Monkey droppings - God Says No by James Hannaham: "I told her what she wanted to hear in the words everybody used like shorthand."

Today, the monkey discovers that all people have faults, there are no easy answers, we're all uniquely human, etcetera, etcetera.

Whole lotta sorts on this planet. Make a'da world go round.

God Says No
by James Hannaham

Even after all the guy stuff, I still believed that homosexuals were evil people who wished eternal hellfire by defying God's law, as stated in Leviticus. Homosexuality was punishable by death. Take a step toward it and Christ, the Bible, and your family would condemn you. If one of the sex viruses didn't kill you, loneliness would.

In the early months of 2006, Ted Haggard was an evangelist on the rise. His congregation neared 14,000 in number, and he was promoted as one of the great charismatic leaders on the American Christian landscape. He also espoused many of the fundamental tenets of the far right wing, condemning homosexuality and gay marriage.

Then, in November of that year, Haggard was removed from his post as details on his visits to a male prostitute came to light. Other leaders were quick to deny that Haggard had ever been a real leader with any power, and he was quickly shuffled off for heterosexual counseling, and was pronounced 'cured' of homosexuality some weeks later.

At the time, I won't deny an overwhelming rush of shameful joy, watching a man who preached love while practicing hate brought down by the very 'sins' he vociferously declaimed against. But a small part of me was sad for Haggard; he was a man brought up to loathe those things in himself that others found repugnant, and was filled with self-hatred that expressed itself in the condemnation of others for his own perceived faults. If had grown up with a family, in a culture, that allowed him the freedom and understanding to find his own way, who knows how things would have turned out?

I bring up this example as way of introduction to James Hannaham's often remarkable debut novel God Says No. Covering many of the same themes as Haggard's life, Hannaham provides a sometimes hilarious, always insightful, and surprisingly even-handed look at a man struggling with his innate desires.

Gary Gray is a young black Christian man with a new wife, a good job, and a deep abiding evangelical belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ. He is also a homosexual, and has known that he has no attraction to women from a very early age. Being brought up in an evangelical household with a father who occasionally beats him, Gary seeks refuge in the Bible, hoping that 'getting saved' and becoming a devout Christian will somehow erase his yearnings from his soul.

The way our classmates talked about it, getting saved came naturally, like a sneeze. Jesus would illuminate your soul and touch your heart until it blew like a volcano into ecstasy and new life. Color and peace flood your world...Salvation was like trying to think of a name you couldn't remember. It would come faster if you didn't force it. Maybe getting saved and liking women happened in the same way. Maybe if I let go and let God in, He'd mend everything.

Unfortunately (from his point of view), leading a deeply Christian life, getting married and having a child does not quell his desires, although he struggles mightily to keep that side of him hidden from public view. He rationalizes his warring natures through a combination of self-loathing, religious teachings, and specious reasoning: "I wasn't a homosexual, I just had same-sex attractions, and I did guy stuff sometimes, but I could sort of perform with my wife sometimes now, so that was that." But soon, Gary finds that denial is not an option, and he decides to travel a new path for awhile to try and rid his tendencies from his body once and for all.

What is most surprising about Hannaham's tale is how superbly he handles all sides of the issue. Gary is absolutely sincere in his desire to change that which can never be, although it is obvious that he's happiest and most 'himself' when he accepts his nature. When he enters a program to 'remove' his homosexuality, a lesser writer would likely use the opportunity to condemn such actions as ludicrous and hateful. But Gary and his teachers are fundamentally good people, led by firm beliefs that what they do is right. This is not an attack on Christianity, but a dissection of people who take the Bible very seriously at the expense of their own unique individualities. There are no cheap shots, no laughs at the expense of bigotry. Hannaham's tale slowly expands itself into an exploration of how we all lie to ourselves to make ourselves feel better, and how we all alter our behaviour to suit the beliefs of others. Gary and his fellow students at the ministry are devout in their belief that they can change an innate portion of their being to satisfy others, even though the entire notion is inherently laughable. The rest of their lives will be spent in hollow denial of themselves, if the treatment actually worked: "Dr. Soffione's treatment didn't offer a 100 percent cure. From the way Bill and Gay spoke about it, nobody could. Did Christ really want that for us? Would we have to spend the rest of our lives counting the seconds to make sure our hugs didn't go into overtime?"

