Penetralia

by Jordan Krall

In the attic of his family home, Philip tortures abducted men in search of enlightenment. Using the knowledge left by his father, the Plague Doctor, he seeks to unlock the secrets of the universe, but weakness of the flesh won’t be ignored. The sordid overtures of his nymphomaniac sister, combined with his own perverse desires, soil his subjects before revelation can be found.
Now the return of Philip’s father is imminent. Judgment is at hand, and if the fate of his mother taught him anything, it’s that one mustn’t disappoint the Plague Doctor.

Genres: Bizarro Fiction, Horror, Fiction, Splatterpunk

104 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Books include:

TENTACLE DEATH TRIP
FISTFUL OF FEET
MOTEL MAN
KING SCRATCH
BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE APOCALYPSE DONKEYS
PIECEMEAL JUNE
SQUID PULP BLUES
NEWLY SHAVEN SAINT
UNFRUITFUL WORKS
PRELUDE TO SPACE RAPE!
SQUID KILLS
THE PISTOL BURPS
ALL POEMS MUST DIE
FALSE MAGIC KINGDOM
BAD ALCHEMY
THE GOG AND MAGOG BUSINESS
YOUR CITIES, YOUR TOMBS

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Serial killer Philip and his nymphomaniac sister Elizabeth continue their father, The Plague Doctor,'s unholy experiments on hapless young men until a letter arrives. Daddy's coming home...

I've been reading bizarro fiction for a couple years now and I've learned Jordan Krall always delivers the goods. When I heard about Penetralia, I snapped it up. More akin to gore-horror like Edward Lee, Penetralia is some disturbing stuff. Philip and Elizabeth torture young men in the name of research, continuing their father's research in exchange for living in his house rent-free in his absence, all the while thinking of their upbringing by the Plague Doctor. What will they do when he comes home?

Penetralia is not for the weak of heart. There is lots of incest, deviant sex, torture, necrophilia, and disturbing imagery. Disturbing imagery other than the incest, deviant sex, torture, and necrophilia, I mean. Funny thing, if you strip all that stuff away, it's kind of a coming of age story, Philip and Elizabeth finally standing up to their father.

I'm not really sure how to rate it. It's pretty powerful but I can't say I actually liked it or enjoyed it.

[Nefariousbig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm going to tell you something. You don't want to hear it. You will want to forget it once you do. Those things that happen in that big house down the street, they are not as bad as you think. They are worse.

In the 14th century, during the time of the Black Death in Europe, Plague doctors were an unmistakable sign of suffering and disease, and imminent death. Plague doctors often wore a costume to protect themselves from infection. Their mask, in particular, was quite menacing:





The “beak” was filled with scented herbs, such as lavender and myrrh, to protect them from the disease. Father is a plague doctor. Father wears his costume with pride and honor. Father is a bad Father. Father needs protection. Protection against his miasmatic, unpleasant, sad and infected offspring.

Philip is a sadistic necrophiliac. Elizabeth is a murderous nymphomaniac. As most siblings do, Elizabeth and Philip have a bond. They enjoy many of the same hobbies: kidnapping, torture, incest. Philip is weak and vicious. Elizabeth is ravenous and strong willed. Philip fucks his sister and dead men, and does unspeakable things to their bodies. Elizabeth fucks her brother, and her Father, and the neighbors, and trips on wild mushrooms. But, the most disturbing bond Elizabeth and Philip share is a craving, a deep and terrifying hunger, for Father's love and approval. Whether it is torture, sex, or vivisection, they want to be loved and appreciated by Father. As the Black Death was punishment for the world’s iniquitous behavior, Father is punishment for their unbearable, inescapable, vile existence. Father brings the pain and suffering. They want to please father. They want to bring the pain and suffering. It's never enough. Father is never pleased.

Krall’s story is short. For all its base, perverse, degenerate sickness, it is enthralling. It is wicked and reprehensible. When I finished, I wanted more. I wanted much more. I wanted it all. Father would be pleased.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars

I am a fan of Jordan Krall's. I love that he writes bizarro fiction that cross many genres. His books are not for the feint of heart. They are not wholesome feel good stories. They are however wonderful blends of horror, the new weird, and just about every other genre there is.

Penetralia is simply best defined as a book of depravity, derangement, and daddy issues. It is a story about a family with a really fucked up father. There is a great deal of torture, raping, killing, rituals, and other sick and twisted acts.

I liked this book, I did not love it as I have other works by Krall. I would have scored it less but I am giving it higher marks for Krall not holding back or trying to make it more accessible.

[Karl]

This copy is signed by Jordan Krall.

[James Stone · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first reading, to my knowledge, of a book from a genre I am told is called, "Bizarro." That title fits very well. I could easily say that this book is just a mish mash of utter nonsense, and, in a way, it is. However, I couldn't and didn't want to stop reading it. This tells me something.
I will put it this way: there is a dark genius to Krall's writing. The tales are convoluted, it is not a novel, but it could be see as a perversion of what the literary world would typically call a novel. Put together as a series of stories, they all revolved around the father, son and daughter of one family. There is a very good story regarding the father and how he came to be as he is. He is a very dark, deeply perverse "scientist" of some sort who experiments on live subjects. Human subjects. His son is supposed to be carrying on the research but we never find out just what that research is for, other than to satisfy the very darkly perverse needs of father and son.
There is strong enmity between father and son, and there is open incest between father and daughter and brother and sister. There is some suggestion that sister may also be somewhat of a necrophile.
There is no question that this is a book for a very small audience, those who appreciate what may well be very dark genius and VERY explicit gore scenes. It is not for those with weak hears. Still, if you feel the need for something very grossly different from mainstream horror, you may find this fun to read. And, IT REALLY IS QUITE BIZARRE!

[April Cote · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you want to read a book full of incest and sex with dead corpses....this is it. The entire book. It was pretty twisted. The idea of what they were trying to do intrigued me, but it was never really went into that. It just described their trauma. Could have been better.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sadistic serial killer, powerful hitting, disturbing imagery is few words that hold this books description. Krall’s deviant design of the plague doctor is a nightmarish journey of sadness, haunt and tormented prose that drives its beak deep into the gullet and punctures your insides until they bleed.

[Pierre · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Oedipus complex acted out to its fullest in bizarro land.
When I finished this book, I was left wondering what it was about.
I didn't get it. We learn of a son trying to continue his father's research, but although we find out that it requires human subjects whose lives are gradually and horribly leached from them, we never find out what this research is about. There is a passage with mysticism where the father is consulting with some ancient desert sage but I was left befuddled as to what specifically the father might have learned from this encounter. There are drug induced visions all through for all characters.
Then I realized that none of this really mattered to my understanding of the novel. It was all there to populate the real drama which was the relationship of the father with his daughter and son and the deceased mother. As in classical Oepipus complex theory, the son loves the mother and fantasizes sexually about her, the daughter does the same with the father, the son-father rivalry is there, so is the daughter-deceased mother rivalry and a host of other factors of the complex, such as the castration anxiety for the boy and the penis envy for the girl. . In this novel though, all the incestuous sexual desires are acted out along with a whole slew of other deviances found in Bizarro works.
Taken from this perspective, the book became a lot more interesting to me.

[R.A. Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is disgusting. It's so disgusting and entertaining that you'll probably come away psychologically changed, deranged, maddened and horny as hell. But horny for the wrong reasons.

Right now you think: "Incest, that's cool." But wait until you've read this book.

