Book Review: The Menstruating Mall [Carlton Mellick III]

RATING: Good, but ending made me go "Huh?" 0_0

Great book cover

Razor wire pubic hair. Baby Jesus butt plugs. Bleeding malls, Satanic burgers. Welcome to the world of Carlton Mellick III, to the Bizarro genre, where stereotypes are shunned and freakish is the order of the day.

Ironically, Bizarro itself is becoming a stereotype nowadays.

But I digress... or perhaps not.

Anyway, I found Carlton Mellick III’s “The Menstruating Mall” to be… quite refreshing. Call it the bread in a wine-tasting session, or the coffee beans before sniffing another perfume. It is certainly something new, although definitely an acquired taste.

Our narrator is the typical yuppie guy who buys everything that makes it into the magazines he reads, watches blockbusters, and likes everything that’s “mass culture”. He goes to the mall one day, and finds that he can’t leave. The mall is suddenly vacated, starts bleeding, and our guy finds himself trapped inside the mall with nine other ridiculously stereotypical characters: the blond cheerleader, the white gangsta boy, the redneck cowboy, the too-male jock, a Goth girl, a bible thumper, a Stepford wife, a senile retiree and the gamer geek. There’s nothing stopping them from leaving – they just can’t leave.

Someone begins killing off our little motley crew one by one, Agatha Christie style. In a race against time, our heroes try to find out what the killer wants, and who the killer is.

In the meantime, things in the mall just keep getting weirder and weirder.

One thing that kept me turning the pages was because I wanted to find out who did it, and why. However, the ending was just simply anticlimactic. I was like, “What the hell has that got to do with the rest of the story?!” when I reached the end of what seemed like roughly 150 pages in size 14 font. (Yep, it’s an uber-short read.) While you will find out who the killer was and what the motive was, the last few chapters just went totally *shwing* off the top.

Oh, and no matter what I do, I COULD NOT appreciate the much-praised illustrations (which looks more like high-school male toilet humor graffiti) in the book.

However, the book is not without merits. I did enjoy this book. Well, three-fourths of it anyway. There are scenes that had me laughing out loud, simply because they were just so ridiculous. There are also scenes that were so repulsive, I couldn't help but be fascinated.

On another level, the author tries to tackle issues about society and conformity, and how consumerism (a.k.a. the horrifying taste of the general public) plays a big part in it. This book is Carlton Mellick III’s effort in promoting the elusive, multi-faceted concept of unique individuality. In other words, stop taking yourself too seriously before you begin, as Spyder puts it, “…[to] seem like [a] badly written B-movie character.” At the end of the day, do whatever you want to do, and to hell with everybody else.

Three stars because I enjoy sarcasm, wit, and a good satire.

Book Review: Idlewild [Nick Sagan]

RATING: A smart read.

The Matrix meets Agatha Christie

Idlewild isn't something I'd normally read. Techie-sci-fi stuff don't really appeal to me, and I don't usually go for first-person narratives. However, I picked up a copy because the plot seemed interesting enough for me to include it to the year-long supply of books I was bringing to a country where English books were a rarity. And partly because I loved the artwork on the cover :D

Reading a bit like Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None", the story opens in a world that is obviously VR, where Lovecraftian monsters, hobgoblins and Smileys serve as foot soldiers for a group of warring teenagers. Our hero, Gabriel a.k.a. Halloween, has just awoken from an electric shock - he can't remember anything except that somebody is trying to kill him. He also thinks that his virtual teacher, Maestro, a computer program, is harboring a grudge towards him. Paranoia? Perhaps. The story slowly unfolds through his re-exploring this world, and his gradual recollection of memories. He eventually finds out that he is one of 10 students studying through VR, and that one of them, Lazarus, is missing. He also thinks that he may have killed Lazarus, whose girlfriend Simone is coincidentally the love of Hal's life.

In a world ruled by an omnipotent computer program, Hal uses this device called a jammer (which hacks the virtual world and returns him to reality) to conduct some private investigating on Lazarus' disappearance and the attempt on his life. One question leads to another until Hal begins to doubt his and everyone's existence, and reality itself.

I can find no fault with Idlewild, theme or prose, but there is something missing from it which keeps me from giving it full marks. Also, there are some parts in the story where it just gets so dragging - probably because it's so predictable - that you just want to skip the damn chapters and get on to the next plot.

Sagan creates a myriad of very interesting characters - delusional and schizophrenic Fantasia, morbid and paranoid Hal, wild and angry Mercutio - every character is bursting with personality. I absolutely love Fantasia - she's so much fun and her childlike insanity balances Hal's dark, morbid broodings. Another thing I thoroughly enjoyed was Hal's philosophical musings about life and death and his incredibly sarcastic remarks. For example: "Every idiot goes through life thinking that he's special. That whole solipsistic conceit where you suspect that everything revolves around you and only you. Are you born with it? Probably. When you discover empathy, you're supposed to grow out of it, but I doubt anyone ever really does. Zen monks spend their lives trying. But it's hard. There's always that possibility, remote as it might be, that nothing exists outside your head. That you're the star of the show. That everyone else is a supporting character. And after you die, it all ceases to exist."

Idlewild is a smart book, dripping with information ranging from biogenetics to history to philosophy and literature. Although not my usual cup of tea, it was interesting enough for me to keep on going until the very end.