Gary is, as befits the dual nature of his personality, quite a complicated individual, and not the most likable of protagonists. His actions are alternately noble, misguided, selfish, pious, and deluded, and it is sometimes difficult to sympathize with his dilemma. But who ever said a protagonist had to be likable? Hannaham pulls off a far more impressive feat; he makes Gary imminently relatable. We may not agree with his decisions, but we see in him all the contradictions we find in ourselves. Hannaham may give other characters short shrift (Gary's wife Annie exists more as an object to test Gary's resolve than a full character), but it's not their story anyway. It's Gary's life, in all its laughter and tragedy. He's a universal character, comic, fallible, and deeply human.

In the end, Gary's tale does not resolve itself, except in the sense that life continues no matter what choices we make. But the finale of God Says No is hopeful, sentimental yet never cloying. Gary may not have found himself by the end, but he may have found a way to live with himself.

VERDICT: MONKEY REALLY, REALLY LIKES

Critical Monkey Entry #4 — Left Behind: Ouch! My soul!

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, please take your seats for the main event!

In this corner, wearing the beige tights and the quizzical look on his face, the always intense and banana enthusiast Critical Monkey! *Wild applause*

And in this corner, wearing the 'what were we thinking?' eighties ensemble, former television sitcom teen heart-throb turned wacko beyond human comprehension (and also banana enthusiast) Kirk Cameron! *Somewhat more muted applause*

Watch as these two titans battle it out for supremacy in the ring. Two will enter, one will leave, no quarter asked, none taken! All this in Critical Monkey: The Thunderdome Edition!

The stakes: only your immortal soul!

Left Behind
by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins

Jesus wouldn't have been the one who was thirsty. He would not have been the one who wished to take the water of life. That, Rayford assumed, referred to the reader. It struck him that he was thirsty, soul thirsty. But what was the water of life?

Why I might hate it: Well, the movie was one of the most atrocious things I ever forced myself to sit through (at least it was a library rental - no loss of money involved). I have an allergy to all things Kirk Cameron, but even excepting his non-presence (seriously, the guy makes Jim Caviezel look riveting), the film was a hopeless mess of poor acting, ridiculous dialogue, and religious speechifying. Maybe it's not fair to judge a novel based on an actor in a film, but whoever said the blogosphere was fair. The Left Behind series as a whole is considered far-right fundamentalist nonsense (although by the Glenn Beck Insanity-o-meter, it's almost sane). Much has been written about its intolerance and borderline-racism, and much more has been written about how absolutely atrocious the writing is.

Why I might like it: Maybe it falls into the 'so bad it's good' camp? Maybe? Please?

Verdict: Much as I hate to resort to such an awful pun, Left Behind is godawful.

In his collection Four Past Midnight, author Stephen King wrote a tight little novella entitled 'The Langoliers.' It concerned itself with a small group of people who had fallen asleep on an aircraft, only to awaken and discover that everyone else on board had mysteriously vanished. It wasn't one of his better stories (the know-it-all mystery author was a little much), but King is a sure hand when it comes to wringing maximum terror from outlandish situations. The scenario is absurd, but over 200 or so pages, King achieves a surprising amount of gut-clenching suspense over the predicament. His characters are strong, the dialogue is heightened yet believeable, and the plot device (waking up abandoned and alone) is so universal that a suspension of disbelief was easily achieved.

Flash-forward five years, when Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins (hereafter L&J) release the first volume of their Rapture epic Left Behind. Like 'The Langoliers,' it begins on an airplane where a segment of the passengers have mysteriously vanished. However, rather unlike King's pulpy good time, L&J take an astounding, brain-shattering event and treat the disappearance of passengers with all the astonishment of passengers not wanting a second helping of peanuts. That is to say, there is zero tension in the narrative from the get-go. And it does not get better.

It must be said, L&J have come up with a plotline that, while derivative of hundreds of post-apocalyptic scenarios, can't fail but grab your attention. Religious catastrophes are ripe for excitement; Stephen King (sorry to go back to the King well twice, but its apt here) penned an enormously entertaining epic titled The Stand about just such events, with most of humanity whittled away by plague, and the survivors being maneuvered by God to fight a monstrous evil. It would appear that the Rapture (for that is what L&J are going for here) should be ideal fodder for such ripping yarns.

Two problems with the execution of this idea: one, Left Behind is poorly written, with dull plotting and characterizations so flat as to be zero-dimensional, and two (and somehow even worse), Left Behind is boring.

