Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Bighead : Author's Preferred Version by Edward Lee, Erik Wilson ISBN: 1-892950-13-8 Publisher: Overlook Connection Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.46 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: How do I love Lee, let me count the ways
Comment: The Bighead is one of those 'mutant in the backwoods' tales that screams to be glorified on film. I can already feel the cheese crawling off the movie version with barely restrained anticipation.
As typical with Lee's more masterful pieces, this is a disgustingly gruesome, gross, violent, barf-inducing tale that the squeamish must stay away from at all costs. Only those with strong stomachs and iron wills should pick up this tasty morsel.
The Bighead's grandpappy dies, and so Bighead heads out from the lower woods to find The World Outside, what his grandpappy always talked of. He is called the bighead because of his hydrocephaly: a head shaped like a watermelon, one eye the size of a grapefruit and the other the size of a tennis ball, an awl shaped mouth filled with jagged sharp teeth, and a low intellect that understands nothing but eating and mating, neither of which Bighead does daintily.
With Bighead headed towards The World Outside, Charity Wells was heading back towards the town she was born in, a tiny place called Luntville nestled in the Appalachian mountains, heading home to be back with her dear Aunt Annie. Advertising for a ride share, she makes the journey with Jerrica Perry, a journalist assigned to write a four piece in depth article about the Appalachians. Charity and Jerrica both have problems, of an exact opposite nature. While Charity cannot seem to ever reach a second date with a boy, Jerrica is a sex addict who cannot stay with only one man, and who is never satisfied.
The two girls stay at Aunt Annie's boarding house, Jerrica starting on her article and Charity catching up on old times with Aunt Annie.
Also staying at Aunt Annie's is Tom Alexander, an out of the ordinary Catholic Priest who has been sent by the Richmond Diocesan Pastoral Center to re-open the Wroxeter Abby. Once a hospice for terminally ill priests, the church had decided to reopen it as a rehab center for the priests who were accused of alcoholism, gambling addictions, and pedophilia. Tom is out of the ordinary because he does not follow the typical beaten path that one would expect of a priest; he smokes and drinks and cusses. Once a Army Ranger, a killer and rapist in the name of war, he swore off all his previous evils and became a priest. Tom is also a psychologist, which makes him the perfect choice for the task of establishing the rehab center. It also gets him and his embarrassing behavior out of the limelight of the church.
Add in a couple of absolutely pustulant local boys named Dicky Caudill and Tritt 'Balls' Conner, who run moonshine over the state line and terrorize anyone who crosses their paths. Literally terrorize them; rape and murder are as common to Tritt as breathing. There are no holes barred with their depravity and viciousness.
Take two pretty girls with problems, a renegade priest, two local human monsters, an odd Aunt with a past, a weird little cemetery, a haunted abbey, a bizarre lake, and an inhuman monster trekking cross country towards Luntville, stir them up all together and you have Lee's The Bighead. Add rape, murder, vomit, poop, disfigurement, dismemberment, cocaine addiction, sexx addiction, dirty little secrets, and a handyman named Goop Gooder, and you have an un-put-downable, gruesome read that will leave you both satisfied and disgusted. Despite how abhorrant the content is, Bighead is very well written and the storyline flows like a smooth river of blood, and there is some interesting artwork preceding each chapter by Erik Wilson. The Bighead is a five star nightmare that will leave you reaching for your barf bag. Enjoy!
Rating: 2
Summary: What's the BIG deal?
Comment: I enjoy horror, I like gross and I love demented. Having read reviews for this book I figured this would be a perfect read for me. Alas, I was wrong in my assumption. This story is gross at times, and does have some humorous moments, but when all is said and done you really wonder what the point was.
This story centers around a small town with a legend of the "bighead" and the long lost niece that comes back to visit her aunt with one of her city friends, who happens to be a coke addict and nympho. Throw in some evil nuns, a prophane priest, two twisted punks and the devil and ya got yourself this story - in a nut shell. I couldn't help but think the two punks (balls and dicky) were pointless, as was their violence and the fact they were never caught astounds me. The story really lags throughout, lacking a certain spark I expected. The end is so ridiculous and unexplained that I felt it was just tacked on for the heck of it. I don't care if a book is gross, tacky, etc. but the story MUST be good. When the story is good, who cares what lies within. I must say - this story isn't good. I would rather read Ketchum any day!
