Tag: Bizarro Week!

Another Bizarro Week coming up!

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

I enjoyed Bizarro Week last November and decided I’m going to have various other themed weeks this year. First themed week is going to be another Bizarro Week starting on February 14-18. This particular Bizarro Week will focus exclusively on books released from Eraserhead Press for the New Bizarro Author Series. This go around, I am giving away one book from each author I review. In order to enter the drawing to win, all you have to do is on the day I review a book you find interesting, leave me a comment. It’s that easy. And you can leave a comment on all five reviews if you so desire. I do a random draw on my end so if the fates say you win more than once, who am I to argue?

So be sure to be here on Monday, February 14 so you can find out about some new voices in weird fiction and maybe even win a free book!

ETA: Updating this entry to let people know the authors I plan to discuss.
2/14: Uncle Sam’s Carnival of Copulating Inanimals by Kirk Jones
2/15: Muscle Memory by Steve Lowe
2/16: Love in the Time of Dinosaurs by Kirsten Alene
2/17: Felix and the Sacred Thor by James Steele
2/18: The Egg Said Nothing by Caris O’Malley

Mother Puncher by Gina Ranalli

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Book: Mother Puncher

Author: Gina Ranalli

Type of Book: Bizarro, novella

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: Well, it’s published by Afterbirth Books, which is often a good sign post for oddness.

Availability: Published by Afterbirth Books in 2008, you can get a copy here:

Comments: It’s fitting that I am concluding Bizarro Week with a review for Gina Ranalli’s Mother Puncher. I reviewed one of her books earlier this year and did not enjoy it that much. Panning Suicide Girls in the Afterlife felt bad. I felt the same way panning it the way I did when I panned Wrath James White because there are authors out there for whom the gestalt of the book does not work in some way or another but you like the way the author writes, you sense that they have something about them that makes them special, even if that book did not show the fullness of talent you sense is there.

This book confirmed my initial sense that Gina Ranalli is a very good writer. Overall, this book is more gently bizarro than some of the other outrageous, absurd and surrealist offerings out there, but the dystopia Ranalli creates is certainly not fodder for a mainstream novel, and this novella makes me invoke one of my backhanded compliments: I wish there was more. The plot got a little rushed in one of the conflicts and frankly, Ranalli’s plot and characterization were absorbing to the point that I was disappointed when the book ended. However, whether or not brevity is a hallmark of bizarro literature, it is a fact that most bizarro is novella-length so I need to get over wanting some of these books to be longer or more developed.

Mother Puncher tells the story of Ed Means, a former boxer who has become a Mother Puncher. That is, the government wants people to stop having kids, so if you go ahead and reproduce, a Mother Puncher comes and punches you in the face. Ideally, the mother and father are supposed to take a shot to the eye, but generally it’s just the mothers who get hit as their menfolk make themselves scarce immediately after the birth. Ed doesn’t like this, but there’s not much he can do about it. He just tries to do his job to the best of his ability despite hate groups, a deranged fan club president who coerces him into seeking side work that he doesn’t want, and a greedy, borderline hybristophilic wife who is seldom on his side.

Like I said above, this is gentler bizarro than many of the books I discuss on this site. The violence in this piece is subtler and more implied (you know, aside from women getting punched full in the face after giving birth), and things make sense. There is no fantasy world here, as the real world makes just about enough sense that one could imagine a law enforcing punches to the face if one insists upon breeding and a large, religious backlash that ends up in violent riots. The dystopia in this book is a mild dystopia, and Ed makes perfect sense to me. The plot does not rely on outrageous fortune to proceed and while I can see how this book would be considered “normal” fiction in some respects, I honestly don’t know if I can think of another publisher that would take on this book.

