By JORDAN KRALL (Eraserhead Press; 2008)
Jordan Krall is a signature author of the Bizarro fiction movement, and this book is a typical example of Bizarro lit, reveling as it does in easily digestible black humored weirdness. It’s also, likewise in common with most of this stuff, extremely short and terminally lightweight. Its biggest sin, however, is that the novel is simply not that weird, as despite a plethora of odd details the story arc is straight out of Hollywood: a nerd meets a beautiful woman (albeit in a wholly bizarre manner), falls in love and vanquishes the assholes pursuing her to ensure a wholly unlikely but obligatory happy ending.
Said nerd is Kevin, a no-hoper who lives over a porno shop and works as a teacher’s assistant. One day Kevin’s cat delivers a synthetic but quite lifelike woman’s ankle that actually sweats—and then Kevin finds a feces-coated eyeball in his crapper. This is followed by a hand, a foot and so forth until the cat drags in a woman’s synthetic head. Kevin now has a sex doll he superglues together that when fully assembled calls itself June.
Trouble starts when Max Alexander, a sleazebag who works in the porn shop under Kevin’s apartment, discovers that one of his prized robotic sex dolls is missing. It seems that Kevin’s cat has been stripping the doll piece by piece from its box, and bringing the pieces to Kevin. Max is pissed, having plucked June’s essence from an alternate dimension ruled by Simon, the God of Whores, who lords over the mythical city of Om-Am (or something), and then fashioned her into the likeness of the retired porn star June St. Clair. The latter, by the way, is still around, and fed up with being jerked around by her porn impresario husband.
What follows is some gratuitous grossness—one of Max’s goons has an attack of diarrhea, the real June St. Clair snaps and murders her hubbie and herself—before Kevin and June declare their undying love for one another, just in time for a final showdown with Max, Simon and a bunch of crab monsters from Om-Am. I wouldn’t dream of revealing who wins.