Rating: 4
Summary: Love Lessons With The BigHead
Comment: Urban legends come in all shapes and sizes and most, as we all well know, are based on an inkling of truth. It is, after all, the movement of information that produces misinformation, the passing down of tales that turns travesties into things that children scoff at before they journey off to sleep at night. The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, they are all one and the same: myths based on fabrications and also on the 'real.' So, when Jerrica and Chastity, visiting a small town in the middle of nowhere, hear the story of The Bighead, a man-beast that devours brains and ravages the living, they laugh as well, knowing that this can't be truth. Sometimes, however, it is that shred of understanding, that cognitive portion spun into something seemingly nightmarish, which is truly of the most fiendish variety.
In The Bighead, Edward Lee decides to pull out all the stops, trying to produce a tale about, amongst other things, a beastly creature that stalks the 'higher woods' on a journey toward understanding and toward fulfillment. After the death of its grandfather/keeper, it has found itself aimless, directionless, killing in the most depraved fashions but, at the same time, empty. It wants to know what lies beyond, in the realms its grandfather told it to avoid, so it begins wandering. And that's when it hears the voice that keeps saying one thing to it. Come.
Herein, Edward produces a quality monstrosity, unleashing it on an unsuspecting world as it enjoys a variety of interactions that are amongst the most wretched types. Because of that, I was pleased. I was also pleased by some of the other characters as well, namely a priest that believes that profanity isn't a sin because it is communion and that also thinks that he sees and speaks with, and a few odds and ends that they inflict on others ' in the most gruesome manners. After a time, however, many of the characters and the things that plagued their lives, the little bits that should have made them stand out, began to bore me. For instance, with Jerrica, the uncontrollable libido in human form, there was a constant reminder of what she liked and what she wanted to do, to the point that my mind began fanning through pages to get to the reason behind the story: The Bighead. Other people followed the same methods as well, especially a pair of rurally-challenged killers roaming the land and killing between moonshine runs, with the horrific beginning to wear down and no longer shock this audience. Instead, the comparison of the human monsters versus the mysterious beast began to make me sometimes wonder when the true beast would emerge.
That said, the ending of the book was interestingly odd and The Bighead and Charity, our human main character that seemed without purpose for most of the tale, began to play roles that were somewhat twisted. The Bighead's plight, that of being unsated in the realms of pleasure, found themselves manifesting ends and, despite the fact that many people died that had been worked on for so long without so much as a whimper, I found myself reading on and on. Why? Because there was a curve in the pitch and it hooked my gaze.
For anyone thinking of reading the book, I am of a mixed mind in recommending it. First, I'll have to say that some of the book is pretty disturbing, crafting a lexicon of deeds that would make many quiver while journeying forward. Second, I feel I have to note that there is a repetition of ideas, that the hammer must strike the nail more times than I could contend with, and that this may cause of page skimming. Third, the beast itself, it may not be everything you might want from a monster and, in the end, it may disappoint you. That said, there are a few reasons to read it, namely if you are an Edward Lee reader already, if you want something that is overly graphic and just keeps giving and giving, and because the ending is interesting. If you aren't accustomed to the gore classification in books, perhaps you should begin somewhere else. If you are a new reader to Lee, you should also try another book on for size first, easing into the waters before going here. Otherwise, The Bighead might getcha!
 |
Title: City Infernal by Edward Lee ISBN: 0843949880 Publisher: Leisure Books Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
 |
Title: Teratologist by Edward Lee, Wrath James White ISBN: 0972915796 Publisher: Medium Rare Books Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $9.99 |
 |
Title: Monstrosity by Edward Lee ISBN: 0843950757 Publisher: Dorchester Pub Co Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
 |
Title: Duet for the Devil by T. Winter-Damon, Randy Chandler, Edward Lee, Randy Chandler ISBN: 1889186163 Publisher: Necro Publications Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
 |
Title: Portrait of the Psychopath as a Young Woman by Edward Lee, Elizabeth Steffen ISBN: 1889186384 Publisher: Necro Pubns Pub. Date: July, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
