Scar Culture

by Toni Davidson

Two profoundly abused patients deemed untreatable by orthodox professionals fall into the hands of a manipulative psychologist almost as damaged as they are. Bored by the "hack work" of standard therapy, he wants to make his name through radical intervention. He sets up elaborate hallucinogenic and regression experiments designed to take his patients back to the scene of the crimes against them in an attempt to rebuild them from the ground up. But in playing therapeutic god, ripping away at their psychic scars, he's courting disaster.

A brilliant debut novel that is destined to challenge the way we think about psychotherapy, Scar Culture is breathtaking, at times shocking, provocative, humane, sharp-witted and always riveting, marking the arrival of an extraordinary new voice.

Genres: Fiction, Mental Illness, Psychology, British Literature, Adult Fiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Toni Davidson was born in Ayr in 1965. He has edited And Thus I Will Freely Sing (1989) and Intoxication: An Anthology of Stimulant-Based Writing (1998). His novel Scar Culture was published in 1999.

Author photo by Ben Dixon.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Like William Faulkner's 'The Sound and the Fury', 'Scar Culture' is a book not to read, but to reread...A brave, imaginative leap into the murk and horror of the human psyche, Davidson's achievement is magnificent and terrible...This is a book that undermines its own emergence as product, by the sheer and terrifying power of its writing." Sunday Herald (Scottish newspaper)

"...one of the most confident literary novels of the year, poised and unrhetorical, and no less chilling for its quiet reticence about physical and sexual horror...This is a work that needs to be read with the almost musical responsiveness one ideally brings to poetry...it is one of the most searching books of recent years." The Independent Newspaper (London)

"An account of pure, undiluted wickedness, it is hard to imagine this novel being bettered." Daily Telegraph (London)

"Deliberately ambiguous and provocative...deft, brave...mighty strange, highly unorthodox and disturbing." Straight No Chaser (UK based, now defunct magazine)

"Like Ken Kesey's 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' slugging it out with Dorothy Allison's 'Bastard Out of Carolina'...Combining an ambitious structure with an elaborate understanding of the various psychiatric methods used to treat victims of child abuse, Davidson has crafted a work of spellbinding contemporary fiction out of a taboo subject." Nick Johnstone, Uncut (London based magazine)

"...a dark and fearsomely clever story." The Times (London)
All of the above quotes are from the Rebel Inc., 2000, paperback edition

I read this novel twenty years ago after discovering Toni Davidson through a short story in an anthology (which one I cannot recall but wish I could) it was, and remains, one of the finest most extraordinary pieces of writing I have ever come across. That it is ranked one of the top 100 Scottish novels doesn't surprise me, but it should be in the top 100 English language novels.

I have included so many contemporary reviews because they express so much more of this novel's quality than I (and certainly any of the other English language reviews on Goodreads) could hope too. I was delighted to rediscover and buy this novel recently because it had haunted me for years, long after I had mislaid the details of the title and author. So many novels, even novels you like, leave scant imprints. Those that do, like this one, are precious and should be cherished.

I can't resist commenting on how 'transgressive', challenging, horrifying, disturbing and at times upsetting some people might find this novel. I would agree that it is all those things, if you are so sensitive that you need to be warned that a book/film/tv program mentions something not 'nice' then you probably shouldn't read this or any other intelligent or adult book.

If you imagine that 'transgressive' literature can be found in all those rather tired imitators of Kathy Acker and Dennis Cooper who present their 'challenging' literary works with all the aplomb of a those performance artists who drop a pile of shit on stage and a look challenging at the audience to not find what they have done extraordinary then this novel may not be for you. Because a pile of shit is just a pile of shit unless there is something real and true behind it. This novel is true, frighteningly so. It will and should disturb and haunt you.