It is a fair statement to say that Left Behind is marginally better written than, say, Twilight (written on the level of an enthusiastic teenager writing fan fiction), but it's also fair to say that Whoppers are better than Big Macs, or that According to Jim is better than The War at Home. To put it in simpler terms, better crap is still crap. And while Left Behind is not laden with the howlers that filled the pages of Twilight - although it certainly does not avoid them altogether: at one point, a taxi driver asks the character if Buck what he thinks of the disappearances that have swept the globe; Buck replies "Funny that you should ask." Funny? Millions of people have disappeared, and that's what you say? How is anyone NOT talking about it? - its writing is as poor and uninspired as the most generic of childrens' fiction. It's basically competent to a point, but there is absolutely nothing worthy of note in its style or presentation. It is a damp paper towel of a novel, soggy and disposable.

The characters are generic cutouts with little to distinguish between them except their names and occupations. Rayford is a pilot, Buck is a reporter, Hattie and Chloe are women, and all are just intrepid enough (and biblically inclined) to see through the disguise of antichrist-on-the-rise Nicholae Carpathia (a name that ranks only second to J.K. Rowling's Lucius Malfoy on the 'why didn't you just get it over with and name him Evil McBadguy already' sweepstakes). The men are all the movers and shakers, and the women are there to support them. This is one of the more disturbing aspects of the overall plot; men are the instigators, and women do barely more than act as background. Not once is any female character given more to do than worry about the men, and never do the authors present the events from their point of view.

So it's not good literature, or good fiction, or good fun, or even bad fun. So what is it? Considered that no character talks when they can speechify, this is evangelism in the barest form of fiction. Sure, all authors have agendas, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Just because I don't share the author's viewpoint doesn't mean I can't enjoy it on its own terms, right? If it were enjoyable at all. Which it is not. It doesn't even challenge the reader with its views, because its overall presentation is along the lines of 'preaching to the converted.'

I admit that there is much troubling about all this. Much has been written from far right religious factions as to the inherent dangers of Rowling's Harry Potter series of books for children. They claim that they promote witchcraft, and destroy the innocent readers' minds, or something equally nonsensical. But why should one story of magic and evil be verboten, while another something to be praised? I would bet good money that Rowling does not believe that what happens in her novels could happen, and neither do her readers. But L&J have gone on record as being firm believers in many of the novel's events and in the possibility of biblical rapture, and many readers of Left Behind await the events that occur in its pages with the passion of the zealot. I find much to fear in people that fervently believe in the actual occurrence of magical events if it suits their own needs, but condemn such ideas if they don't match their belief systems. One is finding enjoyment though imagination; the other is indoctrination through fear-mongering.

But regardless of this (and please, no diatribes on my comments, I'll just delete them) Left Behind is poorly-written pulp, not even strong enough to be mildly entertaining. LaHaye and Jenkins take an admittedly strong plot device and do absolutely nothing with it save preach to their base. It is awful, just awful. The Rapture itself could not be any worse.

MONKEY SHUDDERS AT THE THOUGHT OF FIFTEEN MORE OF THESE

Love in Infant Monkeys - review in Quill and Quire

My review of Love in Infant Monkeys, Lydia Millet's absolutely fantastic collection of short stories (from Soft Skull Press), has been posted on the Quill and Quire website:

Stories involving animals can often be a mixed blessing. At their worst, like the manipulative treacle of Marley & Me, such tales use animals as a contrivance through which human characters may better themselves. A quick glance at Love in Infant Monkeys, a story collection that revolves around the tabloid fodder of celebrities and their pets, might suggest that Lydia Millet is following that same path...Millet, however, is a shrewd storyteller, and the stories in this collection are penetrating narratives that lay bare the complexities of life in all its folly and glory. Millet is unconcerned with easy homilies, instead crafting subtle studies of the existential crises humankind faces. That the stories are often very funny only adds to their effectiveness.

Read the rest of the review here, and check out a sample of the collection here.

And buy the book. Seriously. I'm not a huge short story lover, but some of Millet's tales have stuck with me for weeks now. Monkey LOVES this book.

Monkey droppings - Monster, 1959 by David Maine: " Maybe there's no difference anymore between existence and entertainment."

Giant Monsters! Giant Monsters everywhere! Run! Run!

Monster, 1959
by David Maine

K. stands roughly upright, bipedal, forty feet tall from crown to toe. Claws instead of fingers, earholes like a lizard's, residual butterfly wings far too flimsy to support his mass, the suggestion of a dorsal fin halfway down his back..Matted black fur covers the rest of him except for those wings...and the scaly forearms, patterned like an Amazon constrictor. Arms longer than the comfortable human proportion, nearly dragging on the ground even when K. stands erect.

I must be in a gigantic monster mood as of late: no sooner do I finish James Morrow's excellent faux-Godzilla novel Shambling Towards Hiroshima when I then pick up a novel that, by the cover alone, has me salivating with glee over its promise of B-movie excitement. Yet like Morrow's offering, David Maine's novel Monster, 1959 offers far more than a mere 'monster on a rampage' narrative, both being rife with political satire and social commentary. And unlike Shambling, Maine makes sure his monster gets centre stage.

