The Sluts

by Dennis Cooper

Set largely on the pages of a website where gay male escorts are reviewed by their clients, and told through the postings, emails, and conversations of several dozen unreliable narrators, The Sluts chronicles the evolution of one young escort's date with a satisfied client into a metafiction of pornography, lies, half-truths, and myth. Explicit, shocking, comical, and displaying the author's signature flair for blending structural complexity with direct, stylish, accessible language, The Sluts is Cooper's most transgressive novel since Frisk, and one of his most innovative works of fiction to date.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Gay, Thriller, Contemporary

263 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2004

About the author

Dennis Cooper was born on January 10, 1953. He grew up in the Southern California cities of Covina and Arcadia.

He wrote stories and poems from early age but got serious about writing at 15 after reading Arthur Rimbaud and The Marquis de Sade. He attended LA county public schools until the 8th grade when he transferred to a private school, Flintridge Preparatory School for Boys in La Canada, California, from which he was expelled in the 11th grade.

While at Flintridge, he met his friend George Miles, who would become his muse and the subject of much of his future writing. He attended Pasadena City College for two years, attending poetry writing workshops taught by the poets Ronald Koertge and Jerene Hewitt. He then attended one year of university at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, where he studied with the poet Bert Meyers.

In 1976, he founded Little Caesar Magazine and Press, which he ran until 1982. From 1980 to 1983 he was Director of Programming for the Beyond Baroque Literary/Art Center in Venice, California. From 1983 to 1985, he lived in New York City.

In 1985, he moved to Amsterdam for two and a half years, where he began his ten year long project, The George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of five novels that includes Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period.

His post-George Miles Cycle novels include My Loose Thread, The Sluts and God, Jr.
Other works include the short-story collections Wrong and Ugly Man, poetry collections The Dream Police and The Weaklings, as well as the recent Smothered in Hugs: Essays, Interviews, Feedback, and Obituaries.

Dennis Cooper currently spends his time between Los Angeles and Paris.

Reviews

[brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

back in the good 'ol days, when goodreads was a much smaller (and some would say better) place, the #1 top ranked reviewer was a woman called ginnie jones. she claimed to be a very old women in pasadena (her avatar remained a found image of a frazzled pencil-chomping booknerd) who spent all her time reading, reviewing, and tending to her very sick husband. ginnie was an elusive bird: she'd rarely comment on others' pages and would almost never answer private messages. but she was part of our little group and her erudition and breadth of knowledge was, well, unbelievable. she'd post several terrific reviews per week and in the following threads would discuss, elaborate, and accept heaps and heaps of praise and accolades.

on a hunch, a certain goodreader googled a chunk of a ginnie review and discovered something: her review was a hybrid of two reviews previously published in separate obscure sources. and she wasn't the author of either of 'em. as this news percolated through the group, and people googled more and more, it was discovered that nearly every one of her reviews was plagiarized. and she was sneaky about it -- she'd change personal information, dates, locations, and any/all facts so as to make it seem that she was the author; and she'd cobble up to four reviews into one vote-drawing superreview.

it all went public and a brutal controversy erupted. (yes, i understand how totally nerdy this all sounds) - a monster thread (at last count the messages were in the high 400s) exploded all over ginnie's, at the time, most recent review and then someone discovered the motherlode: a review which ginnie had plagiarized about a book on the ethics of plagiarism! amazing! so ginnie deleted the monster thread and a GR club was started in order to discuss different aspects of the controversy -- topics: 1. the nature of plagiarism 2. is ginnie real? 3. which articles were plagiarized from which sources? 4. is internet plagiarism on a social website as egregious/unethical as plagiarism in/of a written text? while there was much dumb anger and shit-tossing, conversations frequently dipped into genuinely interesting epistomelogical/existential riffs on identity, authenticity, reality... it was cool.

a huge seam split up the middle of goodreads dividing those who felt that a) ginnie should be excused b/c she's old and lonely b) ginnie should be excused as online plagiarism of this nature doesn't matter, c) ginnie should be excused as she's obviously someone who needs vast amounts of votes and praise to fill whatever hole exists in her 'real' life, and d) those who felt betrayed, hurt, and kinda repulsed by what she did. and it wasn't pretty. name-calling. account deleting. friend kicking-offing. and, finally, intervention by the goodreads gods which resulted in ginnie's banishment from the site.


