Lights Out In Wonderland, by DBC Pierre

Vicariously living the drug-addled, suicide-obsessed life of the delinquent first-person narrator, Gabriel Brockwell, in DBC Pierre’s Lights Out in Wonderland, was a strange and unnerving experience. But I got through it, mainly because I was too weirded-out to stop reading. The book has nothing to do with Lewis Carrol’s “Wonderland”. The title refers to the fact that, in reality, life is brutal and not nice and people fool themselves into thinking everything will turn out fine – in short: the lights will inevitably go out in Wonderland. Gabriel’s life goes down the drain at a smart pace and one reads on with a rising sense of dread of the outcome. (Continue reading…)