Paul has hated the world and everyone in it since he was eight years old. As an adult he has decided to write his autobiography, his final words directed at the very existence that he despises. Paul will take you on a path of murder, death, incest, and violence, the likes of which you could never imagine.
Dark bleatings everyone! Dark indeed…
As part of my “reading extreme horror” experiment, I picked this up based on several recommendations from the kindly folk in the Books of Horror group on FB. So this is their fault.
Out of 5 extreme horror books, this is the one I started with. In fairness, I was warned that as a beginner, I probably shouldn’t start with this. But I was a kid raised on Return to Oz, and stupidly, I thought it would be fine.
You know… I was surprised in some ways. Like, for example, as soon as I started reading. On the first page, I was assaulted by horrible language and the mention of incest. I think I laughed out of shock. ‘Okay, I see’ I thought. But you guys, I didn’t see. That was just the tip (ew, don’t say “the tip” right now, Kayl) of the iceberg.
To summarise, this book is the world’s longest suicide note, written by the world’s edgiest edge-lord. He’s just a horrid specimen, truth be told, and his adventures are not exactly the stuff of The Hero’s Journey. However… (oh yes, there’s a ‘however’), I was engaged the whole time.
I’m a very sensitive person so I didn’t think I’d like anything in this genre. Typically, I tend to avoid films and books that depict real-world human suffering. It’s just too horrible and too much for me. Stuff like Hostel, while I like the concept, is basically unwatchable for me. Nothing in my entire life has ever scared me more than the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. However, something about reading an insane, extreme, and grotesque amount of it like this had a weird effect. I think it was because it was written in the first-person, and therefore the language and cursing was very explicit, but I was desensitised entirely to the happenings of this vile story. Had my sense of empathy remained intact, I don’t think I could have finished it. I didn’t know my empathy had a switch, but apparently it does, and off it popped. This rendered me able to enjoy (if enjoy is the right word?) the story.
However horrible and over the top I found it all, I was engaged and interested the whole time. I forgot why this book was first-person, so also forgot that I already knew where it was all headed for the protagonist. Additionally, the author has a sense of humour about his character and what he’s writing, and it shone through when other characters were responding to the main dude, Paul. I rolled my eyes at him so many times, but so did other characters. I started to find it… dare I say… funny. The more extreme it got, the funnier I found it. I suppose, in the interest of getting anything aside from nihilism out of this story, I had to find the humour in it. But it wasn’t forced, it was sincere. I… I chuckled quite a bit.
Also, I have to say I think Stuart Bray is a good writer and I’ll be looking out for more of his work. I’m very interested in reading something that he’s written in the third person and I look forward to it.
I’d recommend this if you’re an extreme horror fan. I personally don’t really have specific triggers, I’m just sort of generally offended by everything, but if you’re new to the extreme horror subgenre, I highly suggest checking out the trigger warnings for this book first just in case (there is a lot of highly sensitive subject matter).
If you’d like to get your own copy of the book, there’s a link for you below:
Happy Goat Horror 
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