In a nutshell, this book is just a random collection of stories which centres on drugs and sex.

It's not very often I finish a book and ask myself 'what the hell have I just read?'

Just say no to drugs, kids!

The blurb did warn me that these biographical short stories were ude “uncompromising, brutally honest and shocking.” But it also promised that “underneath this series of deplorable autobiographical stories is an echo of heartbreak, loneliness, and the eternal poetry of a man struggling to be heard.”

The stories trace the descent of popular American Hip Hop DJ Jude Angeline into ever more debauched sexual and drug-fuelled exploits.

I am no prude, in years gone by I myself have indulged in a few debauched and occasionally even drug-fuelled exploits. But I couldn’t read this.

I think I got maybe four stories in before chucking it away, what I couldn’t stand was the total lack of liking or respect for pretty much anyone else in the stories. If the character was female it went beyond that and deep into misogyny. It sickened me.

Maybe the author is a lonely, heartbroken poet, maybe he’s just another selfish, repellent prat. Either way I wasn’t going to give him a minute more of my time. I just hope he is a kinder person now than he was.

1 Bite

NB I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley in return for an honest review. The BookEaters always write honest reviews

This is one I just could not finish.
The drug taking, swearing and sex chapter after chapter left me feeling that there was very little story and made it very boring.
Not for me.

Intriguing and very different. I was captured by the premise but I feel on the whole that the writing itself fell a little short of the promise. I really wanted to love this book - and parts certainly sparkled. But overall the cohesion just wasn't there for me and I found myself growing a little tired of this narrative voice. I think that I'd just hoped a great deal that this would be as good as I;d envisaged and perhaps that was what left me feeling a little short-changed.

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This is some sort of autobiography of Jude's life. Well, it actually is but I felt like he was jumping back and forth timespans.

This is definitely not a book you should read on the tube or the train with anyone looking over your shoulder. It contains strong language and graphic descriptions.

Despite all that, Jude writes in a way that that makes you want to finish the book but at the same time repels you.

Rating: 2/5

Favourite quote: I'm watching this world pass me by. I don't know if I wanna catch up, cuz I'm not sure I like where it's going."

I really enjoyed this book, but might hesitate in recommending it to a maiden aunt! It's not for the faint-hearted, but if you are ok with reading about sex in often messy detail, warts and all, then this books is for you.

I didn't finish the book.
I read a few chapters and couldn't really read anymore. Some people can some people can't.
I don't mind the use of profanity, but when it fits in. Don't get me wrong I know some people talk like that. It is exactly the same in life if someone spoke like that to me i would close the conversation and leave.
However it was full of action,adventure and errrr experience lol
I hope it is successful for you Jude and well done for getting it out there.

Well what can I say about Hyena except that it jumps from story to Story, Past to Present without much consistency to the story.

I understand these are personal accounts of Jude's life and memories but they are mixed up and have no order so to speak so the actual story becomes a little confusing.

Each chapter has a title representing a short story.
However there is no date order, the reader has no true way of knowing when the event happened.
It's jumbled up.
One minute we see him in the car with he's Dad getting sex education, next minute he's taking drugs and having sex.

This book is very Personal to Jude, but i would of liked to of seen it as a diary entry of some sorts.

This book is not for the shy hearted as there is alot of sexual references and very graphic encounters.
Plus alot of drug use. This is a big part of the main story line.

Don't get me wrong there is some funny bits, and some serious bits, the book touches on some racial issues too.

Jude can come across as being a little sheuvenist towards women as he uses them for sex alot. But he does have a softer side.

We do get a glimpse into another side of Jude's life occasionally, which doesn't consist of sex, Porn or drugs. For example we see a sensitive shy side to Jude when he meets he's first love Kit at the age of fifteen.

Jude's style of writing is very much written how it is spoken. When reading each sentence you can almost hear him talking. This book was very easy to read and the chapters were kept nice, short and to the point.

This book was very different from anything I have read before. It was very real and had alot of very strong descriptive text.
However I didn't dislike this book I just found it too messy.
It felt like Jude couldn't decide whether he wanted the book to be a journal/ diary or a biography.
Either way it would of been nice to have experienced Jude's life from childhood, to teens, to adulthood.

Personally I wouldn't recommend this book to others, but I also wouldn't discourage someone to read it.

One star for being mercifully brief! A drug fuelled life summed up in lacklustre prose.

Totally overhyped; a cross between Hunter S Thompson and William S Burroughs but a very poor version by comparison.

Wow! Well, I was looking for some humour. Yes, here it's usually of the dark (very dark) gallows variety, but I’ll take my laughs where I can find them and there’s plenty of them here. And that’s not all, this series of short, autobiographical anecdotes is rewarding in many ways. It’s shocking and not for the faint-hearted but if you can get cope with the graphic sex and the many scenes of drug binging then there are riches to be found.

I’d seen some strong ratings for this book but I’d never heard of Jude Angelini. A quick internet search advised me that “Rude Jude'' is a shock jock on a North American radio station. He’d previously made a bit of a name as a guest comic on the Jenny Jones Show, which, as far as I can gather, seems to have had something in common with the Jeremy Kyle Show, aired in the UK, whereby the poor and uneducated are abused and abuse each other for the snickering entertainment of the audience. Angelini had grown up in a factory town called Poniac, close to Detroit. He says he carried a little excess weight when he was young and struggled to find a girlfriend – something he certainly made up for further down the line! After school there was no college education but rather a series of jobs which included cleaning toilets in a gay bar, where he also sold single cigarettes and sticks of gum at a dollar a time.

The stories here are very short, mostly just a few pages. The chronology is mixed so there are constant jumps between phases of his life. For most of the book he is on the hunt for women. He isn’t looking for a relationship, just sex. In fact, there’s only one girl whose name crops up a number of times, a girlfriend he broke up with four times before splitting for good. There’s a sense that he misses her but then the qualification that he realises he’d likely get fed up and they’d fight again – a process he is all too familiar with.

The tales reek of honesty and of a life lived large but at the same time within narrow confines. There is humility here and I think some shame too, but mainly I just sensed that he was doing what he wanted to do and enjoying it most of the time. There are snippets of his childhood that show a dysfunctional family: a violent father who once raped his mother at knifepoint and showed his son porn at an early age. Jude’s survival instinct at school led him to be a funny kid who was quick with the one-liner. In fact, all roads seemed to point to his life’s eventual destination.

This is a book I’ll remember for some time. It contains the single most stomach-turning story I’ve ever come across (though would you believe it, I still smiled at the punch-line) and generally a whole lot of laughs. But it delivers pathos too. It’s a pretty incredible mix. It’s a top shelf book you’d want to lock away from your children but I’m very glad I read it, it’s given me a really interesting view of life’s underbelly.