Living up to its reputation, this putrid book was not the breeziest read. Relentless misery hedged by long descriptive passages of piggy sex, shitting and slaughter. The prose is a waking nightmare that blurs ruined faces together, flattens time, and only becomes lucid in the abattoir.
The result is ambitious & engaging, but the brutality doesn't lead to much beyond a self-contained pessimism. Pasolini without a sense of humor. I suppose that puts Del Amo in a very french lineage of Flaubert, de Maupassant and Zola; great misanthropes whose excellent stories become tediously predictable.
Here's a nice passage about kitten slaughter that I got a kick out of:
