The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams review – twisted love story from a cult writer

Williams follows her prize-winning debut with a gothically overstuffed tale of a cynical young woman in a crumbling university town Missouri Williams’s darkly absurd and wilfully grotesque debut novel, The Doloriad, concerned itself with the aftermath of a world-shattering catastrophe. Her second takes place in what feels like the beginning of one. The Vivisectors is set in an ancient and unnamed university town – we could call it Oxford or Cambridge, but let’s not – which is rapidly being ov...

By Ian Maleney