Ed was an excellent character, fully realized even within the limitations of a novella. Even more impressive were how vivid the minor characters in this book were. A pissy teenager who rats out her mother giving birth to her child in an abandoned house in an attempt to circumvent her punch – that scene painted the petulant teen who acted like a snot until shit got real and her self-absorbed, self-righteous mother perfectly. Drizzle, the underhanded, scuzzy president of Ed’s fan club and his weasel attitude. Ashley, Ed’s chain smoking, lethargic yet greedy wife. The only character I wish I knew more about was Tea, a woman who begins as Ed’s antagonist but eventually becomes his ally, willing to remain by his side even in great peril. She was interesting but I didn’t clue in to her as well, and this is a piddling criticism. In a novel with so many well-formed characters, even those with tiny roles in the novel, perhaps having a character who makes you wonder what she was really all about is a good thing.

Ranalli lets us into Ed’s mind frequently but she is a writer who, in this novel, achieved the dream of really showing and not telling, and one of the ways she did it was via her wonderful characterization. We really get to know Ed via his interactions with other characters. Ranalli contrasts him with weak men who hide to keep from taking their punches. We see his reluctance to take on side work but deciding to do it because the other man who punches mothers had a tendency to go to far, to do permanent damage, and while Ed does his job and feels he is doing a great service to his country, he does not want to hurt anyone permanently. He just wants to live in his secure gated community, have a cold beer now and then, eat a decent meal and do his job.

But Ed’s a good man. He doesn’t shut out the part of himself that feels morally conflicted just because he senses his beliefs are correct. After punching one repeat offender, a woman who takes her punches with good humor because they matter so little to her in the grand scheme of having a large family, Ed settles into a comfortable moral gray area.

Watching them together cheered Ed up somehow, but he couldn’t really say why. He still thought having babies in the current world was sinful but there was something about Mrs. English and her determination to keep doing it for no other reason than that she loved kids. And it was obvious she was a kind and caring mother. Hell, she was a kind and caring woman.

Go figure, thought Ed.

One of the reasons I am discussing the characterization so much is because in Suicide Girls in the Afterlife, I liked the characters but I didn’t buy them. They seemed unlikely at times, and that is not the case here. Motivations make sense. Ed’s emotional reactions make sense. His antagonists make sense. Ranalli’s plot is also very tight, with no loose ends.

The crisp, almost no-nonsense writing style that I found so captivating in her earlier work seemed especially well-suited for this particular tale. I am a person for whom ornate writing can grow very tiresome. The capacity to tell a story that is both straightforward yet engrossing seems simple enough but enough writers do it poorly that when it is done correctly, it is amazing.

Though this novel is not as outrageously baroque and demented as a lot of bizarro, I still think bizarro lovers will enjoy this book. But people who like a character-driven novel written precisely and with an eye to a tight plot will also like it. Like Andersen Prunty’s works, this book could be a gentle introduction into the wild world of bizarro and would be a great book for anyone new to the genre. While at times violent, it is restrained violence and in Ranalli’s hand, what could have been an incredibly misogynistic premise instead seems like an inevitable step in ZPG. I am really glad I read this book. Though the first book of Ranalli’s I read was not to my tastes, there were enough clues there about Ranalli’s style that I hoped I would like one of her other books. One of her more recent books, House of Fallen Trees, is now at the top of my wishlist and I very much look forward to reading it.

So it feels good ending Bizarro Week this way. It just worked out that the five books I had to discuss were all books I really enjoyed, but it always feels much better for me to love a book than hate it. I hope some of my readers who haven’t tried bizarro yet give one of these books a look.

Carnageland by David W. Barbee

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Book: Carnageland

Author: David W. Barbee

Type of Book: Bizarro, novella

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: It’s a part of the New Bizarro Author Series, which is generally a good indicator of oddness.

Availability: Published by Eraserhead Press in 2010, you can get a copy here:

Comments: Bizarro Week is still chugging along and today features another book giveaway. You can win a copy of David W. Barbee’s Carnageland one of two ways: leave me a comment in this entry today, November 11, before 7:00 pm PST, or retweet any of my Twitter posts with the hashtag bizarroweek. Doing either will throw your name in the hat to win a copy of the book. I’m giving away two free copies and you can both leave a comment here AND retweet in order to improve your chances of winning. I will choose one random commenter and one random retweeter after 7:00 pm PST.

