The Bleeding Mole and Other Stories
Yesterday I nailed my first rabbit. It made the mistake of coming
into the backyard through a hole under the fence. I went through the
backdoor like a bolt of lightning, and the hunt was on.
The rabbit was fast - very fast - but I was even faster. Chomp! Chomp! Shake! Shake!
Shake! Chomp! It was over in about 15 seconds. This was a big, fat brown
rabbit. It tasted much better than squirrel, so I buried it in the yard.
In a month or two I'll have some delicious, naturally-marinated rabbit
kimchi.
I didn't feel like going out today except to relieve myself. Even though it was early May, the wind was howling and it was cold and snowy. So I decided to curl up in my office with a hot cup of Earl Grey and read. Then it struck me like a flicked booger. Why not become a book reviewer? No one I know can digest a book as well as me. So I called my publicist, Abe Doubleduck.
"Hey Abe," I said. "How's it hangin'?"
"Yo, Zoe-Dog," he replied, "Wazup?"
"I'm looking for a book review gig." I said.
He replied, "Well dog, you called at the right time. After firing their top dog, the Times is looking for some fresh faces and maybe a fresh muzzle or two."
Before you could say, "Everything has an expiration date," Abe called back to let me know I had a 90-day gig with the Times. I was at my typewriter spitting out lapidaries of some of the newest literary gems. I initially have undertaken three lovely romantic novels for my premier engirdlement:
The Bleeding Mole by Harlan S. Cornsucker
Harlan S. Cornsucker's third novel, The Bleeding Mole, is both rapturous and elegant. It's not about some unlucky, subterranean rodent wounded by an errant spade. No, it's about love - specifically, about a dermatologist, Tony Donatello, who falls in love with a mole on his chin. This is a decidedly odd, unconsummated relationship, but it's filled with passion, melancholy, and ultimately, unrequited love.
Attraction sparks between dermatologist Tony Donatello and the mole on his chin when they meet in his bathroom mirror, but she's looking for a relationship, not a player — a situation that becomes increasingly complicated when they're forced to plan a wedding.
Professionally, Tony has reached the pinnacle of his career, moving back from Newark to Philadelphia to accept the position of his dreams, which almost makes up for the fact that the vainglorious wart on his butt he thought was his perfect match cheated on him two weeks before they were to marry.
As best man and maid of honor, Tony and the mole are thrown together to help plan a quick marriage (the mole's sister, a voluptuous boil, is pregnant, though they're keeping it secret from everyone but Tony), while their simmering attraction boils over, creating a whole new set of conflicts and obstacles to their shared happiness.
As time passes and their relationship deepens, the mole stoically watches herself change from the beautiful young mole she used to be, to a bleeding, pustulant, cancerous vanillanoma. Could radiation save their relationship, or would she just wither away?
Cornsucker is a contemporary romance superstar in spite of his pandering of young girls and gerbils. He is known for intelligent characters and quick, witty dialogue that ratchets up intense sexual tension. His new novel goes in a slightly different direction from his previous titles, creating strife without any icy spicules — to great effect.
***
Pigmy Tail by Clive Devine
As far back as his 1993 groundbreaking trilogy, The Heavy Anus, The Thick-Thighed Ballerina, and Curvaceous Buttocks, Clive Devine has specialized in intricate, sizzling romances. Of these three Joycean novels, The Heavy Anus is the most impenetrable, but the Hugo-nominated Curvaceous Buttocks has garnered a wide audience. Even 1996's The Wormhole of Miss Priscilla Jones — his most accessible and scintillating work — was a study in dizzying puzzle-craft.
With his latest book, Pygmy Tail, Devine has once again gone postal. Not only does he weave together multiple storylines, but he also adds deviant morphisms to the equation — some of which echo back to his previous novels, ones that never seemed meant to do anything but stand alone. Devine always has worked on a large scale, but his canvas has never been more sprawlulating.
In his grand symphony of strangeness, Devine hits a few off notes. His crisp, pinpoint prose sometimes verges on the antiseptic and iodinic. The way the characters are emotionally removed from each other — and from themselves — may be exquashly chilly, but it also undermines the powerful love story at the heart of the book.
