which is what both novellas are written in, mostly because I feel that first person works just as fine-and for a while I thought that first person probably would have served it better, but I gave that up because it would not have made much of a difference. The problem I had was how the novel jumped around a lot, which can be attributed to just how often the main character, Kline, was drugged or knocked out. It had a disorienting affect on me and left me confused at points, but that also may have something to do with me reading it so late in the evening when I am about to drift off to sleep.
I have no major complaint for Brotherhood other than that, but I do have a minor one and the book is not to blame for it. Reading reviews for Last Days, most have one thing in common: they talk about how disturbing and disconcerting the book is, especially Brotherhood. This is actually one of the things that brought the book to my attention in the first place. Unfortunately, Brotherhood, which deals with self-mutilation and dismemberment, was lacking. To me at least. I just felt it tame. Not fault at all to the book or author, but I would give a dirty look to those reviews and their weak stomachs.
Last Days, the second novella (huzzah, confusion!), actually has not a single complaint from my direction. I felt it was the strongest of the two, taking elements found in the first novella and basically doing it better. I bitched about third person limited in Brotherhood and I can admit that I was wrong to have thought it would have been just as well in first person. I feel that Brotherhood did not pull it off all that well, but I can happily proclaim that Last Days went above and beyond with it.
There are few books that pull me in as well as Last Days did and it was because of Evenson's wonderful use of the limited perspective that it was accomplished. I could feel the frantic pacing and Kline's frustration and that is what made it great. Last Days is also the disturbing novella, I quickly found out, but not in the same way as you would expect from a novel that features self-mutilation. In the end, Last Days is a descent into madness and chaos and it presents it so well that even when I knew I should be bothered by actions taken, I was still cheering. Anything more would, of course, be too close to spoiling it.
When I look at both novellas as a running whole, since Last Days continues from the end of Brotherhood, I find the characterization to be a bit obvious. Kline is depressed, dead to the world, and wallowing in self-pity at the beginning of the novel. This changes as we go along, with him accepting his loss to a degree, but as people start to push and pull at him from various angles, there are only so many paths that a character can take.
When both novellas come together to create Last Days, you can be guaranteed that at the very least, even if you do not like the book, it is a very interesting story. If you are, like me, willing to give the book credit where it is due, then it is easy to say that the book is an immersive dive down the rabbit hole that is, in turn, frustrating, frantic, disconcerting, and, especially towards the end, unrelenting. Last Days is definitely recommended.
Twisted, but cool!
Creepy. Dark. Twisted. Insane. Those are some words I would use to describe Brian Evenson's macabre detective novel. There are other words I would use, but unfortunately such terms are not appropriate for a review. Don't misunderstand me, though; I mean these terms in the most complimentary of ways. Evenson was sure as hell striving for a creepy, dark, twisted, insane, and macabre detective novel. And he succeeded, practically from page one.
Last Days is about a fellow named Kline, a brutally dismembered detective who is unwittingly drafted into a bizarre cult of amputees to solve a murder. The more involved he becomes in the investigation, and the crazed cult of amputation-revering individuals, the more lies, deceptions, and threats are thrown his way. Soon he realizes that the only way he can escape this bizarre world and get his life back on track is to do something that will rely on sheer will...something drastic and possibly just as insane as the cult that has forced him into their service...
Does that description paint a good picture of how creepy and twisted this novel is? I hope so. Last Days is one of the most twisted books I have ever read, and yet it is strangely addictive, almost infectious--much like a cult, actually. Each chapter progresses the plot at a rapid pace. This novel is not one that takes the time to slow down and let you settle it. It wants you to be on the edge of your seat, wondering what will happen next, who will come popping out of the wood works to screw things up for Kline. The fast-paced feel of the novel is precisely what makes it so infectious; each chapter made me want to know what would happen next, and how Kline would manage to get himself out of whatever new pickle had come his way.
The only problem I have with Last Days is that it could have been somewhat longer to give Kline a bit more space to develop as a character. While I certainly rooted for Kline, I wanted to know more about who he was and where he had come from. Thankfully this flaw does not ruin the overall entertainment of the novel.
If you're into the macabre or need a twisted detective novel, then this is certainly for you. Or, if you just want something weird and twisted to read, then start with Last Days. It's short, sweet, and does a fine job of making sure you're uncomfortable, like going to a horror movie and knowing that the bad guy with the butcher knife is right around the corner and the main character doesn't realize it...
... Read more
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Hmm
Forget it!