Taking a cue from King Kong, Monster, 1959 begins on an island almost forgotten by man. But not forgotten enough, it seems, as the atomic tests of the 1950s are held almost precisely on top of it. As a possible result (it's never entirely clear), the island is laden with monsters likely impossible under normal evolutionary conditions.

Ruling the island (from the point of view of the natives) is Kama ka, or K., as he's referred to throughout the story. K. is a creature of ridiculous proportions and features, a 40-foot behemoth, part ape, part lizard, part who-knows-what; "There is something unfinished about K.s face, as if nature gave up halfway through. Quitting an obviously hopeless job in favor of something more fruitful: flamingos, maybe, or eels." K. is also a vegetarian, not something that occurs to the islanders who routinely sacrifice virgins to appease him. He never eats them, he just ignores them until they pass away, either from hunger or from outside forces i.e. a flying lizard that often absconds with K.'s sacrificial brides to feed her brood.

Maine takes great pains to point out that K. is an animal, and thus cannot have human thought processes ascribed to him.

An observer might be forgiven that K. is lost in thought, He is not. He is simply lost. Or more properly, he is waiting for a stimulus, internal or external, to prod him into motion. Perhaps hunger, or the approach of the flying lizard who occasionally torments him, or the need to relieve his bowels, or a thunderstorm.

However, K's fairly simple world comes under great stress when, one day, the islanders offer up Betty, a blonde-haired beauty they kidnapped from an ill-advised adventure excursion to the island. K. is soon after chased through the jungle by Johnny, the manliest of he-men who would be right at home in any of the monster movies Maine continually cites. K. is unequipped to deal with such a chase as he is "not a predator though he might look like one [and] is unable to appreciate the predatory instincts of others...Having lived his life as neither killer nor victim, his instinctive understanding of such things—what would be his race memory, if he had a race, or memory—is vestigial, dormant, rusty." Soon after, K. is caught, bound, and dragged to America, where a canny impresario markets him as "the Romeo is the Forgotten Jungle...The biggest big top in history...Two bucks to stand in the presence of the mightiest monster the world has ever seen."

Many lesser authors would doubtless present such a tale as a pure adventure saga, and there's nothing wrong with that. While the King Kong and Godzilla movies have always had a subtext (the perils of atomic radiation, the folly of man's pride, etc.), they were first and foremost awesome monster extravaganzas (see Cloverfield for the best modern take on giant monsters destroying things - not much subtext, but tonnes 'o fun). Monster has a fair amount of its progenitors excitement, and Maine expertly layers this with K.'s dawning sense of his self as a being rather than a collected series of impulses sheathed in animal muscle. K. never becomes fully cognisant and therefore a complete individual, but in places he gains what only can be described as insight: "Now what? K. wonders wordlessly, not recognizing this as a breakthrough: he has learned to expect things to happen."

Maine, however, wants to thrust his subtext forward to garner equal coverage to the beast, and that's where Monster, 1959 falters, not fatally, but substantially. Maine has a point of view, mocking the world through his presentation of K. and juxtaposing his plight with those of displaced cultures the world over, most notably the Palestinians. And there is nothing inherently wrong with this, but Maine's B-movie plot structure cannot hold up under the deadly seriousness of his agenda.

If anything, his satire is too 'on the nose'. Morrow's Shambling had an agenda against military thinking and the monstrous proliferation of nuclear armaments, but his story withstood a perilous crushing under its weighty themes through its judicious use wit, smart characters, and general entertainment value. Morrow used a scalpel to dissect his thesis, Maine attacks his with a blunt hammer. Where Morrow used facts to emphasize the story, Maine drops in details about the world as it was in large chunks of world history that interrupt any narrative flow, such as:

On TV, CBS begins a new weekly program called The Twilight Zone, featuring outlandish stories, crazy stuff really. The kind of thing that no one but a child could ever believe. It will prove remarkably durable over the ensuring decades, slyly suggesting the possibility that almost anything—aliens from space, free and fair elections, Martians bearing gifts, "liberation" at gunpoint—could be accepted as reality, if presented convincingly enough on television.

I won't say that Monster, 1959 is a failure, just that it lacks for subtlety. Maine's story has large swatches of inspired writing, and K., like all the great monsters, elicits as much sympathy as he does horror. Monster, 1959 is a good, thoughtful read, and Maine is a strong enough writer that I am going to ferret out his other novels post-haste (The Preservationist looks especially good, like a pairing of Morrow's best religious satire and Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage ). But much like K., the novel doesn't fully appreciate its own strengths, and tends to smash all things in its path as a result.

