Okay, so technically I gave up on this book, but I marked it as consumed because I will never finish it, unless I am held at gunpoint and forced to by a couple of particularly menacing clowns. I really wanted to like it, because it has an awesome title, the premise is weird (and pretty interesting), and it’s the only horror novel I know of that takes place in southern Ontario, but…I just couldn’t. I even went back and reread the first couple of chapters. Four times. The only reason I was able to decipher what the hell was going on in this book at all was because I went online and read some reviews and interviews with the author.
The write-up about it in Rue Morgue describes it as “A laboured, surreal read,” which I now realise means “completely incomprehensible, but the author is my brother’s buddy.”
I get the feeling the author was trying to be William Burroughs-esque with all the vagueness and “is that actually happening? Because if so, it’s fucking disgusting” stuff, but it just doesn’t work. This book is a complete disaster.
Apparently it’s a sequel to some short stories, but I suspect I wouldn’t be any less confused and annoyed if I had read those first.