With that out of the way, let’s discuss Carnageland. This novella is part of the New Bizarro Author Series that Eraserhead publishes. This series is a testing ground for new writers to prove that they have what it takes to sell books so the writers in the NBAS pretty much have to hit one out of the park in order to get a book contract with Eraserhead. While I am not sure if Barbee scored a home run with this book because that is definitely a mileage may vary statement, he definitely got on base with an amusing, foul, interesting novella that is worth a read. I have read far worse third and fourth efforts across genres and while I see room for improvement, the fact is, I also see a lot of talent that makes me want to read what Barbee comes up with for his second and third and fourth books.

Carnageland tells the story of Invader 898, a priapic little alien sent to a strange backwoods planet in order to prepare it for invasion. When I say he is priapic, I mean that he wants more or less to have sex with all vaguely feminine creatures but he has undergone strict training that has taught him to curb those sorts of urges. But he comes unglued at one point. You sort of knew he would. You’re just waiting to see how bad it’s gonna be when it happens. Believe me, it’s gross.

The planet he is combing over for alien occupation is a Disney and Grimm Brothers nightmare, an inversion of all that is sweet, moral and touching in those stories. In Barbee’s hands, the stories of Peter Pan, Rapunzel, dragons and trolls all become something quite horrible and nasty. I mean, dragons and trolls and witches in fairy tales are fearsome but in Carnageland, they are just horrible and foul. Tinkerbell, who becomes Tinkerslut in this novella, experiences some really harsh treatment. I recall being actually disturbed reading it and, not to spoil too much, was secretly relieved when she died. That whole scene was just full of the yuck and those who love bizarro for the foulness and disturbing content it often brings to the table will enjoy this novella.

Invader 898 works his way through the planet on a slayer quest that is cartoonish and quite like a video game, conquering one Disney or folklore character after another. I could easily see this book as a console game, licensing issues aside. A small alien dealing with an ocean of cartoons and characters found in children’s books, a complete bloodbath. Barbee has no problem completely destroying the icons of my youth, and it was actually pretty fun, the Tinkerslut scenes notwithstanding, seeing what amounted to Disneyland get taken down by a little green man with an erection.

Barbee’s story isn’t profoundly unique. Killing off the symbols of purity and childishness, inverting them to show the seediness that was always probably there, is common enough. What made this book entertaining for me is the excellent synthesis of these things from childhood: in a book that seems like a video game, the symbols of childish stories get annihilated. This is a book with a clear protagonist but it is also a book without a hero, and in a way, that is one of the most subversive things Barbee could have written. I could not root for anyone in this book and I kind of liked it that way.

All in all, this is a sound first effort. There are some sections that could have been more polished but overall, a few clunky paragraphs in the face of an good story are small criticisms. If you’ve spent your childhood (and possibly adulthood) playing video games, if you ever fantasized about putting Disney characters in their place, and if you just like good old fashioned quests filled with blood and guts, you will like this novella.

And just to drive this home one last time, I am giving away two copies and you can win one if you comment to this review or if you retweet any of my tweets with the tag #bizarroweek. Contest ends Thursday, November 11 at 7:00 pm PST.

My Landlady the Lobotomist by Eckhard Gerdes

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Book: My Landlady the Lobotomist

Author: Eckhard Gerdes

Type of Book: Fiction, novella, bizarro, experimental prose

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: Well, it was published by a bizarro imprint, so that was my first clue. But upon reading, I found that I had never read a narrative style like the one Gerdes employs.