Then you'll think: "Eurgh, Krall ruined incest for me". But you won't be mad. You'll be horny. You'll be so horny that you start questioning your own sexuality. And then, you'll probably begin to enjoy those perverse things you never thought you would. You will accidentally conflate being sick at disgusting and grotesque imagery with getting a pop-on in your pants or a wet-tart in your panties because one minute Krall is writing about this mad young pair of siblings and their strange experiments, and the next he has the daughter getting all incestuous with her father. Oh god, I am forever scarred by this book.

Just, if you like Krall's gross-out stuff, you'll love this one. I know I did.

[Dustin Reade · Rating 4 out of 5]

deeply strange. deeply offensive. surreal and beautiful. scary. off-putting.
check all that apply.

Krall has gone for the deepest pits of disgust with this one. he has written here, something dark and terrible. Incest. Torture. Drugs. Murder. Gore. Porn.

I loved it. really. Krall can really write. when a character hallucinates, you are right there with them, seeing what they see, feeling what they feel. black giraffes on bicycles. books exploding into "storms of doves".

A book that reads like a fever dream.

[Sheldon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, we need to get one thing out of the way: The title of this book, Penetralia, is not actually as dirty as it sounds. The definition is:

1. the innermost parts or recesses of a place or thing.

2. the most private or secret things.

Okay, so you can get your mind out of the gutter.

Okay, now put your mind right back in that gutter.

Penetralia by Jordan Krall is a hard book to get your head around. You're constantly slapped around by images of physical and sexual violence, and yet there's a constant promise that there's going to be a grand revelation of wisdom through these actions. The story follows a family who is seeking through violent experiments on unwilling subjects/victims for an ultimate Wisdom as prescribed through ancient texts. The grown-up brother and sister, Philip and Elizabeth, are conducting these experiments on their own in their father's absence, who dresses in a plague doctor costume and is away for unknown reasons but will be returning soon.

Right away, you will realize that it takes a strong stomach to get through Penetralia. Krall has never shied away from gross and violent gross imagery before. In some books, like Squid Pulp Blues for example, he seemed have a strange obsession with characters releasing their bowels at inopportune times. In Penetralia, Krall has kicked it up more than a couple of notches. Almost from the get go, you're shown that this is a very incestuous family, and that some of the experiments performed on their subjects/victims to reveal the ultimate Wisdom involve extraction and consumption of numerous bodily fluids and substances. Seriously, do not read this right after you've eaten. I have a cast-iron stomach, and even I felt a little queasy after one of the early scenes where Philip consumes one of their subject's vomit.

If you can get past this (or even if these parts were cut out or rewritten), it's not so much a story about torture, murder, and incest, but becomes a story of an extremely dysfunctional family that suffered continual and extreme abuse at the hands of their patriarch. While Philip resents his father for the abuse with every fiber of his being, he still does everything he can to continue his father's work knowing full well that he will never earn his father's approval. Elizabeth, on the other hand, has a case of Stockholm syndrome, loving her father deeply even for or because of the abuse she has suffered, despite knowing in the back of her mind that what she has suffered through was horrible and violent.

This made the book very frustrating. Krall is a great writer, and the prose is brilliant throughout, clean (not counting the gross imagery), and quick to read, even with making you stop to reread something or think about a particular scene carefully. But the imagery felt unnecessary to what would have been a fascinating story, and even distracted from it. The disturbing images felt like they were put in for sheer shock value. In that respect, they do their job well. But the story underneath it is actually very interesting. The story of a dysfunctional family who finally come to terms with the abuse they've suffered and confronting their abuser is actually quite engaging, but it becomes buried in the shock scenes so heavily that it's difficult to see. You practically get two separate books, one for shock value and one for a heartbreaking story, but the two don't mesh well and are constantly fighting for your attention.

Overall, Penetralia has some great writing, a potentially powerful story, and vivid if disturbing imagery. I know that Krall has recently moved away from writing bizarro fiction, and Penetralia may have been his swan song in the genre. It's certainly a strong and powerful way to bow out, but it was a little too extreme for my tastes. I sort of wish he had bowed out sooner and written Penetralia with more focus on the story than the imagery, which based on his False Magic Kingdom series he can clearly do. Don't get me wrong. Krall has a real talent for descriptive imagery and storytelling, but in Penetralia, those to forces seem to be at war with each other rather than support each other, making it confusing and not my particular cup of tea.

