I didn’t find this book on my own. Most of my books I found on my own. This one, however, was recommended to me by Eric Dando, a writer whose work has had a profound and positive influence on both myself and my writing over the years. I was pleased as punch to try something new, especially something he had enjoyed as much as I’d enjoyed his book, Snail.

I’m a bit of a fan of westerns. Not all westerns. I can’t stand John Wayne. Sorry, but it’s true. My favourite westerns are, without a shadow of a doubt, the Edge series by George G. Gilman (aka Terry Harknett) who is, undoubtedly a genius in the form of a man. Reading this book, I thought a lot about George G. Gilman and Eric Dando, and how if you kind of put the two together you’d end up with Richard Brautigan.

Brautigan has a poetic manner about his writing (and if you look at some of his poetry, you can see why). He also possesses a keen sense of humour. Combine this with a taste of the absurd and you have an incredibly delicious novel indeed.

The biggest asset to Mister Brautigan’s novel is his simplicity of style. I’m a big fan of this style and if you read my rant about Mister Dando’s book, you’d be well aware of my opinions, but I can’t express enough just how effective simplicity can be in conveying both humour and imagery. Brautigan’s work could compete easily with most modern bizarro authors for weirdness, but he possesses such an easy-going level style that just drips class all the way and is very hard to emulate due to the natural flow of the words and ideas which combine to release an almost hypnotic novel onto your unsuspecting mind.

It’s so calming, so trippy, so weird that it should be an illegal drug.

It’s a gentleness of prose, which evokes a sense of innocence and the sublime in a surreal and dangerously subversive manner.

It is, as Mike Patton would cry, It.

Poetry as prose is hardly a new idea, and Brautigan no doubt wasn’t setting out to “be” different. He just was. It’s a lesson I do believe many writers trying to be weird can learn – to let your natural voice just flow out in as simple a manner as possible and it’s just amazing what comes out.

The plot is a simple one – two cowboys are hired to kill a monster which has killed the father of two girls (and boy howdy is THAT a weird twist of an intro). Along the way they find out the monster isn’t quite what it seems, and nor is the house which is built above the ice caves in which the monster lurks. You’ve got it all in here – cowboys, mad scientists, sex-starved girls, insane monsters and just plain weirdness seeping out of the walls.

I cannot recommend this novel enough, especially to those of you searching for something a little different but which is not pretentiously different or bone-jarringly different.

Thankyou, Mister Dando. For both books.