Availability: Published in 2008 by Raw Dog Screaming Press, you can get a copy here:

Comments: This is a book that I almost didn’t review because the very thought of trying to talk about it made me ill-at-ease. I feel this way because from time to time, despite being an indiscriminate reader, I come across a book that makes me search for words and ideas I fear I may not have. I have a good education backing up my opinions, and odd literature certainly is a part of my daily life, but this book is different. It is not different wholly because it is so experimental. I recently reviewed an experimental novel here and had no problem explaining why I thought it a very bad book. But when things don’t work, sometimes it is far easier to say, “Here are the myriad reasons this book stank!” than to say, “This book is good and I don’t entirely know why.”

But I’m gonna give it a shot anyway and if I end up looking like a dumbass, so be it.

My Landlady the Lobotomist is the story of loss, of a man whose mind becomes a splintered place as he deals with the loss of his lover. The narrative divides his grief from his break up into metaphors, stories that reveal his emotional struggle. These stories are fantastic, imbued with a dreamy surrealism that remains ethereal even when the stories descend into gritty detail. The stories are sad dreams, pillowy nightmares and while these stories have a tint of reality to them by dint of the emotions Gerdes shares, the reader is always certain that these tales are nothing more than biochemical reactions in the narrator’s brain.

Which is why it is so appropriate these stories begin with the narrator speaking about living in a boarding house with other men, their landlady a woman known to take parts of their brains to adjust their behavior when their actions become too excessive in any manner. The narrator is helping stage a play for children about Godzilla but the play then takes on a life of its own, as Godzilla rages against the monster She-sus, but also a dragonfly is seeking its angelfish, struggling against the sea, a thugfish and other elements as he ultimately loses her.

I’ll be completely honest here. There were moments I had no idea what was happening in this book and when that occurs, I generally blame the book. But this time I think it was me, literalist that I am, seeking stable ground in a book where the only real knowledge I could have was that love will probably die. So I should have hated this book but I didn’t. This is not a case of the dim embracing the difficult in an attempt not to show their dimness (or at least I hope it isn’t) but rather an admission that despite at times realizing I was in over my head, I loved the prose nonetheless. The humor, the desperation, the at times lovely turn of phrase Gerdes employed.

O Recursion Recursiveness! Every way I look, it’s all the same thing. There is only one blue angelfish, as far as I can tell. I’m not going to settle for catfish. If I need to outwit the thugfish, I will. Shouldn’t be very hard. But the first move is that the Angelfish has to return on her own. If I drag her back slapping and screaming, I come all up in the thugfish’s face, the ocean will declare war on the land and nothing will be achieved. She is not a prize to win. She is a person who is capable of making up her own mind and coming to her own conclusions. If she prefers prison to joy, then she’s with Mrs. Brently Mallard. How sad. But I can’t force freedom down her throat. I can’t make her want to be happy. I know she’s thinking about me. Up from a bubble in the sea, I heard her voice singing a line of a song we both loved. The line was, “the fish will rise from the sea for thee,” and I think was an old English hymn, but for us it took on a very personal meaning. There I go, reminiscing about my lost love. I didn’t want to do that.

This is not the most dancing of passages in this book, but reading it happened upon one of the moments when I was able to grab onto a serious sense that I understood the narrator. His married or not-entirely-single girlfriend chose her standby over him, and with the narcissism of a man who cannot believe he has been rejected for an inferior, a thugfish, he convinces himself she would really be happier with him, if only she would choose happiness. Of course she has chosen what she wants, but there is no way to really look at losing in this manner as her making the correct choice. And even as he is convinced she is singing for him, I really thought instead of Prufrock, who in his maudlin honesty knew that the mermaids would not sing for him.

This novella could be, for me at least, intensely funny at times. Because the narrator’s neurosis seeps through in every story, even the part of his brain that considered itself a monster still had feet of clay.

Godzilla remembered that he was hungry. He ate an ice cream van and would have had bad brain freeze had he still had his forebrain. Plus he had sensitive teeth anyway because he so seldom flossed or brushed his teeth. And his feet hurt. He wished he could wear some comfortable loafers instead of always going barefoot. Smashing buildings barefoot cut up his feet badly.

Godzilla with brain freeze and sores on his feet, battling for his love and he complains…

I wish I could sit down with Gerdes and pick his brain over this book about a brain because as I began reading, I was certain the narrator, once he shed himself of the part of his brain that could not let go of the Angelfish/She-sus (or his landlady forcibly took it from him) he would stop obsessing, he would recover and move on somehow. But that was not the case. He lost his forebrain but still rampaged, still mourned even after the rusty ladle scoops out part of his cerebrum. The book does not necessarily need a firmer conclusion but the end left me itchy, as if there was something in this meditation of loss that I missed somehow. I think I am, at times, a reader who craves conclusion and this fantasy shows, all too clearly, that no matter how robust one’s imagination, no matter what forms one takes in one’s mind, there are some wounds that never heal.

The second chapter niggles at me the most. “The Running of the Rapids” was the chapter I enjoyed reading the most but the chapter that made the least sense to me. A recently single father takes his sons to an annual event in the town, wherein townmembers throw themselves into a rocky river and no one makes it out, drowning, smashing into rocks, bitten by snakes. I’ve reread it twice and while I like reading it, I wish I understood who or what the swimmers were meant to represent. We get a small sketch of each one, all vastly different people, and if they are to represent the various parts of the narrator’s psyche, then there was almost no sense in reading this book as no one makes it out alive. But perhaps I am thinking too hard. While experimental, this is still bizarro and perhaps meant to be absurdist, meaningless actions with meaningless consequences. But I don’t think so. Yet I also don’t know.

Should you read this book? I don’t know the answer to that either, but ideally I think I want you to read it so you can comment here and tell me what you thought of the book, maybe give me your insight. I don’t think you will regret reading it. I enjoyed reaching every chapter, each story, outrageous and fantastic, sly and clever, aching and bleeding. It’s hard as a person who reviews books to say that I liked something but am not entirely sure why, but that is the conclusion I reached with this book. I like it and that was enough. I suspect I will reread it again some time in the future and see what it says to me then.

Jack and Mr. Grin by Andersen Prunty

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Book: Jack and Mr. Grin

Author: Andersen Prunty

Type of book: Fiction, bizarro

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: Eraserhead Press, bizarro, etc. etc.

Availability: Published by Eraserhead Press in 2008, you can get a copy here:

Comments:When I decided to feature a Bizarro Week here on IROB, I knew I had to discuss a work from Andersen Prunty. The first of Prunty’s books I read was The Overwhelming Urge, which I reviewed here, and I loved it. It was cerebral, gentle weirdness, a collection of short stories that was odd but restrained in the bizarro-ness. More magical realism than full-bore strangeness, all of the short stories in that collection were common scenes with a fresh and at times unsettling eye.

That is also how Jack and Mr. Grin reads. A familiar story with a new, unsettling eye. The plot is simple. A man is on a quest to find his true love before something terrible and violent happens to her. Abducted women in peril plots are a dime a dozen, from romance to thrillers, stacked in the supermarket paperback wire displays. The devil, of course, is in the details and that is where he resides in this book.

Jack Orange loves Gina Black. He spends all day at a job place called the Tent where he shovels dirt into boxes which are then shipped off to strange and unlikely destinations. It’s a foul, filthy job but he does it willingly, knowing it gives him and Gina a better life. One Sunday morning, Jack is distracted on the way back into his house after a quick trip to buy breakfast. He has a ring to propose to Gina, whom he has left in their house, listening to old records. But he is distracted by his neighbor and when he returns with breakfast and the ring, Gina is gone. She has been kidnapped by Mr. Grin and he will torture her to death if Jack does not use his wits to discover where Gina is being held and destroy Mr. Grin. The answer to her location lies in the history of their relationship and the things Gina has considered important, but it still isn’t that easy.