VERDICT: MONKEY LIKES (BUT WAS PREPARED TO LOVE)

Shelf Monkey gets a gun permit!

I won't usually repost other posts, but thanks to the good people at io9 (as well as Marvel Comics, apparently), this picture is now one of my favourite, most iconic images ever:

Isn't that amazing? No news on what it represents, but I think myself (Shelf Monkey), Mark Rayner (Marvellous Hairy), and Jeff and Ann Vandermeer (Evil Monkey!) will appreciate it the most, for vastly differing reasons.

Thanks to io9 for the heads up.

Canadian Thrills and Excitement Galore!

Just a quick little jaunt down Blogosphere Lane to point out two reviews I wrote for the revered publication Quill and Quire, now online for the amusement and edification of all. These are two esteemed Canadian novelists, and each of their efforts is well worth your time.

First, a review of Arthur Slade's The Hunchback Assignments, a young adult steampunk novel that is absolutely fantastic:

Slade ensures that the fanciful elements never overwhelm the story through his careful handling of the gallant Modo and the canny Octavia, another young ward drafted into action. Modo’s unusual predicament is handled with aplomb, and children will empathize with his role as an outsider who craves acceptance, even as they revel in an outlandish plot that ends with a promise of further tales of danger.

And next, Linwood Barclay's thriller Fear the Worst, a novel with the frenetic plotting of the best Hollywood thrillers:

Like the best suspense novels, Fear the Worst expertly navigates an increasingly jumbled plot with clarity and precision. It is a given that such novels include red herrings galore, but Barclay keeps the story moving at such a terrific clip that the 400+ pages fly by.

Enjoy!

Monkey droppings - And Another Thing... by Eion Colfer: "Get your towel, Arthur. We have to leave."

The monkey uses his mind to fold space in upon itself, and travels the space-time continuum in search of a new entry in a classic series long thought dead. Will it be a new awakening of classic pleasures, as enjoyable as Joe Gores recently revival of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade in Spade and Archer? Or will it fester like the innumerable entries in the 'sequel to Pride & Prejudice or anything by Jane Austen' sweepstakes?

Let's find out.

And Another Thing...
by Eoin Colfer

The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying "And another thing…" twenty minutes after admitting he's lost the argument.
- Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

I'll just start this little review with an aside: How could I possibly hate a novel that has the following conversation:

A huge anthropoid was seated uncomfortably in the interview room's office chair, its grotesque, scaled torso squirming in the confines of the small seat. tentacles dripped from its chin like fleeing slugs and hard black eyes glittered from the depths of its pulpy face.

Hillman Hunter shuffled the pages of the creature's résumé.

'So, Mr Cthulhu, is it?'

'Hmmm,' said the creature.

'Good,' said Hillman. 'A bit of the ineffable, I like that in a deity.' He winked conspiratorially. 'Still, it wouldn't be much of an in-depth interview if we couldn't get a few facts out of you, eh, Mr Cthulhu?'

Cthulhu shrugged and dreamed of days of wanton genocide.

How could I ever dislike a novel with the temerity to subject the Great Old One Cthulhu to a job interview to ascertain his possible suitability as a deity for a new colony of Earthlings? Hillman had high hopes for a more ethereal interview process, "engaging in philosophical conversations on the nature of happiness, or being wowed by awesome displays of godly power. Instead he had been forced to grind his way through a sludge of padded résumés in which demi-gods tried to make themselves sound a lot more significant than they actually were." As it turns out, Cthulhu is not at all what Hillman has in mind, being only a 'demi-god' and therefore not technically an immortal being. "It's more or less the same thing," Cthulhu protests. "I do all the same things: apparitions, impregnating, you name it. I have cards for the lounges in Asgard and Olympus. Gold cards." But as Hillman insists, "the advertisement did specify grade-A god."

Part of the genius of Douglas Adams was his ability (likely learned from the British masters of comedy Monty Python) to always make even the most fantastic of circumstances appear mundane through a morass of well-meaning bureaucracy. In Adams' worlds, the most awe-inspiring sunset could only be fully appreciated if the correct paperwork had been filed beforehand in triplicate.

