I can honestly say that I’ve never seen a book quite like this. Go Ask Ogre is comprised of letters (and a few journal entries) that a young woman named Jolene Siana wrote to Ogre, the lead singer of the industrial group Skinny Puppy. In her letters she expressed the feelings typical of anyone caught on the outside of “normal” existence: all of the pain, confusion, and depression resonates as a true experience captured on paper. Somewhat miraculously, Ogre kept all of the letters that Jolene Siana sent him over the years and eventually returned them to her. Perhaps he has a great gift of foresight; it is obvious that writing to him was one of the only outlets for her feelings that Siana had at the time and that by giving her the chance to view it all again she had a chance at closure and emotional reconciliation. This book is a beautiful biographical artifact. Jolene Siana not only wrote to Ogre to an obsessive degree, but she lavishly illustrated the envelopes, which are presented here with personal photographs as part of the overall message. The book is subtitled Letters from a Deathrock Cutter, and while there are mentions of “cutting”, I didn’t really find it to be the focus of this book. Cutting is just one of the many ways the author attempted to deal with her pain: she also turned to drugs and immersed herself in art and music to get by. If you’ve been an outsider I don’t think you can help but recognize these patterns of behavior, even if you never had to live through them yourself.

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