Jack has to navigate a landscape that has been changed by Mr. Grin. People he turns to for help end up with a stinging brand in their skin that either makes them insane or is a symbol of their insanity, becoming homicidal in their attempts to stop Jack from finding Gina. This is a quest novel but it is a bizarro quest novel so it could very easily have become a circus of intensely insane, surrealistic violence as Jack struggles to find Gina. Prunty has a strong hand and controls this story, ramping up the horror and disbelief, yet never becoming so disgusting or unbelievable that the novel reaches a state of near surrealistic parody or gut-wrenching gore (not that there is anything wrong with either, it must be said).

Nothing is random in this novel. Though one of the hallmarks of bizarro is the surrealistic plot line, at times using cloying details that seem important but later mean nothing in the face of absurdist plots, Prunty does not take that route. His plots are held together tightly, each plot device, each character we meet, every single event playing a role in the way the novel unfolds. In that way he is definitely more restrained than some of his bizarro brethren. In many ways, this book was more in the vein of dark horror. But there were enough otherworldly elements, strange, surreal descriptions, that make this book a good crossover for anyone who wants to try bizarro without descending too quickly into a complete mind bend.

All in all, this is a tight, well-told horror/bizarro tale. Every detail matters in the game Mr. Grin forces Jack to play. Anyone who has either tried to write a mystery/thriller/horror novel will know how hard this is to do, and more important, anyone who has read a novel that cannot pull it off knows how marvelous it is when a writer gets it right. Since I don’t want to spoil the plot, I can’t go into depth about all the ways that Prunty makes every word matter, but I can say that Prunty doesn’t make the mistake of making words count in a calculated, stiff manner. He is far more deft than that. Casual conversations help with characterization but it is subtle – not a hammer in our foreheads announcing, “Hey, character development, pay attention!” As Jack careens from one bad scene to the next, the plot’s pace never seems overwhelming or rushed.

However tight and well-paced this novel is, I think the real reason to read it is to wallow in Prunty’s prose and ideas. He handles some downright creepy scenes that resonated with me weeks after reading this book. For example, the first time Jack hears Mr. Grin on the phone, the voice he hears causes him to immediately know what the man looks like.

“Who are you?”

“I think you know who I am.”

Already he had a picture of this guy in his head. He was like a more bloated version of his high school history teacher. The teacher would come in and lecture for an hour about holocausts and smile the entire time. Only his history teacher had been very thin. Just from a couple of sentences, Jack pictures this guy as a plump man. He didn’t know why. He was there, on the other end of the line, his plump red cheeks all pulled back, those gleaming white teeth, almost perfect enough to be dentures, gleaming out from all that rosiness.

Later in the same conversation:

Already his head raced with ideas of trying to track the man by this phone call. Of trying to pick up some sound from the other end that would allow him to place it. The sound of kids playing in a playground, or a siren from a fire engine or a train. Anything. But he didn’t hear anything except the man’s somewhat labored breathing and, perhaps, the sound of his cheeks pulling back from his gums in that hideous grin.

I initially thought I saw so much meaning in these passages because I do this all the time – build a mental image of what a person looks like on the basis of their voice. I think everyone does that. But this passage means so much more, really. It shows that Jack is sharp, even in the face of shock. He knows to sift for clues. He knows to listen closely. But this passage most importantly shows very early on that we, the reader, can trust Jack’s instincts. On the basis of a voice, he remembers a creepy, grinning man who likely had a strong sadistic streak in him. He knows, from the very beginning, before Mr. Grin makes a single threat, exactly what sort of man he is dealing with.

I reviewed recently a book by Supervert, wherein he argued that there was a noise that could, despite philosophical assertions stating otherwise, inspire disgust. This book is full of examples of how, in the absence of any other stimulus, Jack heard noises that if heard by the reader would have been disgusting. Dreadful sloshing, slurping noises he hears on the phone can mean very disgusting, degrading things are happening to Gina. Having read Supervert, it put those noises into a whole new… horrible perspective for me. It’s nice when the odd writers I love intersect like this.

