Controller

by Sally Ashton

Shortlisted for Route s Next Great Yorkshire Novelist Competition Shortlisted for Sabotage Review s Saboteur Awards Best Novella He stands. Slack thud of the drawing pad, dropping onto the floor. His dry shadow, solid and smooth, begins to lap up the oil-slick puddles of sunshine that are around my feet. From my view his broad shoulders block out light, white and blind from the window. How far would you go to satisfy your desires Sex and punishment, art and exploitation, Controller is the debut novella from one of the UK s finest young writers. A young traveller finds herself in Northern Spain, working as an artist s model. As her relationship with the artist deepens and darkens, her experience of the city, those around her and the nature of art and desire change.

72 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2012

Reviews

[Sadie Hartmann]

I'm not going to rate this because I didn't finish it. I was so on board with this 30% into it. The prose is sparse and the main character, Laura, is weird but interesting. A young woman who left home is now modeling for an art class.
Around 40% the story leans into body horror; the detailed descriptions are very detailed and graphic--uncomfortable. 50% I had to tap out. The MC finds some photographs in a drawer and then describes them in explicit detail and I wish I hadn't read what I read. Fucking sick.
TW for grotesque subject matter, unsexy sex stuff, and horrible disgusting shit with the corpses of children. Ugh. No. Bye.

[Becky Filipek · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disturbing and Weird

The free form is distracting. The content is violent and awful. There is no point or real plot. A disturbing read, not a good one. I'm not into this kind of thing, but I had to read something from Dead Ink for a class.

[Phil Herbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short read at ~90 pages, but one that took me a while to get through. It's incredibly dark and dense, with pages and pages focused on minute movements and senses. The prose is often stilting and sparse, and it sometimes took a lot of concentration on my part to follow what was happening. It's consistently beautiful, though:

Her deft, quick hands. The lid of the milk, pour thick, opaque stream, pan, pan handle, metal, click of lighting, flame blue.

The book doesn't beat around the bush when it comes to the darker subject matter. Some of the scenes (the photos and the virus) were very, very gruesome and disturbing, and I struggled to get through portions of it.

I appreciated Ashton's note at the start - that Controller is an exploration of the Male Gaze, and was not intended to be interpreted as erotica. I'm stealing this directly from the testimonials on the back, but it really is a striking dive into the relationship between artist and model.

[Kelsey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t know what I just read. Honestly, I don’t. Mainly because the writing was so sparse and fragmented, it was all I could focus on. That’s it. That’s the whole review.

[Belladonna Le Strange · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whoa..