Period

This is the last instalment of Cooper's five novel cycle, a kind of literary full-stop that manages to revisit most of his familiar obsessions - death, cute boys, drugs, sex - in the most sparse and minimalistic prose he has ever created. It is also, in part, the continuing story of the beautiful but deeply disturbed George Miles, the object of everyones desire in the first book 'Closer', and the hero of a fictional novel - 'Period' - by his one-time lover Walker Crane. Now George may or may not have suffered a brutal rape which has left him in a wheelchair, a deaf mute called Dagger who looks remarkably like him and who has suffered a remarkably similar fate may or may not be talking to him through a mirror from a parallel universe, he may or may not be the boy in the pictures on a web site devoted to the book (as might many of the other characters), and he may or may not have shot himself in the head. Radiating out from all this uncertainty are Leon and Nate, or Noel and Etan, two kids from Dagger's universe, or perhaps another parallel dimension all of their own, or perhaps reality, whose own stories form a mirror-like frame around the central chapter, and whose fortunes at the end of the book are somehow completely the reverse of how they were at the start. Add to this the satanic goth band The Omen, who speed around the countryside murdering innocent hitchhikers and spouting fake, devil-worshipping nonsense, and the stage is set for Cooper's most mesmerisingly bizarre slice of fiction ever.The novel's intensity comes from its almost complete lack of descriptive passages. Compared to 'Frisk' and 'Closer', which revelled in their goriness to a certain extent, 'Period' reads more like a radio play. Anonymous, (literally) dismebodied voices talk at you out of the fog, carrying on their conversations with very little reference to the fact that they're hacking up a body or being molested by the Devil, and this lack of context only makes it more intriguingly difficult to figure out what's going on. Technically, Cooper's dazed, vague narrative style has never been sharper, making this the shortest novel of the series (it's entirely possible to read it in one sitting, and I suggest you do). Perhaps it is the case that, by now, Cooper knows his most devoted readers will be able to fill in the gaps for themselves, or perhaps the air of general confusion and mirror-images repeating themselves into infinity was the only way to bring the series to a conclusion. Either way, as the end of the cycle, it all makes perfect sense for some reason.As a book in its own right, however, I'm not sure how well it functions. Even though this is not a sequel in any way, so much still depends on you knowing what's come before it that it's difficult to imagine anyone who hasn't read the previous books making any sense of it whatsoever. If you haven't read Dennis Cooper before, my advice would be to go back to the start and read the books in order. But if you've been waiting for the final instalment, prepare to be... perplexed?

Jacket was slightly dirty, spine is a bit crushed, but pages are completely intact and clean.

This book was awful. The story line was hard to follow, and the book didn't make sense at all, a waist of money.

Its significance becomes more startlingly apparent at its end. If you've never read Dennis Cooper, then I wouldn't suggest beginning with PERIOD. The culmination of Cooper's five-book series, 'The George Miles Cycle,' PERIOD is a difficult text -- difficult to read, to understand, and to put down when you realize it's already over. My introduction to it was gentle; I'd been eased in by books one through four, as well as a couple of Cooper's outliers (THE SLUTS, MY LOOSE THREAD). As with most of Cooper's books, plot is not as essential as the language and thematic elements, but neither are overlooked or parceled for easy consumption. Those who write off PERIOD as meaningless have not hacked deep enough into its layers -- beneath the epidermis of taut, yet authentic, language; through characters desperate, manipulative, hungry for worlds within and beyond their reach, electronic and tangible, down to the subcutaneous fat. Give PERIOD a chance, when you're ready, and read it more than once. It's the perfect ending to Cooper's so-called 'cycle of sex and death' and a revelatory beginning to a new mode of reading, and writing, fiction.

Dennis Cooper has named his latest book after a punctuation mark -- the most common, perfunctory punctuation mark (except for the lowly comma). In case you're wondering why Cooper does this, I should probably inform you that _Period_ is meant to give closure to his previous novels, much as a period provides closure to a sentence. Actually, in this case it's more like a stake through the heart.The big news here is that George Miles reappears from Cooper's first novel _Closer_, and is marginally more interesting this time around.For such a tiny book, _Period_ is crammed to the gills with impenetrable incident. There are pseudo-satanic murders, body doubles, radio call-in shows and cyberchats, isolated teenagers shouting to the dark, rumors and rumors of rumors about a minor novelist, and a generous dollop of smoke-and-mirrors postmodernism just in case you think you might have understood what just happened.Not that there's any reason to care.

I must say i was surprised to say the least when i read this book and got out of it nothing i would have expected. Although many people dimiss cooper as an overindulger in morbid homosexuality, I honestly didnt think this book was as frightingly grotesque as cridicts tend to label it as. The sex, although undeniably intigrated into the stories main point (if there even is one) is fleeting, nondescript, and sometimes if you skip past a single sentence you wont even know anything even happened. Which brings me to the next point of this book. Its so very confusing. I finally understand the phrase smoke-and-mirrors, thanks to cooper's brain-rattling insane prose that for some odd reason thinks it should call itself a book. But its apparent that he possess an ultimate ablity to trick the reader beyond belief, and to leave you sitting there wondering whats real and whats not. And all done so as if he isnt even taking credit for any of these events he just happens to be writing.This is one of the most unique stories i have read in years, addictive, deceptive, sometimes unrelentless, buy always good.