and then Garygate. 18 months later a figure emerged on goodreads who seemed too ridiculous to be true. gary carpetbombed everyone's threads with preposterously punctuated comments with such a sense of flamboyance, bravado, and hyperbole he makes me look like mike reynolds. no shit. his avatar (a guy standing in his bathroom staring directly into the camera) and profile information were carefully examined so as to determine if gary was simply an (extremely) enthusiastic booknut, or just some asshole having a laugh. and so, again, a monster thread and group (the 'who is gary? what does gary mean to you?' club) followed in which several gary related topics were discussed.

and then it got weird when one of us changed our avatar to gary's and cloned his profile page. within 30 minutes there were 4 or 5 garys all claiming to be the 'real' gary. it was, at once, strange and confusing and funny and stupid and, yeah, a little bit profound.

and exhilarating to watch as it unfolded in real time. hit refresh and you'd have a slew of comments from gary, gary clones, a woman claiming to know gary in real life (revealed to be another goodreader who had created a false identity), those who were trying to figure it all out, those who were just kicking back & enjoying the show... and it was then i understood the nature of the internet. y'see, i was born in 1974 and remember using the Vic 20 and Commodore 64. i remember my dad coming home one night with the atari 2600 and playing Pong for weeks on end, my head exploded by the concept that i was controlling a jumble of pixels on a computer screen, that that white bar was me! and that 'i' was moving around to prevent some more pixels from flying past me. rudimentary, of course, but a big deal back them.

i was a kid right before this crazy computer explosion and find myself too old for it not to blow my fucking mind, but not so young that i'm one of those geezers who just can't get the interwebs. but watching ginniegate and garygate unfold, i saw the internet for what it is (for me, at least): the ultimate postpostmodern detective story. had bolano or borges made it into the 21st century, surely they would've written tales of online espionage (borges nearly did with the aleph). to sit alone in a room, a cave, a plane, a bunker, a lighthouse, and watch a drama unfold in real time on a screen which simultaneously plugs in dozens of 'people' who could be anyone (and claim to be anyone else), anywhere, and could do anything...? amazing. (of course all this wonderful and mysterious online anonymity is soon coming to an end)


so sluts. a hybrid of borges and bruce labruce. a novel in the form of comments/reviews left on a male hustler website in which, through multiple narrators, we piece together the tragic, LMAO, and frequently frightening story of an underage junkie hustler called brad and the web of dementia that spins out as a result of his real-life and online exploits. we follow those who seek out the 'real' brad online and in the flesh, we read threats by brad's pimp/torturer 'brian', we track a journalist for a gay magazine who may or may not be himself, brad, and/or brian. people fall in and out; a webmaster frequently intervenes; people stalk brad's known hangouts and fuck him, beat him, cut him, impersonate him, castrate him (or do they?); an HIV+ porn star makes a brief appearance claiming to have fucked brad, to have killed brad, to be brad, and then is (possibly) murdered himself. there's a lot of pomo pyrotechnics here -- but cooper never shows his poker face, never winks an eye, never allows one of his unreliable narrators piled atop unreliable narrators to reveal the puppetmaster. it's all surface, it's all a game. and the game is perfectly played.

[josé saleiro gomes]

thanks dennis i had a terrible time

[Barry Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

finally a castration scene that gives 'story of the eye' a run for its money.

[Toby · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know after you finish a book and log it in that you’ve completed it, you get an email from goodreads stating “You have finished “****”, what’s next?”

My answer to that email for this book is therapy.

[Meike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lambda Award & Prix Sade
(trigger warning for everything you can possibly imagine)
What an incredibly smart experimental take on the dynamics of internet debate: Cooper constructs an escalating story line about the truth turning into affect-based fiction, and what better echo chamber to do so than a rating website for gay escorts - here, where people anonymously review sex, the commodification of the body meets unrestricted desire. It all begins with an apparently underage and mentally troubled sex worker named Brad, who performs extreme gay sex acts for money until he ends up in jail, with a pregnant, much older fiancee waiting for him. The message board goes crazy over his alleged allure and charisma, Brad becomes an online myth.

