The Glister

John Burnside’s The Glister opens in a modern day ghost town. The chemical plant that once fused the city with life and prosperity has been closed and left to rot. Everything in the town can be described as dead and deformed. The town’s adults are apathetic, depressed and diseased. The children are......more

Kann man lesen, Burnside ist ein großartiger Schriftsteller, Glister ist spannend, und vielleicht sogar sein bester; ich muss aber zugeben, irgendwann hat sich meine Begeisterung für seine Romane erschöpft; Ashland & Vine liegt schon lange ungelesen bei mir rum, mehrfach angefangen und wieder schnel......more

The Glister is a story about a once-industrial town, specializing in chemical production, known as Innertown. Now, Innertown is not a place anyone with a right mind would want to live in; the kids are violent with practically no morals, and the adults are either too sick from unknown illnesses or to......more

Billed as a horror novel, this bizarre novel goes nowhere frightening or even ... coherent. Trying to be "abstract" it succeeds only in revealing there are no ideas at the core of this "story."......more

To be honest, I expected a lot more from the author of 'The Dumb House'. Glister is frightening, but with no underlying message. It is vividly cruel and wild, like life, but the feeling that the town described and its inhabitants are makeshift fakes never left me. I also did not particularly enjoy t......more