Scar Culture [Paperback]

Toni Davidson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2000

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest originality mixed with the divine audacity of William Burroughs and Irvine Welsh. Thought-provoking, erotic, sharp-witted, and totally riveting, Scar Culture marks the debut of a groundbreaking writer. With the power of the spoken word and the authenticity of a research document, Scar Culture follows the lives of Click, Fright, and their dysfunctional therapist Sad. Using experimental, dangerous techniques, Sad tries to bring Click and Fright out of the stupor to which they have succumbed from childhood abuse. Tempering the story with the darkest humor, Toni Davidson makes us confront the meaning of being human in this challenge to psychotherapy.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

From the beginning of Scar Culture, the reader knows that something has gone wrong: the first-person accounts that form the bulk of Toni Davidson's debut have been found "at the scene." Who has done what to whom is the question driving this novel, moving it beyond the conventions of its psychiatric/criminal frame. In "Click" and "Fright" we are forced up against the more unsettling ways in which children live, or die--the book is part of the contemporary uncovering of the perversity of family life--as well as a few fragile metaphors of survival (if that is what they are). Click takes headshots recording the utter commotion of life with his mother and father, Exit and Panic; Fright passes into a state of waiting for his brother to return, for his (dead) mother "to sing something, anything, into my ear." Sad's narrative starts to pull the book together, or further apart, in its presentation of the madness of analysis, which becomes inseparable from the abuse it is supposed to cure. Within the tradition of a literary challenge to psychotherapy, Scar Culture is taking its chances, too, though it may become, in fact, a powerful contribution to this discipline. --Vicky Lebeau

From Publishers Weekly

Already a cult hit in Europe, Glasgow author Davidson's first novel tracks extremes of incest, abuse, desire, cruelty and illness as it uncovers the warped past and present of two grown boys named Click and Fright and their obsessive therapist, Curtis Sad. The adolescent Click lives in a trailer with his hideously abusive "mobile family," parents named Panic and Exit. Part one mixes Click's narration with descriptions of the photos he snaps as his family takes to the road, trying to outrun child welfare agents. Fright's tale (part two) details his father's incestuous brutality, conducted behind a mysterious flower curtain in the bedroom Fright shares with his brother, Jake; Fright's father may also have murdered Jake and their mother. Articulate therapist Sad narrates the rest of the book. Sad's greatest pleasures have long been his sexual dalliances with his little sister, Josie, about whom he keeps having hallucinations. (He also enjoys the pornographic hidden-camera footage given him by his more precarious patients.) When Click and Fright finally enter the mental health systemAtraumatized and uncommunicativeASad decides that he's the man to treat them. He and his thuggish co-workers go in search of his patients' memories via drugs, isolation and experimental regression. Sentence by chilly sentence, Davidson is a fine writer, proud of looking where others would turn away. All the scenes add up to a narrative composed mostly of rape, incest, confinement, violent erotic fantasies and their creative enactmentsApart Dennis Cooper, part Marquis de Sade. Davidson aims first and last to shock; on those terms his book is a roaring success. Judged by other standards, it seems forced and thin. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. (September 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393320898
• ISBN-13: 978-0393320893
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,748,783 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fragmented yet touching, October 19, 2000

By 

Jennifer A Smith (Racine, WI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scar Culture (Paperback)

The beginning of the book was wonderful. Vivid. I could hear the characters' every heartbeat. As the stories of Click and Fright unfolded, I yearned for some sort of resolution, or at least an epiphany.

I was disappointed in the shift of narrative to the therapist, Sad. Though his story was compelling, I felt that the focus was drawn too far away from the children I'd met at the book's beginning. And his story was far less interesting and not as well written.

All in all, I think there were too many missed connections in this book, but I still enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to those interested in this genre.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars twisted, December 21, 2000

By 

mungo181 (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scar Culture (Paperback)

Compelling drama without resorting to the romantic or maudlin. The intentional vagueness ads alot to the emphemeral quality of the stories. I highly recommend this for people who enjoy non-traditional fiction.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinated and repelled, April 5, 2001

By 

E. Gironda (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Scar Culture (Paperback)

The beginning of this book is well written - the stories of the two children are vivid and while disturbing, not so far removed from reality as to seem unreasonable. The rest of the book, however, is somewhat of a mess. I found myself waiting for Sad to get back to the kids, and when he did, it was unsatisfying, and the torturous story seems to end without having a point.