The Room - Harrowing and Graphic
Hubert Selby Jr. writes depraved characters with a flourish. I love how eccentric his style is. This story is written like a stream of consciousness with little to no grammar and odd spacing to indicate the changes from the main character's thoughts to his physical settings. For some, this may prove a difficult read based on these characteristics alone. And if that doesn't put you off, then the violent machinations probably will.
The Room is about a man sitting in prison. His cell is his room. With nothing but time, he putters around his 9x6 space and spends nearly every waking moment pondering revenge fantasies about the cops who imprisoned him (wrongfully or not). He has thoughts within thoughts, like a tangent about how those cops *probably* pulled over a woman and brutally raped her and got away with that *in addition* to whatever they did to him to get him imprisoned. Memories from childhood fold themselves into the narrative as well, but surrounding every thought is seething rage, which makes everything unreliable.
I can't decide if this guy is insane, wrongfully convicted, or a product of the prison system. Like Schrödinger's cat, this man is suspended in time in The Room in a way that indicates all of those options are simultaneously possible and impossible.
An exigent read with many trigger warnings (rape, sexuality, graphic violence), but it's worth it if you're a Hubert Selby Jr. fan.