Prunty gives us more than disgust, as there is raw horror in this book. If I had any quarrel with this book, it was with the ending. It seemed too neat, in a way, but I also guess at the same time that given the otherworldly elements in this book, the sort of slipstream combination at the end, that the ending is not out of place. I guess there was enough realism for me to want the gritty horror that Prunty set up to endure throughout the book.

I think this is a fabulous book, very much worth a read. It also skirts one of the biggest complaints readers have shared with me about bizarro – that the books are too expensive for what are often no more than a 100 page novella. I’m not one to complain about the cost of books (most of the time), but at 195 pages, this is an actual novel and you will enjoy turning every one of the pages.

How to Eat Fried Furries by Nicole Cushing

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Book: How to Eat Fried Furries

Author: Nicole Cushing

Type of Book: Fiction, bizarro, short story collection

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: Well, it begins with a team of humanoid ferrets trying to save the world from a literal shit storm. It gets odder from there.

Availability: Part of the Eraserhead Press New Bizarro Authors Series, it was published in 2010. You can and should get a copy here:

Comments: LET BIZARRO WEEK BEGIN!

I am going to review one bizarro book a day this week. Why? Because I love bizarro literature. I also had five bizarro books to review and figured, “Why not.” If people like Bizarro Week, it may become a regular feature so if you are digging it, comment and let me know.

Also, if you leave me a comment in this entry today before 7:00 pm PST, you’ll be in the running to win a free copy of How to Eat Fried Furries. If you retweet any of my Twitter posts with the hashtag bizarroweek, that will also throw your name in the hat to win a copy of the book. That’s right, folks. I’m giving away two free copies and yes, you can both leave a comment here AND retweet in order to improve your chances of winning. I will choose one random commenter and one random retweeter after 7:00 pm PST. You definitely want a copy of this book. So get to it!

Okay, all my business out of the way, I need to say that this was a great book to start off Bizarro Week. A fucking wonderful book. A themed short story collection wherein all the stories have a link to one another, no matter how small, this book is subversive, sickening, funny, eerie and, dare I say it, entertaining. It is random, topical and creepy as all hell. One chapter raised the hair on the back of my neck, it was so creepy. These are stories for people who like being disgusted, for whom a book cannot be too disturbing, and who don’t mind the nasty being quite funny.

I think I knew this book was going to be utterly wonderful during the prologue.

Who hasn’t, in some moment of midnight genius, concocted a plan to murder Santa Claus? I know I have.

I have, too.

But killing Santa is only part of this book. And while the title refers to furries, they are not those kinds of furries, the kind mocked on CSI. They are humans forced to wear animal suits so people will feel more comfortable with cannibalism. A recurring theme in these stories is that of humans assuming the roles of animals, either as an attempt to survive during a squirrel invasion or by force in a grim dystopia, or animals becoming human hybrids, as happened with the grotesque Ferret Force Five, who try to save the Earth from space invasion as well as stop a massive shit storm that is covering the planet in hot, steaming poo.

And then there are the people who decide to lose their skins as a means of rebellion. Ugh.

So what makes this collection of stories about shit storms and Squirrel Jesus and deformed ferrets and cannibalism so special? Well, first, the book is culturally cunning without sliding into insufferable hipster territory. The nods to 90’s brother band Nelson and Pulp Fiction amused me but aren’t invasive. She blends little dots of pop culture references into her narrative in a manner that ensures that if you get the reference, you’ll grin a bit but if it all means nothing to you, you won’t sense that there is an inside joke that does not include you.

Second, Cushing’s narrative styles are also a thing of beauty. She uses a pastiche of different narrative types to tell the stories of worlds gone mad. Recipes, scripts for long-forgotten television shows, first person journalism accounts – the way she uses varied methods to tell these stories with a common theme make this collection seem active, engaging and sharp.

