I read this in one sitting. If that explains ANYTHING. I read this based on the supposition that this is the grossest book a lot of people have read... but... unfortunately (or fortunately lol) that was not the case for me. I have read FAR grosser books (like Carlton Mellick a Chandler Morrison). But the grossness is not what I focused on because the perpetrators see it as art and there are so many other themes prevailing here.

So let me back up. Andrew Compton is a serial killer in a mirror image of Jeffrey Dahmer in prison in London. He fakes his own death and finds his way to New Orleans. Jay Byrne is an "artist/photographer" in New Orleans who has a dark obsession with... I just want to say dark and twisted things as to not spoil it for you. Then we have Tran, a runaway Vietnamese-American who starts falling for Jay. Tran is the embodiment of gay hope and love in a disease and drug-ridden gay world. I can just picture him being this radiant and jubilant ball of sunshine and always the life of the party. Now, I think Jay and Tran might make it work. Tran intoxicates Jay in a way that he stops his deranged behavior and it seems like Jay could change. Then Jay meets Andrew in a bar. And all hell breaks loose. And there is NO going back.

But while this book is loaded with gore and extreme sexual situations with vivid descriptions, that is not the focus of the book. This book heavily explore what it means to be alive and living. HIV/AIDS is always on the forefront in the book as most of the book is connected to blood and sex. Fear, acceptance, life, living, love, death, everything. There's a lot to be said about physical pain vs a disease that is slowly killing you before it turns full-blown lethal, too. There's a WHOLE lot truly happening in this novel. SO MUCH.

And Brite's writing is SO intellectual and intoxicating. It felt like reading Bret Easton Ellis meets Anne Rice meets gore porn. This book explores the darkest corners of the mind as we journey to understand the minds of serial killers, how they love, and how they view killing, sex, and death.