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Four Circles
“It was over. There was no making up for it. There was nothing I could do. All of this right after Phillip gets out of the psych ward for trying to off himself. What a nightmare. How could things possibly get any worse? I had learned by now never to ask that question.”
Join your lusty host Meg McCarville for a hellishly undivine comedy as she leads you through a quartet of blazing infernos in modern America. Witness in horrified fascination the madness and drug-fuelled obscenity to be found in the decaying streets, crackhouses and trailer parks of Chicago, Oakland, Miami and New Orleans. There’s a terrifying cast of barbaric denizens that Meg has met, fucked (voluntarily or otherwise) and finally fled from in a degraded odyssey of self-discovery and preservation. We’re not in the business of issuing trigger warnings at Amphetamine Sulphate, but for just this one time we STRONGLY advise readers to exercise all due caution before embarking upon this particular pilgrim’s progress. Those brave enough, however, will be rewarded with the hard-earned wisdom of a born survivor and most incorrigibly independent woman.
File under: memoir / women’s studies / art and pornography
Join your lusty host Meg McCarville for a hellishly undivine comedy as she leads you through a quartet of blazing infernos in modern America. Witness in horrified fascination the madness and drug-fuelled obscenity to be found in the decaying streets, crackhouses and trailer parks of Chicago, Oakland, Miami and New Orleans. There’s a terrifying cast of barbaric denizens that Meg has met, fucked (voluntarily or otherwise) and finally fled from in a degraded odyssey of self-discovery and preservation. We’re not in the business of issuing trigger warnings at Amphetamine Sulphate, but for just this one time we STRONGLY advise readers to exercise all due caution before embarking upon this particular pilgrim’s progress. Those brave enough, however, will be rewarded with the hard-earned wisdom of a born survivor and most incorrigibly independent woman.
File under: memoir / women’s studies / art and pornography
- GenresFiction
90 pages, Paperback
First published March 7, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
April 4, 2019
Meg McCarville is your tour guide for a trip around four of the USA's more insalubrious destinations. Her encounters with the likes of the incredible paint-huffing human statue Goldman all make for a wild, druggy and life-affirming ride.
March 8, 2020
Brutally honest, unflinching account of impoverished urban living while dealing with mental issues and a crazy amount of drug/alcohol abuse going on. Incredible she went through all this while coming out not only alive, but able to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Don't want to spoil, but the way she handled the incident that finally inspired her to leave Florida was not only funny, but brought my jaw to the floor. Before reading, watch the Jerry Springer episode where she appears describing her sexual fetish for clowns!
October 10, 2019
Incredible. Totally ruthless.
March 31, 2019
American life can be laughably dangerous
March 14, 2021
Full Review
This, as you can probably guess, is not a book for people with weak stomachs. However, it's a damn great work and, if you can handle a constant barrage of disgusting and awful things, I highly recommend it.
This, as you can probably guess, is not a book for people with weak stomachs. However, it's a damn great work and, if you can handle a constant barrage of disgusting and awful things, I highly recommend it.
December 16, 2019
If Harmony Korine and Max Hardcore made a film about a budding modern day Aileen Wuornos it would probably watch a lot like Four Circles reads.
Meg takes on a ride through a handful of choice chapters from her life, from rape to crack den to rape to suicide motel to miscarriage to trailer park to rape. And all with a wild sense absurdity and humor, aided no doubt by the plethora of street-level drugs she's on. Given the subject matter, it's a feat that the book punches along like a Hannah-Barbera cartoon on crack.
I would say reading Four Circles is akin to repeatedly skinning your shin while eating fruity pebbles. This book somehow feels warm and nostalgic while still being utterly real and nightmarish. Maybe it's because I dropped out of school and ran with similar ne'er do well's that this is the case. Some of these adventures feel ripped from the periphery of my life and especially the lives of people I've known that are now either dead or worse. Given what McCarville has gone through, it's really a wonder that she's still here and coherent enough to write a very good book.
All this is not to say that Four Circles is for everyone. Please don't think that. I imagine many readers will relate the book to being repeatedly flicked in the nuts or clit. This is a trashy book written for trashy people. It is gratuitous to a level bordering on rape-revenge porn. It even comes with a kind of trigger warning on the back. Which, coming from the publisher Amphetamine Sulphate, says a lot.
Some might find Four Circles overblown, gimmicky, or childish. And well it sort of is. If addiction, depravity, and constant sex crimes (written with a flair for the absurd) is a gimmick. McCarville isn't going to win any awards for her prose, but she is damned funny in the midst of real American sickness. No clue what Kafka would have thought of this book, but it definitely aims to stab and wound us.
https://bluescapes.blogspot.com/2019/...
Meg takes on a ride through a handful of choice chapters from her life, from rape to crack den to rape to suicide motel to miscarriage to trailer park to rape. And all with a wild sense absurdity and humor, aided no doubt by the plethora of street-level drugs she's on. Given the subject matter, it's a feat that the book punches along like a Hannah-Barbera cartoon on crack.