Third, she is a fine storyteller. I am walking a fine line here because I want to share some of the best parts of these tales but at the same time I do not want to give too much away. So to a degree, you may have to take my word for it that this is one clever, interesting, disgusting, foul, hilarious, over-the-top yet subtle short story collection. Some of the text will just make you uneasy, like the description of Ferret Force Five in the first chapter, “Ferret Force Five, Episode VII: Hirrelter Squirrelter! A Media Tie-In for the Ages!” The description of the hot, steaming shit storm in the same chapter is both disgusting and quite funny, especially the “science” that explains the phenomenon.

“Squirrelmagedon: 2012” is bleak, dystopic and horribly funny. The Angel Uriel sends survivors rhyming messages from a bi-plane and the remaining humans do their best to appear as squirrel-like as possible. Yet as bizarre(o) as it all seems, the characters still manage to pigeon-hole their experiences into the world view they had before they experienced such calamity.

Crossan couldn’t stand to hear her talk this way. Hadn’t she listened to enough of his sermons to know that the Book of Revelations predicted a cleansing, purifying bloodbath at the end? Didn’t she know Jesus would win? Admittedly St. John had left out the part about three decades of hiding from a squirrel army. But other than that it was all working out according to plan.

The best story in the collection is “A Citizen’s History of the Pseudo-Amish Anschluss.” This story, more restrained than the poop-filled, gross, outrageous plots of the other stories, was easily one of the creepiest, eeriest things I have read this year. I don’t want to discuss it in depth because frankly this is one of those stories I consider “worth the price of admission.” It’s a story most readers will come back to in moments of mental silence, remembering the absolute but understated horror of the piece. But let me share one passage from this story, and even with zero context, I think the power of Cushing’s prose will be clear:

I heard the Black Suit Ladies knocking gently–ever so gently–against the basement windows, the front door, the back door, the downstairs windows, the upstairs windows. Their tiny wrists tapped their elegant nails against each window, sending each pane of glass a-titter. “Bossie, time for milkin’!” they all called out in unison.

I didn’t answer.

I knew I had time.

[…]

I will surrender to the Black Suit Ladies. Not yet, but soon.

If you are reading this now, you must be one of them.

When a bunch of women, who reminded me of Mrs. Danvers, are gently insistent that a woman become a cow, we are dealing with a palpable level of creepiness.

One of the reasons I started off with this book for Bizarro Week is because I can’t remember the last time I read a first effort that was this damn good. I am a reader who appreciates many genres and this book covered horror, humor, the grotesque, the foul, the insane and the unthinkable in a way that even satisfied the part of me that still has the stink of an English Lit grad student. Cushing got this book published in the Bizarro New Author series but in order to hear her voice again in another book, we readers have to buy this book. This series really does permit us to vote with our dollars. So if you read here often and I’ve steered you right before, consider buying this book. I highly recommend it and spending money on Cushing’s book will ensure we have more books from her in the future.

And because I liked it this much, I bought two copies to share, and again, you can win a copy if you comment to this review or if you retweet any of my tweets with the tag #bizarroweek. Contest ends Monday, November 8 at 7:00 pm PST.

ETA: nmallen won the Twitter retweet giveaway and Dan won the copy for comments in this entry. Thanks to everyone who commented to win – keep an eye on the site as I will be hosting another book giveaway on Thursday for another New Bizarro Author!

Bizarro Week! Bizarro Week!

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Next week I will be reviewing one bizarro book a day over here on IROB. It’s a Bizarro Celebration all up in here!

In addition to wallowing in the awesomeness that is the bizarro genre, I will also be giving away free books on Monday and Thursday. Enter to win by commenting on my entry here on Monday or Thursday or by retweeting my announcements on Twitter on Monday and Thursday.

Join me in my oddness extravaganza, people!

ETA: Just found out BizarroCon is next week. I have crappy timing. Or really excellent timing. Sometimes being utterly clueless plays to my advantage. We’ll see.