Synopses & Reviews
The Marbled Swarm is Dennis Coopers most haunting work to date. In secret passageways, hidden rooms, and the troubled mind of our narrator, a mystery perpetually takes shape — and the most compelling clue to its final nature is “the marbled swarm” itself, a complex amalgam of language passed down from father to son.
Cooper ensnares the reader in a world of appearances, where the trappings of high art, old money, and haute cuisine obscure an unspeakable system of coercion and surrender. And as the narrator stalks an elusive truth, traveling from the French countryside to Paris and back again, the reader will be seduced by a voice only Dennis Cooper could create.
Review
“There is a brutal honesty to this novel, a brutal wisdom.” Barnes & Noble's "Unabashedly Bookish"
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"A button-pushing portrait of sex and rage, told with Sade-esque fervor." Kirkus Reviews
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"[P]alpable and dizzying....Decadent readers bored with de Sade's imaginings can use Cooper's book to fill the modern void." Library Journal
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"Readers unfamiliar with transgressive fiction would do well to brace themselves for what will either be the shock of the unrelentingly different or, perhaps, the shock of recognizing writing that speaks to their souls." Booklist
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"[A] twisting, twisted novel....Almost every physical structure has hidden catacombs within, mirroring the narrative layers, the stories within stories." Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Dennis Cooper is the author of the George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of five novels: Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period. His other works include My Loose Thread; The Sluts, winner of France's Prix Sade and the Lambda Literary Award; God, Jr.; Wrong; The Dream Police; and Ugly Man. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Paris.