Penetralia by Jordan Krall earns 3 plague outfits out of 5.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a book for the squemish. Penetralia is a dark disturbing book filled with incest and madness. It reads like a classic B-horror film on acid. Krall has given us a story that is so twisted and bizzare you have to read it to believe it.

What makes Penetralia so good is Krall's knack for story telling. You are pulled into the story and once you're hooked there's no stopping until it's finished. No review can do this book justice. You have to read this for yourself and draw your own conclusions but you have been warned. Penetralia is a dark bizarro hybrid filled with disturbing visuals and images.

[The Local Spooky Hermit · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this a loooong while ago it was... gross to just be gross but I guess I must have had that idea when I got it.
all I can remember was possible zombie but I know there was gnome sex, dead body sex, and incest. and I read It just bc of the plague doctor cover. huh.. not for me like I can't really say what the plot was other then the son hates the dad and the dad just hates everyone and the sister loves both brother and dad but I guess the brother way more and then dead bodies and lots of odd sex for no reason. then gnome sex. and some porn store was visited. something about a dead mom. THE PLOT EVERYONE.

[Ahimsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. A scatological joy; dark fiction at its best.

[Kyle Atwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most disturbing and unfiltered stories I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Brilliant stuff.

[MW · Rating 1 out of 5]

Um.....this was definitely not for me. The onslaught of mindless abuse and perversion not for the sake of a meaningful plotline, but for shock value was absolutely nauseating. No thanks.

[Vincenzo Bilof · Rating 5 out of 5]

A journey through sexual nightmare and repression, “Penetralia” is an erotic horror story that challenges our perception of perversion to the brink. In stretches, the entire piece reads like a prose poem, with repeated imagery and sensory details which serves to haunt the tormented characters who are helpless against the mental and physical rape of their identities. There’s nothing simple about this story’s presentation; on its surface is a surreal tale of personal horror and sexual identity crises masterminded by a tyrannical father, but “Penetralia” is a painted design that is not meant to be read on the surface.

I couldn’t help but wonder about the prose mechanism; the characters are bombarded with horrors that afflict their five senses, but the manner in which the sexual acts are described is simple and blunt. Forceful and violent, Krall’s superimposition of sensation and physicality represent a unique dichotomy which is paralleled by sexual philosophy that is implied rather than described. It’s as if Krall suggests that these horrors are nothing new, but are rather ancient in scope, a plague of repression that has spread across the world, only to be cured by the masked “plague doctor” driven by prophetic and messianic principles.

I couldn’t help but find myself entranced by a sense of vicious honesty that isolated Krall’s characters from the world we think we understand, or want to understand. This is a book that will inspire revulsion and dread; courageous and self-aware people who are comfortable with themselves will find “Penetralia” to be both moving and disturbing, as I did. “Are people like this?” you might wonder about the characters. Deep down, you know the truth is not so difficult to grasp… It’s nothing more than a reflection of something personal and secret.

[J.W. Wargo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written book. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there is something sublime going on here. It manages to remains subtle despite being truly disturbing. And while it is disturbing and even disgusting at times, this isn't a horror book. Yes, horrific things happen, but not in a way that sensationalizes the violence.

Phillip and Elizabeth are siblings who live in a giant Victorian manor where Phillip continues the work of his father, a plague doctor who is out traveling when the book begins. Their mother has been dead for years. Phillip and Elizabeth have a love-hate enabling relationship. She craves abuse from Phillip, who hates that she loves the abuse at all, and Phillip abides because he loves her and wants to protect her.

