PIECEMEAL JUNE

ISBN-10: 1933929634

ISBN-13: 978-1933929637

reviewed by Garrett Cook

06.11.2008

Bizarro fiction is a strange, occasionally untenable genre. What makes something weird enough to be Bizarro? What kinds of scatology are valid? What IS Bizarro? All of these questions are of a fairly personal and thereby subjective nature. Jordan Krall embodies, expands and has a rich dialogue with his genre in his novella, Piecemeal June from Eraserhead Press. Here is a writer that utilizes the tenets of Bizarro with skill and aplomb and a real talent from worldbuilding that makes him an ideal representative of the genre for the Bizarro neophyte and an exemplar for the die-hard fan. While I might not go so far as to compare him to Ovid, as a review elsewhere has, I would say he is a can't miss literary talent who can show skeptics what Bizarro has to offer.

Fans of the early works of Clive Barker and the paintings of Salvador Dali will have a lot to appreciate in Piecemeal June's world, a world that is an ideal Bizarro and introduction to the genre because it is itself the world of scatology. The city of Om Am, ruled by Simon, is a place with harems, a wise woman who divines out of a well of excrement on her back and harvested body parts used for grisly and amusing purposes. This world is not just used for fart joke gross out purposes, but rather to chart out human sexuality and make it into a palpable site, an ideal stage for an unconventional crime story and a very unusual love story. Kevin, the protagonist already teeters into the world of the scatological and the sexual by living above a porno store with an enthusiastic tarot reading cat. When the cat discovers the foot of a most unusual sex doll, he dips deeper into this world by reconstructing her and finding love with the sex doll he has constructed, who is very real and sought after by Simon. The conflict that ensues bringing in an aging boxer, two crab monsters and a sleazy porno director brings the two worlds completely together. This chaotic, well wrought and brilliantly paced caper features something the reader wouldn't expect from either a Bizarro novel or a book that explores the nature of kink and pornography: warmth and tenderness, components that end up making Piecemeal June a sublime balance of sacred profane, grimy, beautiful and sickening that could only be found in a world of gutsy surrealism. Piecemeal June is a great read with strong crossover potential that rewards a strong stomach and a good sense of humor as only Bizarro fiction can.