Ever since Adams passed away in 2001—and in another aside, what does it say about me that the celebrity deaths that have affected me the most are invariably comedy related? Adams, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., John Candy, John Ritter, Phil Hartman (I will never get over Phil Hartman)—ever since, there has been a dearth of his uniquely weird brand of comedic literature. Yes, Terry Pratchett and Robert Rankin are cut from the same cloth, but Adams was an originator. His seminal work The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (hereafter referred to as HG2G) is a masterwork of offbeat plotting and witty writing, and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is, to my mind, even better.

But even Adams admitted that his later sequels to HG2G were lacking. The first two were of the same calibre, more or less, but the last two (particularly Mostly Harmless) showed us an artist running a little dry. They had their moments, but they can't be considered as worthy of 'classic' status.

So a new sequel to HG2G should be dismissed out of hand as a bad idea. But there is still the idea that one should not tamper with another's work. Let's be honest, no one wants to see the glory of Adams' legacy reduced to something on the scale of the still-ongoing literary tawdriness of V.C. Andrews, whose fairly ridiculous writings have continued for over two decades since her death.

So now, on the thirtieth anniversary of HG2G's initial publication, a new sequel has been released. Unfortunately, it was not written by Rankin, who I still feel was the best man for the job. But Irish writer Eion Colfer (who mainly writes fiction of the child/young adult variety) has pretty much pulled it off, creating a novel that honours Adams' sensibilities, yet doesn't come across as forced. Make no mistake, Colfer's sequel And Another Thing... is not up to Adams' best, but considering how wrong it could have gone, it is a fine accomplishment, and certainly better than Adams' last two sequels.

And Another Thing... takes up the plot immediately at the end point of Mostly Harmless, wherein Arthur Dent, Trillian, their daughter Random Dent, and Ford Prefect are about to be destroyed along with the Earth, or a plural reality version thereof. I'll stop here to note that a knowledge of the previous five books is essential to comprehension of And Another Thing...; I have read a few blogosphere comments complaining about this, but allow me to make the bold statement that no novel of Adams' HG2G trilogy-plus-two makes any sort of sense without full knowledge of the previous entries. If you're not up to that task, best walk away now.

After the quartet (spoiler alert!) survive the attack, they find themselves once again hooking up with Zaphod Beeblebrox (highly improbably, but if you know the series, imminently foreseeable), ex-president of the Galaxy and all-round froody guy, as well as with returning bit player (from Life, the Universe, and Everything) Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. Together, in a plot that manages to weave in the mythical god Thor, a bizarre cult "who firmly believed in divination through the medium of semi-congealed cheese," and feral physical therapists, the group must defeat the Vogons from wiping out the last vestiges of humanity (currently living on a planet designed after the John Wayne movie The Quiet Man).

Quite obviously, Colfer has taken Adams' penchant for throwing everything into the mix to see what sticks to heart. The pages of And Another Thing... are teeming with the absurd asides that were the hallmark of HG2G's style, such as a quick explanation of the belief system of Folfangan slugs, "who judge a number's worth based on the artistic integrity of its shape. Folfangan supermarket receipts are beauteous ribbons, but their economy collapses at least once a week." Admittedly, such tangents can get tiresome, and Colfer arguably uses a few too many funny words and silly noises, but Adams was hardly above a bad pun or two himself.

Not a lot of Colfer's plot makes any sort of linear sense, but the series has always had a great deal of fun playing with notions of time and space anyway. And it's rather wonderful to be with old friends again, especially the terminally unlucky Arthur, pining for his lost love Fenchurch; as Random succinctly puts it, "I'm sure you'll bring doom down on us all presently. It's your destiny to be a cosmic Jonah." I also enjoyed Colfer's attempts to better humanize Trillian, a character Adams never fully explored and who came across initially as flighty and later as just plain unlikeable. Ford gets slighted, but there's more than enough Zaphod to make up for it. I would have liked a return of Marvin the paranoid android (surely there must have been a way), but as his ultimate exit in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish was Adams as his most touching, I can live with it (If you must spoil it for yourself, visit the Marvin Wikipedia page). If there's a real fault with Colfer's attempt, it's in his trying to cram too much in; there's too many nods to past novels, too many inside references, too many bloody characters doing too much at once.

But the HG2G series has always had a shaggy dog aspect to it, an unkempt attitude; the novels sometimes behaved like ADD sufferers on a Red Bull binge. Colfer does his best, but And Another Thing... occasionally substitutes speed of delivery for wit, and quite often is plain too goofy even for a Douglas Adams piece.

But I'm okay with that. Colfer has crafted a strong companion piece to Adams' HG2G series that continues the mythos with the same anarchic glee and intelligence. If he must continue it further (and there is always more story out there), I look forward to the ride.

VERDICT: MONKEY THINKS IT'S ALL RATHER FROODY

Critical Monkey - update the fourth! One-third done!

