This book has an absolutely lunatic premise. It is said that a decapitated head can remain in a state of consciousness for 90 seconds. In heightened states of emotion or agitation, people can speak at the rate of 160 words per minute. Combine the two and you have the micro stories in this book. Read the rest of the review here: http://ireadoddbooks.com/?p=231

I saw this book on a cart outside Books-a-Million years and years ago. I looked through it, thought it was intriguing, and put it back. I have thought of it at various times over the years, and wished I had purchased it. Not only could I not remember the author's name, I also could not remember the title. The only thing I remembered was that each page was 240 words in length and there was no punctuation. Fast forward to last week, when I just happened upon it online. Kismet!! It was at Half Pri...

A post-modern post-mortem -- 240 word entries of severed heads last thoughts. It sounds tremendously morbid, but it is a fascinating window into the intimacy of thought made more vivid through the use of truncation. We read a few of these short pieces while reading The Tale of Two Cities and the students I teach were hooked. They what-if and questioned one after another and the tantalizing realization of never knowing the rest of their life or tale was hammered into them in a way I could not hav...

I had a look at what other people thought of this book & I find it odd that so many people have commented on the theme of this book being a gimmick. I'm a huge fan of short stories & I have found some of my favorite collections are linked stories or are centered around a particular theme. I absolutely agree with the people who've commented that these brief little stories are more akin to poetry than prose. They're so achingly beautiful. And speaking of beauty, I also appreciated the presentation...

This book’s dubious achievement is to associate chopping off people’s heads with cuteness. I bet you thought it could not be done. But the author came across two factoids – 1) after decapitation, the human head is believed [by who? by who?] to remain conscious for one and a half minutes; 2) in a heightened state of emotion (such as when you’ve just been executed) people speak at the rate of 160 words a minute. So, therefore, you see, 1 ½ minutes gives us 240 words. So…. stay with me… let’s take

Whether or not this is deserved, I associate Chronicle Books with titles like "Photographs of Kitschy 1970s-Era Cartoon Themed Garden Implements" and "Naughty Ilustrated Haiku By Cheesecake Models of the Mid-Fifties." This book is kind of in that vein, except the theme here is decapitation (and there are, thankfully, no pictures).This here, consistent with my stereotype of Chronicle Books, is a gimmick. The gimmick is the idea that a person remains conscious for a minute and half after being beh...

In Severance, Robert Olen Butler combines two seemingly unrelated ideas: first, that consciousness lasts for one and a half minutes after decapitation, and second, that people speak at a rate of 160 words per minute when in a heightened state of emotion. Since people are likely pretty emotional once they've been decapitated, Butler figured that their final thoughts would run precisely 240 words -- the length of each of the book's 62 pieces, which seek to "capture the flow of thoughts and feeling...

Severance combines two theories: that consciousness is retained after decapitation for 90 seconds, and that, in heightened emotional states, people speak 160 words per minute. The book is sixty-two stories, at exactly 240 words each, from the heads of decapitated people: kings, queens, farmers, girls, businessmen, jihadists, authors, and mythological women, men and animals. It’s a fantastic book in its originality, its concept and, yeah, its execution.I can’t remember the last book of poetry I r...

MARISSA, surly undergrad, beheaded in college town by a drunken business major driving his dad’s Benz:Damn, I’m dead. Looks like I’m fated to spout off 160 adjectives and nouns loosely connected to my bullshit life for two arbitrary minutes while the lights are still on. Uhhhh . . . . . I read some good books in my life, and some not good ones. This would be an interesting writing exercise to give to a high school history class but I wouldn’t assign a 9/11 victim because that would be super tast...

I’ve said this before, but Robert Olen Butler is my favorite writer; I think he’s one of the most gifted writers around in terms of technical prose; and I think no one does stream of consciousness better than him. All that said, his last novel was terrible (Fair Warning), and the novel before that was mediocre (Mr. Spaceman). It’s clear now that he has decided to stick to his strengths – this work is another creative writing exercise for his talents. The premise behind Severance is the combinati...

