Savage Nights

By Cyril Collard

Book Overview

The erotic, autobiographical novel of a bisexual man's voracious appetite for life--the inspiration for the controversial, award-winning film of the same name. "A work of rough genius, a glorious... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879515805
• ISBN13: 9780879515805
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Overlook Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 7.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Powerful

Savage Nights, written by the late film cameraman and director as well as actor and singer Cyril Collard, is not an easy read. It's graphic sexuality and the difficultly in feeling any kind of sympathy for any of the characters makes this a book that reads like a car crash on paper. You can't look away. The lead character, Jean, is devoid of any human decency and I don't mean just his sex life. For him, no one matters except himself. He cares for no one, no matter how much he professes to. Completely self- absorbed, he takes a teen aged girl, Laura and a young man, Sammy, as well as many others down the path of destruction with him. However, with Laura's insane ranting's and violent, unstable and manipulative behavior, even though she shares Jean's fate, it's hard to feel sorry for her. Sammy is an opportunist who is no better than Jean in his treatment of people. All and all, I didn't care about any of these people (even though I know they were based on real people. Laura was really a woman named Erica Prou who died at 26 of AIDS and Collard himself died of the disease at 35) and couldn't help but feel they brought their problems on themselves. They seemed to thrive on drama, a series of fighting and making up, but as I said, you can't help but be fascinated by these people. They see death as the ultimate romantic sacrifice and speak in cliches about love. While not lovable, they are interesting and make for a book that is hard to put down.

so engrossing....

Written by French director and rockstar Cyril Collard, this book is an engrossing confession where it is impossible to keep hope and despair apart. This largely autobiographical novel is the story of a young, gay, promiscuos man, Jean, who, after being told he's got AIDS, starts understanding the meaning of love thanks to a nervous, morbid at some times, relationship with a very young girl called Laura: whem the end comes (there is an end, actually) Jean states he's understood what love means and his farewell sounds like the triumph of life rather than of death. Collard loved life; and life, which was not unsensitive towards him, gave him the possibility to write this remarkable story, with an outstanding style that reminds of both rap music and French symbolism.