the title of this post just about says it all. Here's the (rather glowing) review copy, you can click on the link to join the debate.
I.E. Lester reviews Mike Philbin's Bukkakeworld on the Vanguard Book Club
Bukkakeworld is a twisted satire of modern corporate life - one where the metaphors of office life are made disturbingly manifest. Any feeling you have of being spat-on (or worse) from the on-highs of the executive levels are made real. For in Bukkakeworld you are continuously bombarded by human semen - all the time and from all directions. So much so you even fear drowning (literally). This is possibly the most distasteful book I have ever read.
That said, Philbin has managed to make this readable - it would have been so easy for him to sink into endless new metaphors all describing ejaculations without gluing (sorry for the image) them together into a recognisable plot. He hasn't. He's stayed focused and told a story, one that he drags you deeply into by making you the central character.
This placement of the reader at the heart of the narrative is the book's greatest strength. Everything is "You". He's telling you your actions, your feelings, your very thoughts. It's your face the cum splatters onto, your eyelids it glues together, your food that has a thick milky coating it.
He's not telling you a story inasmuch making you live it. He's forcing the prose into you by any means necessary, hammering it into your brain, making you soak every drop in through your pores. You feel each drop of semen, each new humiliation.
But he also offers "You" a way out - a way to become more than "You" might be. And this is a simple (although somewhat surreal) love story. He offers up an angel who seems unaffected by the dripping malaise of Bukkakeworld.
At the start of this book I feared it would descend into an adult's only Thesaurus entry for semen - how many different terms can we come up with? He does include quite a number with - "man-fat" I think being the most comical. But you stop looking after a while and just go with the flow.
The one thing that best sums up Bukkakeworld the place is that the lead character "You" is so accustomed to his pitiful role in the world that when a fresh dollop of human semen lands in his face he is not awakened. It's a place where such a thing is so commonplace that it's just accepted - a part of regular life. Bukkakeworld is a semen-encrusted 1984.
This book hits you square in the face - with sticky, salty unpleasantness. Philbin does that to you. He holds nothing back. But also you don't get the feeling he is just out to shock. We could all do that - "Fuck! Shit! Cock!" These words by their very nature can shock. Peppering text with them just to offend, just to make people pay attention is simple but without meaning. Philbin doesn't. His language is the way it is for no other purpose than to tell his story. And it's not a story you are ever likely to forget.
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