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Sep 24, 2015 Morrissey By Christopher Roberts

Back in 2013 Morrissey had previously written his autobiography, but today he has released his debut fiction novel, List of the Lost, via Penguin Books. Little was known about the book, beyond its cover art, but now Morrissey has posted to his official fan site True to You a synopsis/description of the book and it’s a bit bizarre:

“The theme is demonology ... the left-handed path of black magic. It is about a sports relay team in 1970s America who accidentally kill a wretch who, in esoteric language, might be known as a Fetch ... a discarnate entity in physical form. He appears, though, as an omen of the immediate deaths of each member of the relay team. He is a life force of a devil incarnate, yet in his astral shell he is one phase removed from life. The wretch begins a banishing ritual of the four main characters, and therefore his own death at the beginning of the book is illusory.”

Also, the initial reviews of the book in the U.K. are quite scathing. Michael Hann of The Guardian posted a long write up detailing everything wrong with the novel and what it all says about Morrissey. Here’s just a brief excerpt, but it’s worth clicking through to read the whole thing:

“Do not read this book; do not sully yourself with it, no matter how temptingly brief it seems. All those who shepherded it to print should hang their heads in shame, for it’s hard to imagine anything this bad has been put between covers by anyone other than a vanity publisher. It is an unpolished turd of a book, the stale excrement of Morrissey’s imagination.”

Hann goes on to talk about the book’s awkwardly written sex scenes and how Morrissey goes on tangents railing against meat eaters and Winston Churchill, among other topics that have little to do with the novel’s weird plot.

The British newspaper The Telegraph has also singled out the 10 most embarrassing lines from the novel here. It includes this strangely written sex scene:

“At this, Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation, screaming and shouting as they playfully bit and puled at each other in a dangerous and clamorous rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation with Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra’s howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it whacked and smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza’s body except for the otherwise central zone.”

It all kind of makes you want to actually read the thing, to see if it’s really that bad. No doubt Morrissey will write some sort of response to his critics at some point, so stay tuned for that.