Purge 1

PURGE 1

Review: FOUR CIRCLES by Meg McCarville

If Harmony Korine and Max Hardcore made a film about a budding modern day Aileen Wuornos it would probably watch a lot like Four Circles reads.

Meg takes on a ride through a handful of choice chapters from her life, from rape to crack den to rape to suicide motel to miscarriage to trailer park to rape. And all with a wild sense absurdity and humor, aided no doubt by the plethora of street-level drugs she's on. Given the subject matter, it's a feat that the book punches along like a Hannah-Barbera cartoon on crack.

I would say reading Four Circles is akin to repeatedly skinning your shin while eating fruity pebbles. This book somehow feels warm and nostalgic while still being utterly real and nightmarish. Maybe it's because I dropped out of school and ran with similar ne'er do well's that this is the case. Some of these adventures feel ripped from the periphery of my life and especially the lives of people I've known that are now either dead or worse. Given what McCarville has gone through, it's really a wonder that she's still here and coherent enough to write a very good book.

All this is not to say that Four Circles is for everyone. Please don't think that. I imagine many readers will relate the book to being repeatedly flicked in the nuts or clit. This is a trashy book written for trashy people. It is gratuitous to a level bordering on rape-revenge porn. It even comes with a kind of trigger warning on the back. Which, coming from the publisher Amphetamine Sulphate, says a lot.

Some might find Four Circles overblown, gimmicky, or childish. And well it sort of is. If addiction, depravity, and constant sex crimes (written with a flair for the absurd) is a gimmick. McCarville isn't going to win any awards for her prose, but she is damned funny in the midst of real American sickness. No clue what Kafka would have thought of this book, but it definitely aims to stab and wound us.