Wow, has it been a third of a year already? Four months of challenging yourselves to be the best your can be? Well, cowboy up, buttercup, because you gots eight months to go! You think this is a challenge for sissies? You gotta have serious literary cojones to compete here!

Sorry, that came off a little harsh. I'm fighting something as I write this, something internal. No, not swine flu; good guess, but this feels different, more watery. Call it fish rabies.

Anyways, to the stats:

Acceptance (seven reviews)

Depression (six reviews)

Anger (five reviews)

Guilt (four reviews)

Bargaining (three reviews)

Corey Redekop

• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
• The Justice Riders by Chuck Norris
• Jake and the Kid by W.O. Mitchell
  

Lori L

• Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Roses of Glory by Mary Pershall
• Spock's World by Diane Duane
  

Steve Zipp

• Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
• Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock
• A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
  

Denial (two reviews)

gypsysmom

• Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
• Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
  

Jeanne

• Empire of Lies by Andrew Klaven
• A Merry Heart by Wanda E. Brunsetter
  

Shock (one review)

Betty

• Generation Dead/Generation Dead: Kiss of Life by Daniel Waters

We've got some real movement here on some fronts, and some stagnation on others. I know its not easy, people, but its of vital importance that you see this through. Remember, you don't necessarily have to choose a novel you think you'll hate, just one that you feel you've ignored. I never would have read W.O. Mitchell otherwise, and I'm sure Lori L though she'd never read a Star Trek novel.

But, since it isn't easy, here's the first giveaway I promised to all contestants, a copy of Douglas Coupland's Generation A, which, by means of a random number selector, is hereby is awarded to:

Betty!

Congratulations, Betty. Write to me with your postal info at shelf.monkey@hotmail.com, and Coupland's latest (and a secret second novel) will be winging off to you as fast as Canada Post can fly it over (general delivery).

And as a reminder, at the halfway point I will be drawing one name to win a signed copy of Canadian author Mark Rayner's absurdist epic The Amadeus Net. For this one, I think a little more participation is in order (let's gird those loins, people!), and only those contestants who publish a new review between now and January 2, 2010 will be eligible for this particular prize. And this goes for anyone new to the game; there's still plenty of time for newcomers, and the more is definitely the merrier in this case.

So tell your friends!

For me, I am loading up on carbs and vitamins to properly tackle my next choice. This one will be a personal Everest for me; one of only two novels I can remember not finishing because it was so damned terrible. (The other novel? The Ninja by Eric Van Lustbader.) I fear this is going to be a bad one, my friends, the Hurricane Katrina of crap. The one that's going to taunt me mercilessly all the way with its unmitigated awfulness.

I refer, of course, to the Kirk Cameron-approved, fundamentalist dogma-infused, rapture-tastic epic Left Behind.

Wish me luck. I already feel nauseous. But that could be the rabies.

Monkey droppings - Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow - "We can thank our lucky stars that Hitler never got the lizard."

Today, the monkey braves horrors that would terrify you, if you were a gullible teen in 1940s America. As it stands today, you'd probably giggle instead.

Still, great book ahead.

Shambling Towards Hiroshima
by James Morrow

There exists in my house a monolithic list of authors I admire intensely. I'd show it to you, but it's far too heavy to move, and is in danger of growing its own gravitational pull. It's currently functioning as a temporary retaining wall in my basement. It's a big list, I guess would be the main bullet point to take away from this topic.

But authors I will follow to the ends of the Earth and beyond if they asked me to? The list quickly gets whittled down to a select few. These are authors who've earned my respect and admiration to such a degree that they could publish the phone book under their name and I'd read it. Hell, I'd read it twice. Jonathan Lethem is probably the leader of the pack. Philip K. Dick, Stephen King, Clive Barker. William Kotzwinkle. Eric McCormack. John Irving. I'm sure there are more, but you get my drift. Jim Dodge, where are you? Please write again.

James Morrow is another. His Godhead Trilogy is arguably (and I'll argue it to the pain, my friends, the pain) the greatest religious satire of the last century, followed close behind by his own Only Begotten Daughter. His work evokes the best of Vonnegut and Swift. Morrow is an author par excellence, a satirist of the highest quality, a provocative writer of limitless compassion for the foibles of humanity. And a damned funny novelist. If you don't laugh as his befuddled characters trek around, over, and through the two-mile-long floating corpse of God in Towing Jehovah, well, you just don't get humour. Or you're easily offended.