This didn't come together like I hoped deep down it would, and I can really only blame myself. The reviews, which I scanned beforehand, are full of people just like me. People who found out that this book is filled with stories of beheaded people throughout history, each story the exact length of what they believe a human head could think in those moments after being separated from the body. It's a great idea. Really intriguing. But like so many other readers here, I felt like it didn't work on

Most reviews refer to this series as "gimmicky," but upon reading I feel the exact opposite. The theme of this book is the final thoughts upon being decapitated/beheaded/hed kut off. The gimmick would be if Butler used the occasion to bring about some sort of macabre second-by-second first hand account of a head rolling off the gallows. This...it is not. It is rather poetic, and geared more towards the author's perception of the situation, whether real or imagined, and what could have been the l...

"After decapitation, the human head is believed to remain in a state of consciousness for one and one-half minutes.""In a heightened state of emotion, people speak at the rate of 160 words per minute."Pulitzer Prize-winning Robert Olen Butler has written 62 stories of 240 words in length, each about some decapitated figure (legendary, canonical, historical, zoological). These stories are insightful and ecstatic - I literally could not put this book down. I just sank into a chair and turned from

[rating = A]One of my: Best Books of the Year (for 2021)This was wonderful. The unique style in itself was enough to capture my eye, my attention. These 62 short stories, each 240 words, are inventive and creative. And also very sexual, it may be noted; their only downside. Told by a person who was decapitated, each story is a glimpse into their thoughts before death.My favorite is the one about the Lady of the Lake. The way Butler constructs the metaphor about where Excalibur came from is brill...

This is probably the most creative concept for a book I’ve ever seen. Supposedly, a head remains conscious for 90 seconds after decapitation. The author takes historical figures, animals, and mythological creatures who were decapitated and writes 240-word prose-poems about what goes through their minds in the 90 seconds after they lose their heads.First, I have to say that I love the design of this book. The pages are really thick, and the colors, fonts, and layout are unusual. Whoever designed

My book cover blurb: "The decapitation one is better than the sex one."I didn't exactly walk away from reading Butler's similarly structured book, Intercourse, with much love in my heart, so I felt like I could go into this one and out the other end with a similar outcome. This was actually the one that caught my attention first and interested me more than the one in which we read the one-page of thought from a person as they get know someone else, Biblically. At the time that I first stumbled u...

When this works, it works very well. When it doesn't, it is still a good read. It is a gimmick that only sometimes works, to be honest. Too often the recollections, though beautifully rendered in a mostly punctuation-less run-on, are merely accounts of how the person got to where they were, leading up to the moment of beheading. It doesn't shine, it doesn't illuminate, it doesn't philosophize or ruminate or make wonder: it renders. Butler is a wonderfully talented writer and has exploited the gi...

Imagine that you have about 90 seconds to remain conscious after your head is severed. This book of prose (62 stories, 250 words each) is based on a 19th century French doctor’s opinion that the head remains conscious for 90 seconds after decapitation. And, if it’s true that we speak at a rate of 160 words per minute during heightened states of emotion, then you might have a lot to think about in these last 90 seconds before all the blood drains from your brain. This book requires a slow and tho...

i love the conceit of this book - it is genius. and the design is glorious, down to the smallest details like endpaper color. that being said, some of these work better than others. but some are truly great - especially when there are unexpected connections. i would be interested to know how much research went into this book, especially with the more contemporary "characters". this is the second book i have read in as many weeks where the author predicts his own death, and that makes me a little...

This is an incredibly interesting collection of short-short stories based around the idea of what would someone say in the minute-and-a-half of "consciousness" that a head is supposed to retain after beheading. Sounds kind of gruesome, but it's not a horrific collection by any means. Assuming that a person in a heightened state can utter 160 words per minute and applying that to the 1.5 minutes of consciousness, the author tells stories that are all exactly 240 words in length of characters, bot...