[Arax Miltiadous · Rating 2 out of 5]

Άλλο ένα βιβλίο που με άφησε με αμφιθυμία...
Το μισό μου "είναι" επαναστατούσε μπροστά στα τόσα νοσηρά, εγκληματικά περιστατικά που αφειδώς κατέγραφε το βιβλίο ως προς την σεξουαλική και λοιπών ειδών κακοποίηση που υπέστηκαν τα πειραματόζωα του Θλιβερού, καθώς και για την ίδια την δικιά του καταδυνάστευση προς την αδερφή του.
Η αλήθεια, το ήξερα κάπου μέσα μου πως θα ήταν ακραίο εφόσον η σειρά των εκδόσεων Οξύ-Παραμόρφωση, επιλεγεί τέτοιους είδους μυθιστοριογραφίες για έκδοση. Απλά, ίσως τελικά να μην το άντεχε ο δικός μου ψυχισμός.
Πέραν αυτού,
Στηρίζεται πολύ και εστιάζεται στην διεύρυνση των ψυχαναλυτικών μεθόδων ίασης όπως και στην εναλλακτική πειραματική μέθοδο που μπορεί ο καθένας να αναπτύξει ξεχωριστά, ούτως ώστε να αντιμετωπίζει την κάθε περίπτωση ως μοναδική και ανεπανάληπτη. Παρότι θέτει παραδείγματα πολύ εύστοχα τα οποία περιγράφει λεπτομερειακά και πάλι, δεν κατάφερε να με κερδίσει 100%.

"ο σωστός επιστήμονας δεν γνωρίζει επιστημονικά στεγανά... γι αυτό και ο τέταρτος κανόνας της ψυχοθεραπείας είναι ότι σε κάθε περίπτωση ο σκοπός αγιάζει τα μέσα."

"Ο έβδομος κανόνας είναι να μην χάνεις πότε την αίσθηση του παράλογου και ο δέκατος έκτος είναι ότι σε μια μάχη θελήσεων ο ψυχαναλυτής πρέπει να βγαίνει πάντοτε νικητής."

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember I found this book odd. Something like a car accident, I couldn't just stop reading it. I had to follow through to the conclusion. But this was definitely not something I would recommend for anyone. It left me shaking my head and frowning.

[Konstantinos Kapositas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dives you into the perseptective of the abused one...very strong. Will read it again

[Jack Deighton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had it not been for that 100 best Scottish Books list I would never have sought this out. As it was I couldn’t say I enjoyed it exactly but it was interesting and well written. It has an odd structure though, broken up into five sections titled respectively Click, Fright, Sad, Preparation, The Experiment and the viewpoint shifts between Click and Fright and Fright and Sad are a bit jarring – but probably intentionally so.

The first two are memoirs of two inmates in The Breathhouse, a psychiatric institution, where the inmates have all been given nicknames by the staff to illustrate their quirks (not only Click and Fright, but also Blade, Dogger, Treats and Synth.)

Click took photographs both in actuality (once he was given a camera by his parents) and in his head. He calls his parents Exit (because she did) and Panic (because he was prone to.) Fright’s section is a transcript of tapes made of him relating his memories as part of his therapy. He and his brother witnessed his mother’s death at the hands of his father and were later subjected to dark experiences in a caravan. The last three sections are written from the viewpoint of Dr Curtis Sad who is indulging in psychosexual research in the area of inter-family sexuality. Sad calls his other professionals psychohacks, and receives communications from Peterson, a like-minded psychosexual researcher in the US (but whose letters, rendered in the text in italics, use British English spellings.)

Sad is obsessed with his Sister Josie, about whom he has memories/fantasies of a distinctly unbrotherly hue. These demonstrate he is as loopy as any of the inmates. He refers to “memory recovery as a form of lethal weapon,” is setting up an exercise in milieu therapy in which he will reconstruct the environments in which Click and Fright suffered their traumas. He enlists Blade, Dogger, Treats and Synth to help construct these. Does this sound as if all will go well?

Three appendices provide us respectively with the Rules of Psychiatry which Curtis refers to in sequence at intervals in the main narrative, notes from his sister Julie’s (much needed in my opinion given Sad’s account of her childhood and adolescence) psychotherapy sessions, and an index of Click’s photos.