But Shambling Towards Hiroshima, like its subject matter, is a weird beast. It's a light, airy piece of work, a lark. Morrow appears to be having a ball with this quick little read, loosing all his talents over a frolic of a novel. Consequently, Shambling may not be his best, most focused work of caustic wit, but it is supremely entertaining.

Remember Godzilla? Silly question. We all know of the great fire-breathing lizard, even if we haven't seen his films. So great and powerful is the hold the mythic pop-culture monster has over our collective conscious that everyone everywhere knows of his exploits. Not bad for a man clad in a rubbery, unwieldy costume who lays waste to some of the least-convincing cities ever put to film.

Well, Godzilla had nothing on Gorgantis, the fire-breathing lizard whom the world fell in love with, at least as Syms Thorley tells it. According to Thorley, writing his memoirs over the course of one long night , Gorgantis was not originally a monster born of Japanese fears of nuclear argmageddon in films such as Gorgantis vs. Octopocalypse. No, Gorgantis was the brainchild of the U.S. Army during the final days of World War II, an attempt to terrify the Japanese high command into surrendering. And it was Thorley, b-movie actor and star of such 1940s monster epics as Curse of Kha-Ton-Ra and Corpuscula Meets the Dopplegänger (not since Paul Auster's Book of Illusions have I longed so desperately for fictional films to actually exist), who was picked to star as the titular monster because, as head mad scientist Dr. Ivan Groelish says, "His lumbering is second to none." And given that Thorley is most famous for portraying Corpuscula, a monster with a "third eye embedded in his cheek and [a] herniated brain emerging from his fractured skull," he would seem ideal for the role. And it's not like Thorley would turn down good work: as he puts it, condensing an actor's entire existence into one short sentence, "You learn your craft, you play your mummies, you collect your trophy, and then you die."

This being the U.S. Army, of course, frightening the enemy is not nearly enough; there has to be something to back up the macho posturing. Through Dr. Groelish's tireless efforts, three leviathan fire-breathing lizards do in fact exist, kept sedated in a large lake and going by the names Blondie, Dagwood, and Mr. Dithers. These aren't cartoonish monsters, however, but truly horrific freaks of genetic alteration:

The creatures suggested quarter-mile-high tyrannosaurs, but modified for a marine environment - pulsing gill slits, translucent swim fins, webbing between their talons like the vanes of a Spanish fan - and retrofitted with fighting tusks, barbed horns, feelers as long as tentacles, and dorsal plates the size and proportion of fir trees.

Thorley is to portray Gorgantis destroying a scale model of a Japanese city to demonstrate the unstoppability of the real monsters should they be unleashed upon Japan. Much of the novel's humour comes from Thorley's personal testing of the constume with his girlfriend Darlene, both for practical and impractical purposes, which leads to a scene of sexual bravado that can only be described as...well, I don't know how to describe it well enough to do it justice. Let it be known, however, that the original Gorgantis suit was put through its paces both inside and out.

Morrow's novel is at once a cautionary tale of military paranoia and a superbly enjoyable recreation of the b-movie renaissance of the '40s and '50s. Thorley's memoir is peppered with loving tributes to the days when movies were made in two weeks, descibing himself and his fellow b-movie breathern as "a bunch of hard-drinking alpha males who spent their days pretending to perform blasphemous medical experiments and their nights fantasizing that they were going to give up alcohol tomorrow."

It was also a time when true craftsmen toiled in the trenches of pulp cinema to pursue their art. Cinema geeks (such as myself) will get a kick as luminaries such as esteemed director James Whale (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein) and special effects maestro Willis O'Brien (King Kong) make appearances. O'Brien is hired to create the effects for Gorgantis' carnage, and Whale is pegged to direct the opus for maximum terrifying effect. Whale proves himself somewhat more artistic than the army had hoped: "This is not a cerebral part," Whale instructs Thorley on the nature of his role. "You are a monster from the id. You are Death with haunches, la Grande Faucheuse with scales."

Beyond the loving recreation of Hollywood's monster era, Shambling Towards Hiroshima makes some trenchant points on military madness, the utter uselessness of war, and the way horror movies desensitize the populace to the true, unimaginable horrors that exist just out their windows. Such movies are fine for entertainment's sake, but they can serve to distract us from the importance of our own reality, as Thorley discovers in his later years, preaching on the perils of nuclear holocaust to Gorgantis fans far more interested in his recollections of wearing the suit.

As I said, Morrow is being immensely loose and playful with his story, which may explain the novel's relative slightness. But how I can I really complain, when the result is so much damned fun? Shambling Towards Hiroshima is the most sheerly entertaining novel I've read in quite a while.

VERDICT: MONKEY LOVES