I would say reading Four Circles is akin to repeatedly skinning your shin while eating fruity pebbles. This book somehow feels warm and nostalgic while still being utterly real and nightmarish. Maybe it's because I dropped out of school and ran with similar ne'er do well's that this is the case. Some of these adventures feel ripped from the periphery of my life and especially the lives of people I've known that are now either dead or worse. Given what McCarville has gone through, it's really a wonder that she's still here and coherent enough to write a very good book.
All this is not to say that Four Circles is for everyone. Please don't think that. I imagine many readers will relate the book to being repeatedly flicked in the nuts or clit. This is a trashy book written for trashy people. It is gratuitous to a level bordering on rape-revenge porn. It even comes with a kind of trigger warning on the back. Which, coming from the publisher Amphetamine Sulphate, says a lot.
Some might find Four Circles overblown, gimmicky, or childish. And well it sort of is. If addiction, depravity, and constant sex crimes (written with a flair for the absurd) is a gimmick. McCarville isn't going to win any awards for her prose, but she is damned funny in the midst of real American sickness. No clue what Kafka would have thought of this book, but it definitely aims to stab and wound us.
https://bluescapes.blogspot.com/2019/...
August 15, 2019
Equally disgusting and entertaining. It’s impressive how a story like this can still be laced with humor. Most of it is based in deeply rooted self-hatred but it’s the one thing that makes this a bearable read.
January 6, 2020
literature of complete illness. captures the feeling of looking around a crowd of complete diseased losers aka your best friends, and wondering, Am I the only one here with a conscience?
February 9, 2022
If Four Circles has a trigger warning, that’s part of the “transgressive” humor. A vomitus travelogue with meth-heads, alkies, “wasteoid hog apes,” creeps, crummy hackers etc, Four Circles is phreaking phunny. The cavalcade of filth would seem to slam “literary fiction” if Meg’s shithole rap didn’t grab. Like the rest of the writers here, she’s a prose stylist at heart. Take this litany on one of book’s shitholes – the entire city of New Orleans:
"Everything you could ever want. Drugs, sex, drive thru daiquiri shops, 24 hour liquor stores, seedy gay bars, 15 dollar hookers, Tina, heroin, crack, gambling, swamp tours, vampires, voodoo, magic, ghosts, parades, golden human statues, beautiful art, great music, carnival, a place to disappear, a place to let go, a place to suck you fucking dry, a place you can literally die on the street and have people stumble over you while this happens, while a brass band plays 3 feet away."
McCarville’s misery is language glee. (But wait, who is “Tina”?)
"Everything you could ever want. Drugs, sex, drive thru daiquiri shops, 24 hour liquor stores, seedy gay bars, 15 dollar hookers, Tina, heroin, crack, gambling, swamp tours, vampires, voodoo, magic, ghosts, parades, golden human statues, beautiful art, great music, carnival, a place to disappear, a place to let go, a place to suck you fucking dry, a place you can literally die on the street and have people stumble over you while this happens, while a brass band plays 3 feet away."
McCarville’s misery is language glee. (But wait, who is “Tina”?)
February 19, 2022
Enjoyed the road novel sort of storytelling structure in this. Each section a different city as the narrator skips towns.
The happenings of each section smeared by the city it takes place in.
Enjoyed how truly unhinged the narrator is.
The van part, how she paints it to scare people off. Great stuff in here if you want to just enjoy despising humanity. Which can be fun to do. I read this mostly on bus rides to work.
The happenings of each section smeared by the city it takes place in.
Enjoyed how truly unhinged the narrator is.
The van part, how she paints it to scare people off. Great stuff in here if you want to just enjoy despising humanity. Which can be fun to do. I read this mostly on bus rides to work.
August 26, 2020
Harsh and relatable. Really captures the feel of being young, female, fucked up and poor in America, with the absurd dark humor that keeps one alive.
June 29, 2019
Its own Naked Lunch.
January 28, 2022
Four circles is a good title, it could serve to be a reference to Stew Friedman's Four Circles which evaluates a person's life via the segmenting of work, home, community, and private self. It could be a reference to Dante's circles of hell, and how the author has their own experience in four circles of their own hell, or It could also just be a means of labeling a story that has four locations.
The writing is kind of all over the place as it shifts back and forth in tone. In some ways that can be seen as appealing, as it never diverts from the intensity of the subject matter, but does become like a strange stream of consciousness with an almost dialogic style. For this kind of narrative, it does make sense. However, I found the final chapter to be the most consistent tonally and feel the most earnest because of that.
There is a moment in the first chapter that I will never forget. Incredibly visceral and heartwrenching.
Overall I enjoyed it a fair amount. For a memoir, it's pretty fucked.
The writing is kind of all over the place as it shifts back and forth in tone. In some ways that can be seen as appealing, as it never diverts from the intensity of the subject matter, but does become like a strange stream of consciousness with an almost dialogic style. For this kind of narrative, it does make sense. However, I found the final chapter to be the most consistent tonally and feel the most earnest because of that.
There is a moment in the first chapter that I will never forget. Incredibly visceral and heartwrenching.
Overall I enjoyed it a fair amount. For a memoir, it's pretty fucked.
July 18, 2022
Felt a bit like fear and loathing but also like seinfeld
Liked it!
Liked it!
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews