Dermaphoria

by Craig Clevenger

Book Overview

Clandestine chemistry and the LA underworld provide the atmosphere for this kaleidoscopic tale of lost memories and the heartbreak of finding them, from the author of 'The Contortionist's Handbook'.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1931561753
• ISBN13: 9781931561754
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing
• Length: 214 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

If anyone close to you has been addicted...

To any sort of hard drug, you MUST read this book. A shockingly large improvement in writing style and story development since his last book (Contortionist's Handbook, which is also excellent). Dermaphoria is a love story, and an epic coming of age piece all rolled into one. Maintaining a clear style despite a clouded narrator's perspective and using ever sharpening wit, Clevenger does well keeping the reader in tune with the story as the narrator races to bring back memories lost in a lab accident while being pursued simultaneously by the police and the group that funded the drug lab that blew his memory to smithereens. While slowly revealing how all this happened Clevenger gracefully shifts in and out of ponderings on the morality and philosophy of drug use. A must read.

absolutely brilliant

Captivating diction, brilliant imagery, and I especially love the jaded & cynical monologue of the protagonist. Clevenger effectively brings the real mechanics of paranoia to the forefront of the reader's attention; and not in a stupid or adolescent manner. He brings you into the fear and sickness, the world falling apart around you. The enemy always watching, the codes they speak, the patterns they manipulate into your reality. He makes me want to throw out all my manuscripts and never write again. Terribly jealous, esp w/ the use of bugs & chemistry as the metaphors for reality breakdown.

More Than Skin-Deep

I was going to start this review by comparing Clevenger's writing to that of Chuck Palahniuk and Will Christopher Baer. He's got the pace and acerbic plot-mind of one and the visceral, dizzying prose of the other. Then I flipped to the acknowledgements, and there, on the second paragraph, Clevenger thanks them both. "Well, no wonder," I thought. Fans of either (or both) Palahniuk and Baer are bound to love "Dermaphoria." Clevenger starts with a classic (and almost trite) premise: a man wakes up in a hospital, and the only thing he knows is one name -- Desiree. The man (Eric Ashworth) -- sought after by info-hungry cops, antsy attorneys, and dispassionate mobsters -- attempts to piece together his life, bit by bit, around that one name, using both old-fashioned persistence and a new street drug. The substance, called Skin, synthesizes the sense of touch, using it to extract reality-rich remembrances from an ever-expanding history ("Having more memory is just a way of distorting a greater amount of the past," says one character). The only problem? Skin comes with some pretty serious side effects. And, furthermore, who's to say that the results are 100% accurate? One part mystery, one part noir, and every bit of it a puzzle of firey, arresting prose, "Dermaphoria" is a great book. Ashworth's disorientation is made all the more palpable by Clevenger's crackling writing. Some might find the descriptions over-written, but I'd say he hasn't written enough. This 214 page novel is a quick read, ending faster than it takes a firefly to blink. Clevenger's descriptions are hefty and mobile, apt and stunning, and everything is slathered with import (even the names themselves, Ashworth and Desiree and others, are totems for a larger point). This book is about more than just drug overdoses and regrets, and like his contemporaries (even more so than Palahniuk, I'd say), Clevenger refuses to dilute his tale with bromides or easy outs. However, even if you don't have the inclination to dig beneath the topsoil of Clevenger's mesmerizing world, you can still enjoy the lusciously dirty surface. It's a tale that is rewarding on multiple levels, superficial or subliminal, and although the ending is chaotic and heart-breaking (Clevenger's male protagonists never seem to catch a break), it also proves there's a real heart there to be broken. Dark, smart, gritty, and spare, "Dermaphoria" gets under the skin and stays there. You should read it, and then read it again. In case you forgot anything.

One of the finest and edgiest authors writing today.

What an experience. Dermaphoria has easily jumped into my top ten novels list. The writing is pure brilliance, the words had an instantaneous impact on my mental and physical state of being. At times I think I hallucinated, and had to reread sections to convince myself that what I read was real. Freakin' amazing, I don't know how else to say it. I'm going to push this book hard on people -- it deserves to be read by everyone, if only to show them the power that words can have when used by a master. I enjoyed this even more than The Contortionist's Handbook, and that is no small feat. If you enjoyed Dermaphoria or The Contortionist's Handbook, you may also like the works of Will Christopher Baer. Thank you Craig!

Finnish street names make terrible safewords

I picked up the latest from Craig Clevenger based largely on the cover and partly from reading good things about him by one of my favorite authors, Will Christopher Baer. Dermaphoria is about Eric Ashworth who wakes up in jail with amnesia from too many drugs and severe burns on his back. All signs point to him being incolved in a meth lab fire in the desert. The only thing he can remember is a name: Desiree. Eric's court appointed attorney buys him roughly a week before his trial where he will likely be found guilty unless he can piece together enough of his memory to sell out his superiors in the drug chain. The premise is basic and straightforward but hung with excellent prose by Clevenger. One of the quotes on the book calls it puzzle fiction which is a perfect description. It's hard to resist the urge to immediatley reread the book once you finish. It's a quick read at roughly 200 pages.