Black Hole is a weird mix of sex and horror, but at the heart of it are teenage kids who are lost and can’t find their place in society.
This book is certainly not for everyone. There are many disturbing images, some of them from dreams, others are just metaphors for STD and the way teenagers interact. Some sex scenes include very bizarre images, like the second mouth and the tail scenes.
However these scenes help with the mood of the story, showing teenagers that don’t feel part of the crowd and find relief somewhere else. They clearly have no idea what to do, they just live their life and experience every single moment. They might say they love each other, but they don’t even know what it means.
A big part of the story is about mood, their state of mind. I think Charles Burns really did a great job with that, both with his drawings and his dialogs. Even a single image on one page is enough to put the reader in a certain mood.
There is also a plot behind all this atmosphere, which really kicks in towards the end. The scenes are not presented chronologically, so at first I was a little confused about the sequence. However once I read some more and started to connect the dots, I was enjoying it. It reminded me a little bit of Pulp Fiction, though it was even more out of order than that.
In the first half of the book, the plot is just about teenagers relationships, their friends and sex with the other gender, as well as smoking and parties. Slowly though a bit of criminal element comes out, and it becomes about teenagers in danger. It reminded me a little bit of Stray Bullets in that regard.
I enjoyed this book very much, but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone. It contains some bizarre scenes, but the heart of it is very interesting and familiar.