The work Phillip performs requires human subjects. Elizabeth seduces men and brings them home to drug for her brother. Phillip than experiments on the bodies using various archaic contraptions in the hope of extracting some absolute form of wisdom from the victims.

What follows is a story about the search for truth while a family tries to cope with each other and their mad sexual proclivities. The children sacrificing everything to appease a father who's egotism knows no bounds. But what happens when good children snap? How long can a son hold inside all the anger and resentment toward a father who only shows him disappointment and disapproval?

Follow the black giraffes on their bicycles into a world of arcane texts, sexual frustration, and the plague called Family we are all infected with.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Krall's book had a number of interesting parts and was in keeping with the comic book surrealism of the Bizarro movement but the parts failed to gel and what is worse the story was not engaging. Along with the story, the character were cliché.

This reader was not disturbed by the violence, the sexuality, or the sexual identity confusion -- that is now all pretty common, though not quite the norm. Krall's deployment of these tropes remained unconvincing, to be fair most, almost all, authors in the Bizarro tradition fail at this.

The one trope that this reviewer fails to understand is the prurient, adolescent misogyny. Misogyny is all well and good, and in this narrative it is fed by the male protagonist's sexual confusion, but it still does not resonate as genuine. Even the sister, who is the most fully formed character in the book, fails to emerge as believable.

Of course, this is absurdism and surrealism so 'real' is not the focus of the narrative but believable within the story should be. Neither of these characters, or their father, is believable.

For fanboys of Bizarro Fiction only.

[Joel Donald · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book By Krall I read, but it wasn't the last. I'm really impressed with this book. If you like what you read in the synopsis you won't be disappointed. this to me is a beautiful book. it is extremely dark and weird. Krall paints a lush world you get lost in and you want it to go on and on.
Very intense and strange imagery through out this book. If you are like me and have a love for the artistry of the macabre you will love it. If you need every single plot point clearly explained and are terrified at the thought of having to interpret something for yourself then this book may not be for you. I found all the characters in this book to be extremely like-able and realistic which blends well with the more surreal aspects. this would be a killer movie. totally deserves 5 stars. if you like your horror extremely dark, strange, and visceral DO NOT MISS THIS BOOK!

[Jamey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in one sitting which is something that is very rare for me. Philip and his sister Elizabeth are brother and sister who live together, perform experiments on the men they kidnap together, and have a pretty extreme love/hate relationship. Their overbearing father (The Plague Doctor) comes for a visit and things start to go out of control. There is gore, there is incest, there is violence, but the way almost poetic wording of these actions are what make this book special. I really enjoyed this one, and if you like Ed Lee and extreme fiction, you'll like it too.

[Emma Alice Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfectly Messed Up Family Drama (With A Family Of Pervs)

The writing in this book is just solid as hell. Probably the most elegant handling of this sort of perversion since Story of the Eye. At its heart, this is a family drama. The family is really messed up though. Incestuous, murderous, rude. Even though this particular family seems to be on some sort of spiritual scientific quest via sex and murder, they have the same problems that every other family has. Sibling in-fighting and a dad whose expectations for his children are never satisfied. This is a quick and crucial read.

[Ginger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whoa...

I read the entire book in two nights. it is not too long, and very engaging. but extremely dark and twisted. The prose is beautiful and creates vivid imagery...yet at the same time I am now wishing I could wash my brain. It is rare that something truly shocks me, but this book achieved that. Something about the rape, incest, and especially all the vomit and scat descriptions. Saying that this book is not for the faint of heart doesn't go far enough. Yet I'm still glad I read it...though I can't say why.

[Auntie Raye-Raye · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure that I quite understood this. Let me think on it.

[Dana King · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disturbing prose. This book will crawl down into the most depraved crevices of your soul and make itself at home. Haunting.

[Brittany · Rating 3 out of 5]

Totally revolting and just as much enthralling.
Couldn't put it down.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Afterall a good read but in the end it gets quite confusing...