In Scar Culture Davidson has opened up the world of the psychologically disturbed (and perhaps that of the practitioners of psychiatric well-being.) It is certainly important to consider in fiction the plight of the mentally unwell – and of those whose upbringing has rendered them unstable – but it is by no means a comfortable experience to read of them.

Curiously, my edition has rough-cut page edges (though the tops and bottoms were smooth) as if it had been published in the nineteenth century.

[Amie-Rose Struzik · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those unforgettable books of which I can always rememeber the name of to recommend to others.
The beautiful writing grants forgiveness for the haunting themes. Perfectly achieves that which I imagine the author wanted, because it cannot be faulted as a psychological, disturbing thriller.

Loved it. Ties up all the strings that fetter around you as you read it, with the strings all coming to the bomb that the ending is.

[Mal Nox · Rating 5 out of 5]

it made me shiver from the beginning until the end.

[Lia · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is very painful to read. This book takes you to this darkness our humanity keeps inside.

[Лина Сакс · Rating 3 out of 5]

Похоже эта первая в моей жизни книга, от которой меня физически тошнило. То есть в книге были такие моменты, когда реально тошнота подкатывала к горлу. А я между прочим довольно цинична и меня на всякие мерзкие штучки развести сложно, но Тони Дэвидсон вот сумел. Если бы не "Книжное путешествие", по условиям там надо прочитать 60% книги и только потом сказать, мол все не могу, я бы бросила читать книгу на процентах 20. Но потом то ли свыклась, то ли читать стала более отстранено, то ли просто мне стали рассказывать про другое действующее лицо, но уже такой мерзости не было и книгу я прочитала до конца.

Так что предупреждаю сразу, если вы существо с тонкой душевной организацией, то вам даже близко к этой книге подходить не стоит. Не такая эта книга чтобы читать и наслаждаться, тут скорее о мерзостях и убогости человечества.

Честно говоря эту книгу даже по героям разбирать не могу, потому что вспоминаю и опять подкатывает. Могу сказать, что описанное ты не можешь не принять, оно не сверхъестественно. То есть такое может происходить с детьми. Такие люди могут существовать, такие проблемы в семьях вполне реальны, может от этого все еще более гадко, чем если бы это было просто больным воображением автора. Больные на голову люди есть везде и... короче, в книге рассказывается о сексуальном насилии над детьми, разные проявления этого насилия. Жутко, мерзко, страшно, отвратительно и куча больных на голову уродцев в обыденности происходящего и о невозможности сбежать, изменить, понять.

Я не хочу такое читать, меня от такого физически выворачивает.

[Piezke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unschlüssig, wie ich den Roman abschließend bewerten soll. Er nimmt sich ernst, aber ich finde den Dr. Sad bei all seiner Ekligkeit albern. Die sprachlichen Instinkte (auffällig: Bro-Lit-Ellipsen) sind aus der Postmoderne gefallen, keine Formulierung hallt nach, und im Shock Value ist Davidson merkwürdig ambivalent. Hier zurückhaltend, dort eindeutig.

[Alfie Woodhead · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tough read - mainly due to the fact that its riveting, perplexingly obscure opening flattens progressively to a much less interesting format, particularly in the final third, but also because it is very effective in how disturbing its portrayal of abuse is. I enjoyed the majority of this, but it really loses its footing at its climax and becomes a real tonal and formal clusterfuck.

[Karolina Omenzetter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can see what this book was trying to go for, and it definitely was quite horrific seeing how corrupt the human mind can be, but it failed to grip me. The subject it handles in itself is upsetting to read, but I struggled to follow the plot or to fully comprehend what was happening. This was likely to be intentional and due to it being written in first person, but I don't think I particularly liked the style of writing.

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm honestly not sure what to say about this book. The story is very odd and focuses on disturbing characters, whilst seeming muddled throughout. I think the writer has a lot of potential but this book was all in too much bad taste for my liking. The book seems to be more about trying to shock the reader than developing any form of story line, although I suppose it adds to the psychosis theme.

It was a struggle to read the whole book as it did not grab my attention (but I managed it in the end!) This story is about abandonment, abuse and incest and is quite graphic in places. I would not suggest this book to a friend.