​ALL INTERNAL BY TERENCE HANNUM

ALL INTERNAL BY TERENCE HANNUM

5/6/2018

by tony jones

“A sex camgirl takes it to the next level and beyond”

‘Aneeda’ is the online alias for Anita who makes a living as a camgirl, spending her time in various state of undress in front of a camera chatting with punters and doing sleazy stuff for her audience. Her goal, to entice them into paying for private shows or buy her expensive stuff from her ‘wants’ list which she regularly advertises. Initially ‘Aneeda’ is successfully detached from Anita’s real life and much of this unpleasant, but very readable, novella centres upon what happens when she cannot.

A friendly warning, the sex stuff is explicit, voyeuristic and not for the faint-hearted or easily offended. To quickly set the tone; within a few pages she has a huge dildo up her rear, with much worse to follow. From the early stages this type of sex scene is portrayed in a bland, matter of fact manner, exploring what the young woman does on camera. But after a while dialogue such as “You wanna’ fuck my ass? You wanna’ fill my hole?” as see in the webcam chat dialogue quickly gets repetitive.

However, before repetition truly sets in the story moves in a much stranger direction, as Anita finds herself waking up suffering from memory loss, her body feels sore and used. Eventually a friend accuses her of going beyond cam-work and into hardcore porn as she’s certain she saw her in a dirty film Anita has no recollection of making. To say much more of the plot would give too much away, and this novella is best read without too much insight. Spoilers will ruin the freaky direction it sleazes and oozes into. I read it almost completely blind and on one level this did not prepare me for the explicit stuff, but on the other hand I was also left scratching my head as some of it was very confusing. Is Anita losing her mind? I really could not figure out what was going on. The reader might find themselves asking the same question. But there is nothing wrong with a certain level of blurriness.

As other reviews and blurbs say, before long we head into David Cronenberg territory, bloody body horror and the crossing of genres into science fiction. The writing is very fractured and broken, reflecting Anita’s mental and physical state where she loses touch with reality and her own consciousness. As she drifts further from reality the porn gets nastier, emptier and more explicit. Her lack of control is evident and as the novella is initially written in the first person “I” tense we have a direct look at what is inside Anita’s head and that’s a confusing place to be. Much of it makes uncomfortable reading, especially the second half when Anita is used again and again and the connection between her mind and body is completely dysfunctional, one of the recurring themes of the novella.

Perhaps the author was trying to make a deep statement about the evils of the porn industry, if that was the case, it is explored in the strangest of ways, and ultimately a very original, if unpleasant, manner. Porn is portrayed, rather voyeuristically, through a woman who for long periods does not seem to inhabit her own body. There is exploitation on all sorts of levels, but it also nails on the head the blandness and repetitiveness of hardcore sex. However, it’s a pacey book to read and has as much explicit gore as it does porn, especially in the second half. In other interviews the author has mentioned horror films such as “Inseminoid”, “Forbidden World” and “The Brood” and those influences are as clear as day in this novella and are solid points of reference.

“All Internal” is very likely to split opinion, many will hate it, but equally so I’m sure it will pick up many fans. Saying “I enjoyed it” is not quite the correct phrase, but it was never dull in any conventional way, and I was fascinated in seeing where the author took this off-beat story. David Cronenberg is the most obvious name-check, but I also reminded of Michel Faber’s “Under the Skin” and perhaps even David Lynch. I’m sure many readers will be heading straight to the shower, to wash away the filth, after getting to the end. A tough and demanding read for those who like their fiction to have serious edge.

Tony Jones