Blog this item

And the Ass Saw the Angel

By Nick Cave

(45)

| Paperback | 9781880985724

Like And the Ass Saw the Angel?
Join aNobii to see if your friends read it, and discover similar books!

Book Description

Cave's only novel to date takes on the southern gothic in this bizarre baroque tale. Born mute to a drunken mother and a demented father, tortured Euchrid Eucrow finds more compassion in the family mule than in his fellow men. But he alone will grasp the cruel fate of Cosey Mo, the beautiful young pContinue

2 Reviews

Dense like a molasses pool.

I don't know, I think that not everyone can be an all-around artist. If you're a good painter, maybe you're not gonna be a good sculptor and if you're a good musicians, who knows, it might be you're not gonna be a good writer, despite being able to write great songs.
And the Ass Saw the Angel, ... (continue)

I don't know, I think that not everyone can be an all-around artist. If you're a good painter, maybe you're not gonna be a good sculptor and if you're a good musicians, who knows, it might be you're not gonna be a good writer, despite being able to write great songs.
And the Ass Saw the Angel, to me, looked like a long Cave trip into his favourite Southern Gothic imagery and unfortunately, little else. The style is exceedingly mannered, even camp at times, not to mention that my suspension of disbelief went tits up after roughly twenty pages, not because of overt deus ex machinas or anything, just because it's really too dense, too... too much, as if the whole story took place behind a curtain of translucency.
It's like as he considered, before writing, "What does people expect of Nick Cave? Ah, that's it. Let's go!"
His songs still rock, though, maybe because they usually last no more than six minutes rather than two hundred and twenty pages.

Is this helpful?

Luciferasi said on Aug 18, 2009 | Add your feedback

For The Fans

If you like Cave's dark lyrics and his tortured portraits of the American South that he frequently depicts musically, for example his Henry's Dream album, then you would probably love this book.
It is a densely written tragedy of fundamentalist religion that plays out in the Deep South ... (continue)

If you like Cave's dark lyrics and his tortured portraits of the American South that he frequently depicts musically, for example his Henry's Dream album, then you would probably love this book.
It is a densely written tragedy of fundamentalist religion that plays out in the Deep South with all of Cave's characteristic metaphor you could crush a bus with, and poetic spiritual vision: one part sublime, two parts phlegm.
His prose calls to mind the poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and e e cummings, and the visionary science fiction novel of Brian Aldiss, Barefoot In The Head, itself strongly reminiscent of Hopkins.
For those who love pushing language to the limit I would highly recommend this work.
This paperback edition is well bound with soft, floppy pages. The spine is strongly glued and because of the soft pages and thin paper used, not prone to cracking.

Is this helpful?

Ramnagel said on May 28, 2009 | Add your feedback