[...] Huysmans depicts ostentatious depravity with an attention to detail that is so exquisitely meticulous it borders somewhat discomfortingly on the poetic. His vivid prose is not graphic, it is far worse than that – it is lavish. The graphic mode aims to shock – the terrible magnetism of Huysmans’s lavish style causes one to feel poisoned. To begin with my eyes jumped all over the resplendently gruesome words haphazardly, like the snowy paws of a kitten trapped in a white-hot fire grate. I felt sick to the stomach and quite deranged, as if poisoned, yes, infected with a diabolical vision that was as compelling as it was repulsive. [...]