We learn about the saga of Brad and his lover/pimp Brian in reviews, then the narrative switches to e-mails allegedly written by Brad from jail, then we get a montage of escort ads followed by encounters (probably involving Brian / a sadist named Zack), and at last we get back to the reviews about Brad post-jail. But Cooper does not stop at the aesthetic level: As this reflects the anonymous anything-goes medium called internet, everything we read is unreliable. There are imposters, fake news, red herrings, lies, gaslighting, denunciation, threats, you name it - and we as readers are puzzling over what actually happens, out there in the real world, while only looking at the online world plastered with trick mirrors.

And as this is Dennis Cooper, the amalgamation of sex and violence is a core component of what we perceive - but in this particular case, I didn't find it that disturbing as the violence is so over the top (and make no mistake: There is not only hard sex, there is rape, extreme torture, castration, murder, etc.pp.). What's more difficult to stomach though is the metaphorical level: This is also a book about HIV/AIDS. One character enjoys infecting others with HIV, and it's easy to see how the many fantasies about torturing gay men to death relate to the fact that until not too long ago, catching the virus resulted in a slow, painful, degrading torture that led to certain death. On top of that, the characters connect a gruesome death to fame and glory, thus rendering it aspirational and inverting the real-life stigma of dying from AIDS, and also perpetrating the adoration of killers normalized in some corners of the internet.

"The Sluts" is a highly complex book about dark urges and human cruelty, about the loss of reality on the internet and how online drama can lead to real-life repercussions. It would be a major understatement to say that this is not for everybody, because this is highly transgressive literature detailing brutal, dehumanizing acts and fantasies, but Cooper is not merely trying to push the shock factor as far as possible, it's also a multi-layered experimental page turner. But only for people with strong stomachs. If you think this is pornography, you should seek professional help ASAP.

Re-read in Oct. 24, still awesome, still prophetic (this was first published in 20004, and it already has all the fanfic / celeb / Tumblr / Reddit / Facebook / X rabbithole insanity we now live through every day; especially relevant if you look at the current US election, which will greatly be influenced by Trump's ability to digitally spread conspiracy theories; Cooper also plays into the human drive to follow baser instincts in anonymity).

The German translation, Die Schlampen, now also discussed on the podcast: https://papierstaupodcast.de/podcast/...

[Leo Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a work of demented genius.

I've never read something so convoluted and complex—structurally immaculate, mesmerising, both difficult to put down and to keep reading.

Cooper hones in on the seediest most depraved corner of the internet and fleshes out their darkest fantasies while, most disturbingly, never mentioning where these fantasies are coming from. Everyone within the universe of this book is simply in agreement about what they want to happen—and what they want is the most fucked up shit imaginable.

Maybe a shame that it won't secure a wider audience on account of its content—but the content is also very much the point.

[frankie · Rating 4 out of 5]

engrossing but it was hard to tell how much was deliberate and how much i was reading into it. sometimes i thought it was genius and sometimes i was so tired by it

[Jaylen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Sluts is likely the most depraved book I’ve ever read in terms of its content (I set the book aside a few times, it’s… wild, and I don’t say that lightly). Looking past its transgressions, it is also a structurally ambitious and ingenious take on internet gossip and myth-making. Dennis Cooper questions freedom of speech on the internet, playing with fact and fiction to disorienting and brilliant effect.

Published in 2004, the novel is set almost entirely online on an escort review website in which we follow reviews of the elusive Brad, a young escort who becomes the fascination of the website’s users. Each review presents a new unreliable narrator, documenting their alleged experiences with Brad. The stories are inconsistent, contradictory, and increasingly disturbing. The only semblance of truth comes from a “Webmaster” who chimes in to provide insight into the “true” events going on in the real world of the novel, yet even the Webmaster’s narration proves skeptical. The myth around Brad becomes a pure nightmare by the end of the novel - there is a murder mystery, shifting identities, sleights of hand. Cooper intersperses sections of emails and phone calls to ground the novel in some sense of reality. If this book sounds daunting, that’s because it is, yet it’s always easy to follow in the moment. Cooper’s descriptions through his numerous characters contain simple sentences that are unafraid to explore the novel’s depravity with absolutely no filter, keeping the novel on a direct shot to internet hell. It feels that Cooper is always in control, even at the novel’s most hectic moments.

But aside from that, it’s impossible to look away from the book, even when you don’t want to perceive the perpetual violence at the heart of the story. The dueling narratives present a thread of conspiracies, and this mystery propels the plot; it also provides some relief in knowing that each horrific account could be fictitious. But what’s truly scary is the lingering truth within the web of lies, and the potential for fiction to bleed into reality. The Sluts is a terrifying and singular novel that will stay with me forever.

[Megha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone remember this goodreader who would pop up on every which review and ask if the book had violence or sexually explicit content? Kiddo, if you are still lurking around, don't ;) read this book. It has everything you have been looking for.

I feel fairly comfortable in assuming that every time this goodreader sees someone reading, say, in a library or a coffee shop, he doesn't go up to them ask the same question. No. He would rather do so while hidden behind the curtain of internet. Social media lets people share with hundreds of people at once. But hardly anyone would walk up in front of an auditorium full of people and show them an instagram of their lunch. On this website, we have came across just-for-fun sock puppets. There have also been instances where a profile was seemingly created for the sole purpose of posting rude comments on other's reviews. While they sit snugly at their keyboards they don't have to face any judgement or consequences in the same manner as an in-person interaction. You can break off the interaction at any point, you can block people and they cease to exist. Internet provides some degree of anonymity (despite how much one reveals about themselves) and facelessness (despite how many photos one posts).

The many faces on the web


(More of 'The Sluts' gallery.)

In The Sluts, Cooper dives into one tiny corner of the internet. It is a forum hosting reviews and discussions on gay male escorts. The reviewers/participants freely speak of their basest S&M fantasies and (truthfully?) claim to have lived them. They openly solicit escorts to maim and kill and make a snuff movie out of it. They promptly admit to having killed someone for a snuff video. They pile lies upon half-truths, contradict others, contradict themselves, admit to have posted under multiple names and false identities, sometimes even come back to say oh btw, I was lying when I said such and such. And the reader is left to wander around among this host of unreliable sources. The reader is constantly spun around, manipulated and confused. And there is no narrator in sight to show you the ropes.

The main character of the novel is a teenage escort named Brad. He becomes an object of obsession among the forum participants and is the topic of much of the discussion. The reader has to put together a picture of Brad largely on the basis of all the rumors, facts, half-baked stories floating around on the forum. Amidst all of the that, Brad remains something of a blur. Cooper had vaguely based Brad on a Czech porn star from the 90s named Peter Azur who had a cult following for a while. In Cooper's mind, Brad looks like some sort of an amalgamation of pictures such as these.

The biggest draw of the novel is certainly its unusual format. Cooper employs the concept very successfully, I would say. Around halfway it may look like the novel is just a one-trick pony, but Cooper does have some more cards up his sleeve which he will reveal eventually, and lead you to some conclusion. Very rarely do books toy around with the readers the way this one does.

Fortunately for us, a lot of the times we don't necessarily have to decide whether something we came across on the internet should be believed or not. We can take it at its face value and carry on. I came, I saw, I moved to the next tab.

[enzoreads]

je sais même pas quoi vous dire à part que je suis traumatisé et que c’est la chose la plus déroutante et dégoûtante et infâme que j’ai lu de ma vie et que je réfléchirai à deux fois avant de prendre un livre aléatoire à la librairie pcq qu’un mec qui s’appelle Luke a écrit sur un petit bout de carton que c’était son livre de l’année. Malade va

[Seigfreid Uy · Rating 5 out of 5]

no dennis cooper just took the cake for the most disturbing book i have ever read.
i don’t even think there’s any competition — i feel disgusting after reading it,
but the themes it explored and the tools used in the process? incredible.

i have read plenty of thrillers, horrors, and other gruesome books within fiction in my lifetime, but the sluts did me in.
this was something else.


dennis cooper presents a seemingly simple premise — a male escort chatroom obsessed with a man named brian. from that we see it transform into a web of stories, and lies that explore the extent of freedom of speech in society, as well as the internet’s role in spreading and blurring the line between fact and fiction. and it gets incredibly disturbing, and brutal, and inhumane.

from the get-go, the themes and plot tools employed were the most disturbing, gruesome descriptions i have ever encountered — written in an incredibly matter-of-fact way that makes you question the human psyche and the reality that this might be something that actually happens, especially in the dark web.

in the process, dennis cooper also delivers such an exceptionally written experimental novel, filled with a great number of unreliable narrators, employing a chat room as its main setting and style of writing so so well, that i have to remind myself that it is fiction.

with these two combined — it becomes difficult to look away.
by the end of it — i gave the longest literary sigh of relief of my life that it was over.

what do i rate this book? i have no idea. it was incredible but also wtf did i read.
i need a whole cleanse after reading this.

[TAP · Rating 5 out of 5]

I personally like my boys a little lived in.

Do you fantasize about being murdered? Yeah, me neither. That’s one of Cooper’s favorite themes. Welcome to his world. We feed his mythology.

The truth is hard to grasp as you claw away at the blood and semen stained computer screen, looking for the fact that’ll offer a little veracity to the erratic mystery of The Sluts. You will find it—or something like it.

Cooper never disappoints. But he does deprave.

[Zoë Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I could bring Toni Morrison back from the dead and give her a book recommendation it would be this.

4.75/5

[Bill Wood]

i wish i could unread this🙇

[persephone ☾]

my tbr is a slut home, not just a slut house, so let's give a warm welcome to this book

[noosha · Rating 1 out of 5]

fuck no baby

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, this was one of the most transfixing things I’ve read in ages – gripping and terrifying. It’s told almost completely through postings on a website where users review male escorts. First, a legend develops about a guy called Brad, though reports of him are inconsistent and strange and increasingly twisted. Then it all unspools, ten times over, the truth told and untold again and again as the story grows ever more brutal. There are scenes in here I wish I could unsee, things I lay awake thinking about, the horror only sightly mitigated by the notion that they might (even in the world of the story) not have really happened. It’s intense, frighteningly so. But I could not tear myself away from it.

TinyLetter | Linktree

[francesca]

i honestly cannot even rate something like this. it was incredible dark, depraved, and just absolutely psychotic — i have no doubt that the things mentioned in this novel happen in real life. i do think this author is incredibly talented at what he does; making readers uncomfortable, making readers think about what kinds of things happen right under our noses. i would never recommend this book to anyone, especially if you are not in a good head space. stay away.

[xelsoi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esta es la novela más mórbida y siniestra que he leído hasta ahora. A medida que avanzaba por sus páginas, me punteaba la culpa de estar haciendo algo malo. Como si al convocar las imágenes desgarradoras que describe Cooper estuviera llamándolas, atrayéndolas hacia mi realidad.
Chaperos - originalmente The sluts, "Los putos" - cuenta la historia de Brad, un escort sadomaso, a través de sus fanáticos, quienes escriben sobre él en una página de internet. La novela, además de ser porno y gore, es multiforme y polifónica: la narración se sostiene en reseñas, foros, correos y otros formatos cibernéticos de texto que son escritos por diferentes usuarios de la web. Esta materialidad le permite a Cooper reproducir el misterio del internet dosmilero, con sus anonimatos, sus ilegalidades y sus mitologías. Aunque me confundía, aprecio también que el carácter testimonial produjera - y resolviera, un par de veces - contradicciones en la trama.
Por las características del oficio que reimagina Cooper, cada elemento de la ficción es sórdido. La novela es narrada por pedófilos, violadores y sádicos que fantasean, con todo lujo de detalles, sobre el protagonista; y, en ocasiones, concretan sus deseos. El repertorio de prácticas - acá no les digo cuáles son fantasías y cuáles ocurren - comprende diferentes formas de tortura: algunas más tradicionales, como las golpizas, hasta otras más desquiciadas, como las amputaciones. Cada entrada profundiza más gráficamente en estas sexualidades prohibidas, tanto así, que en ocasiones mi instinto me llevaba a saltarme líneas en la prosa. Cooper construye - o, en el peor de los casos, reconstruye - una comunidad del deseo más allá de nuestros códigos morales; en cualquier caso, en alguna entrada de los foros, un usuario plantea una inquietud que, en varios niveles, me parece literaria: hay experiencias que es mejor se queden solo escritas, que nadie persiga su realización.
Esta novela es verdaderamente perturbadora. Anoche, tras terminarla, me hubiese gustado compartir la cama con alguien, para recordar en un abrazo la ternura de la intimidad. Me tomaré un break de las lecturas brutales por un rato. Creo que este libro es tan exitoso en su propuesta - por eso los cinco sapitos - que no soy capaz de recomendarlo.

[Constantine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4.0/5.0

I can't remember who or which website recommended this book to me. All I can say that it is something very dark and very sleazy. I feel even saying this is an underestimation describing how dark this book is! I could not find a physical copy so luckily I could borrow a digital copy from Archive.org, but I was in the waiting list for a quite some time which I forgot completely about until I was notified that the book arrived in my inbox!

The structure of this book is really interesting. The story is about a homosexual male escort and we get to know about him through an online message board of an escort website where reviewers write reviews about their experience with this escort named Brad. But of course, the story shows us how the internet is not a reliable place to know about someone. Lots of twists and turns in this book, it will make you question who is telling the truth or who is lying. This book is not meant to be read by everybody. The amount of gore, profanity and sexual content in it is beyond anything I have ever read. You will feel all the emotions, be it disgust, empathy, shock and all. Everything is mixed up. It feels like a different world to what we are living but it is not different, people just go on with their imaginations, desires, and fantasies because it is the internet.

The book has a lot of trigger warnings be it suicide, prostitution, pedophilia, BDSM, Watersports etc. Makes it really hard to mention all of it. Looking for something sick? then this is your book. I asked for something dark and got something darker than dark! There are parts of this book that I liked and there are parts that made me very uncomfortable. I tend to like books that throw me out of my comfort zone which The Sluts did here. I have not come across anything like this before and I doubt that I will in the future.

[Alberto Villarreal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Empecé este libro sin saber nada de el y me lleve muchas sorpresas. El inicio esta sostenido por la intriga, pero muy pronto se vuelve tedioso y grotesco. En algún momento estuve a punto de vomitar, el gore no es lo mío, al parecer. No encuentro valor literario en este libro. De todas formas, me alegra haberlo leído porque encontré algo muy diferente a lo que había estado leyendo.

[Oliver Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ugh

[Joshua Chaplinsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun, light-hearted romp.

[M. J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Public castration is not such a good idea after all ... The Sluts reads like a queer version of As I Lay Dying, only the family procession is made up of horny men online and the dead body carried is that of a young escort with a death wish. The story is a meandering mess, structurally complex and completely told from the perspective of dozens of unreliable narrators. It's virtually impossible to tell what's real and what's the fabrication of a feverish collective of minds in their pursuit for pleasure. Online, reality and fiction become an amorphous mass waiting to be used and arranged to fit anyone's desire. Cravings are promptly satisfied by their very elucidation in words, needs that expand and expand to accommodate ever demanding impulses.

"All things are permitted then, they can do what they like?" the young Alyosha asks in The Brothers Karamazov. What if desire is self-fulfilling and therefore no longer desire, then everything becomes tedious, there's no stimulus, no reason to go on. The Sluts is about, among other things, death. The physical one - there are many depictions of it in here - but also death as in the end of desire (the lust for life). The ultimate sacrifice is not that of the young and famous Brad - around whom everything else in the book revolves - the sacrifice is the symbolic castration that'd come as a result of his death. It's no wonder that right after the (real?! it's hard to tell) castration of "Brad" in the book a man identified as "snazzystocky" writes:

"Is it just me, or has the fun and eroticism and intrigue gone out of this Brad thing? I remember the old Brad reviews being so much sexier and more mind blowing. Maybe it's because, as far I can tell, these reviewers are actually doing these things to him and not just making up evil fantasies about him and pretending they're true"

Desire virtually dies. There's no point going on if even the most extreme hunger is effortlessly sated. (Lacanian psychoanalysts must love this book). The fun is over the moment desire leaves the realm of ideas.

"Brad was just your idea, and I guess you think he's a great idea".

Dennis Cooper writes a shocking, but truthful portrait of our complicated relationship with desire in virtual environments. It's amazing really how prescient this book is, how accurate even 20 years after its publication. I must add that Cooper's writing styles and use of confessional voices felt right at home in the novel's use of early internet language, deftly articulating dramatic moments and dark humor. The Sluts is a phenomenal and disquieting piece of fiction, nauseating in its themes and sophisticated in its form. A relentless reading experience.

[Maria Lago · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing, hilarious and disturbing. The characters in The Sluts are much more like all of us than we're ready to admit. And if you don't think so, well, you sad boring bastard.
PS: Let's kill Nick Carter.

[Caleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the craziest internet rabbit hole I’ve ever gone down to, and this was written in 2003?! So visionary, so weird and monstrous and graphic and real. And still, hilarious, and with a lot of heart for its characters. I love this cruel world. I have a weird urge to read more like it…

[Cassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I wanted a heavy experience, not to have my life changed forever.”

well, it has

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adam's review of this is already essentially perfect:

What if Borges took on Rashomon, but instead of the action happening in a grove, it went down on a message board dedicated to reviewing homosexual escorts?

This is almost Cooper's perfect form: the frame means he only has to write a series of escort pickups that convey the entire story (for better or worse depending on your desire to read such), but more interestingly the format entirely lends itself to unreliable narrators lying about eachother, obfuscating, creating their own naratives, and otherwise allowing for a pretty lucid discussion of the power of fantasies vs. reality, of the power of the unfulfilled over the fulfilled, of the fascination of stories and untruth and how this context warps and alters the events they touch, of the old sex/death equation that Cooper can't really avoid. Plus it's at turns almost noir-like, completely horrifying, and for at least one stretch completely heartbreaking.

Usual Cooper-recommendation caveats apply: there's an unflinching intensity here, but as always he has larger goals than just shock and squeam, building up layers of discomfort only to pull out the rug and recast his significances at the exact point at which I'm really starting to wonder at my own willingness to keep on rapidly turning the pages. Because relentless as this may be, it's also never less than relentlessly entertaining. But more than that, too.

[Emma Sea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. A work of fiction concerned with the nature of truth. Recommended.

[Amina · Rating 1 out of 5]

✰ 0 stars ✰

“Are you the Brian of Brad and Brian? Fess up. Again, I ask you to justify your actions. You can't, can you?”

I'm not even going to deign writing a proper review for The Sluts - I'm ashamed I even considered the possibility that this could be a literal decent read, but if a book reads like a reddit thread with details of the utmost perverse acts and ridiculously inconceivable ideas of pornography that unraveled into just utter madness of vile notions and disgustingly disturbing acts - I won't recommend this to anyone - anyone. 🤢🤢

“Ludicrous, emotionless snuff pornography you've been reading here. You're all lost in your own imaginations. I was lost in my imagination for a long time too. I'm trying to get away from that now.”

I'm sorry, it was just stupid - I'm sorry, it was. Not even interesting garb, except for the fact that the title, in fact, does not even refer to the escort boy in mind, but to those outrageous reviewers, who were taking satisfaction in writing with great joy and cringe-worthy satisfaction over trying to figure out the hidden mystery behind their time with Brad or Brian or Steven or even Kevin. Who the Hell cares? Even if this was intended to be comedic satire, which I seriously could not see, it was not handled in the best light - and I will never consider reading something by this author ever again - EVER. 😤

And another thing - this is a personal issue of mine, but I have never been a fan of reading RPF (Real People Fiction). Never - it makes me queasy and it makes me extremely uncomfortable. So, if I'm going to see random people, discussing what vile actions they would like to do with Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys - for their own twisted pleasure - I don't care if you're a fan of his or not (which, for the record, I am - BSB were my teen crushes), I can't tolerate that - I just can't. 😔

I'm actually surprised the author got away with it - even if it is a fictional story, but there must be some limitations, right? 🤨 It left a further distasteful, unpleasant feeling in my mouth that only my own-instilled rule to never DNF a book I've started, did I reluctantly and disgustingly complete this --- yeah, I don't think, this filth deserves to be called a novel, no matter how many intellectuals will argue with me about the true meaning behind the story. I'm not interested. 😡😡