But there's also magic, or at least artful misdirection, just like in the Curvaceous Buttocks. Devine hides the answers to his obteresque mysteries just up his sleeve, waiting for the most jaw-dropping time to spring them. The story line hits you in the face from the first page:
Zefron Hildebrandt loves pigmies but never thought his family would approve of his long-kept secret. After falling head over heels in love with Ota Bengala of the Bambuti tribe, he's finally forced to confront his fear of coming out to his Methodist minister father.
Zefron overcame years of abuse at his father's hands, eventually becoming a successful hair dresser. It wasn't until meeting Ota Bengala at a transvestite minstrel show in Terre Haute, Indiana that he found something was missing. Even if that something meant falling in love with a man half his size.
Ota Bengala, a Mormon and former drug addict who is less than three feet tall, has always struggled with his past and never thought it possible to find someone who could accept him, let alone a six-foot tall White suburbanite from Milwaukee. A night of tragedy began the couple's journey toward love ten years before ever meeting. But can they put aside the complications of their pasts to create a future together?
The lively dialogue and the tender emotions compel readers to relish every moment of the developing romance. As their secrets are revealed, their love is tested. Zefron will do whatever he must to free Ota from his guilt-ridden past even though he knows there is no future there.
***
Where Wolf and I? by Imogene Poots
Imogene Poots burst upon the literary scene in her native England with her much-heralded gothic novel, Where Wolf and I?
Oftentimes, madness breeds the finest art. Some of the most historic and well-regarded pieces of literature have come out of a sort of psychosis. From the works of Edgar Allan Poe to Robert Louis Stevenson and a host of others, the evidence is there. And I find it convolutionary the way the mind overcomes itself to render something beautiful yet bizarre.
Rejecting the structure of a traditional plot, Poots' Where Wolf and I? reads like a long poem — one with utter insanity pervalessing each and every page. The vivid, disjointed prose mirrors the troubled mind of our protagonist, Delores Abercrombie, a veterinarian who is losing her grasp of reality. Something has happened to her. Is it the rejection she feels? Some vision beamed in from afar has completely set her off, altering everything around her.
Where Wolf and I? is one of my all-time favorite books. I remember blubbering all through the ending, and then I immediately started over and read it again.
Veterinarian Delores Abercrombie grew up expecting to be mated to shape-shifter Julian Mangrove when she finished boarding school, but when Julian leaves to join the Dog Soldiers Legionnaire, she reluctantly builds a new life for herself, eventually coming home to take over her fathers' practice in Dirkhound, Warwickshire where she strikes up a relationship with a hermaphroditic, lesbian pharmacist.
One day, Delores begins to suspect that someone has been prowling around her house while she's at work. She uses a hidden camera to find the culprit. She's shocked to see a very changed Julian, who is dealing with a severe war injury by mating, in wolf-dog form, with Cranberry, the three-legged, stray shih tzu she recently adopted.
She'd never turn away an injured animal, not even when he's also the man who broke her heart. Can she help him to heal without falling in love with him again?
Watch for my next reviews:
Cancer, Under My Nuts! by Jordan Belafonte. The poignant story of one man's struggle with probate cancer and how he turned a tragedy into an affirmation of life. You're gonna like this one!
Tarnation, I Don't Want No More Coal by Willard McBride. This biopic explores the inner workings of a West Virginia coal miner bent upon becoming a Buddhist monk in spite of his family's dire predictions of "burnin' in hell for abandonin' the true faith of Jesus." This one will spin your teeters.
Alabama Sucks Like a Dog's Dry Teat by B. J. Cobbledick. An embittered methhead struggles with his Southern heritage, his misanthropic children, and the dysfunction of his trailer park existence.
Condensers for my subsequent reviews:
How to Refurnish a Horse's Colon by Althea Groins
The Gonads Trilogy by Chamber McFarlane
Carnal Knowledge Under the Walnut Tree by Elvis Stroker
The Joy of Hemorrhaging by Priscilla Blankenship
I Am the Lord By God! by Jeroboam Akim
How to Kill a Cow With a Pencil: the Mystic Circle of the Ninja translated by Hibachi Yokohama
Bite Me With a Spoon by Agnes Leadership
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
~ Stephen King