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Eyeballs Growing All Over Me …Again by Tony Rauch
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Aliens. Goblins. Giant robots. Regular-sized sexy robots. Big hairy, smelly beasts. Dimensional travel. Mutations.

These elements make up the series of fever dreams that is Eyeballs Growing All Over Me…Again, a collection of short stories by Tony Rauch.

Each story packs a punch of weird into it, which makes it a good things that this is a short story collection. Eyeballs is a book best taken in small doses, and it feels like it would be very easy to get a Bizarro overdose if reading too much at once.

How to describe it? Well, that’s actually really hard to do, especially when it come to short story collections like this. There can be different ways of interpreting the stories and if they’re related at all. For example, I got the feeling that all these stories could have taken place in the same community or small town. There’s nothing to suggest that in any of the stories, as there are no common characters or threads through anything, but I somehow got that impression. It probably has to do with the consistent writing style throughout the book.

There’s also a sense of humor about everything. With a couple of exception (the story of the nosy paperboy, or the one where the man’s head starts growing to gargantuan size), you get the feeling that the characters aren’t that bothered by the strange and unusual going on around them. Yeah, Boone builds a sexy robot to help him meet women. We try to disuade him from doing so. He does it anyway. Life goes on. Huh. It’s like a scifi version of “Airplane!” or “The Naked Gun.” Yeah, there are eyeballs growing all over me. It’ll probably pass. Let’s go yell at airplanes. (This actually happens in one of the stories.)

As I started writing this review, I was going to suggest that it could be a good starter to Bizarro fiction being a short story collection. But as I think about it some more, I’m starting to question that conclusion. First, as I said above, it’s much better taken in small doses, as a story or two at a time. Given how short some of the stories are, a reader could be very tempted to keep plugging through, but they’ll probably regret it. It’s kind of like how it takes twenty minutes for a person to feel full after eating, so they keep eating not realizing this. These stories are like a literary superfood, small in portion size but packing a heavier-than-expected nutritional punch that needs a little time to sink in. But if you don’t give it time to digest, you’ll probably make yourself sick. Mentally.

Second, some of these stories have a subtext to them and go outside the norm enough in other ways that some people might not grasp. I’m familiar with the Bizarro line of books, and the subtext in some of these stories took a little while to sink in. The storytelling style itself is unusual, to say the least. It definitely gets the author’s distinctive flavor (ewww!), but it’s unconventional enough that I would find it hard to recommend to a casual reader.

One thing that is notable, however, is how tame a lot of the stories are. There’s a distinct lack of profanity, violence, or “adult” situations. Rauch chooses to mess with your mind in other ways. I’m not a prude in any sense, but it’s something that I think a lot of newer authors could learn from. For some reason, reading profanity on the page can be a lot more jarring than hearing it from a movie screen, and can yank a reader out of a story more easily. Bravo to the author for taking this route, and choosing to challenge the reader in other ways. I might even go so far as to call it a Bizarro book aimed at young adults. It made the book feel different and refreshing.

Eyeballs Growing All Over Me…Again works most of the time, but there’s a couple stories that went a little wide of the mark for me. This invariably happens with most short story collections. In addition, I didn’t have the foresight to take my own advice and read the book in small doses. Use the benefit of my hindsight when reading this book.

Eyeballs Growing All Over Me…Again by Tony Rauch earns 3 out of 5 stars.

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The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Rapture. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It’s the belief held by most Christians that, at the end times, the faithful will be lifted up to heaven, disappearing from the earth, leaving the unfaithful behind. But what if the Rapture actually occurred, but it wasn’t really the Rapture?

This is the question posed by Tom Perrotta in The Leftovers. In the novel, a Rapture-like event occurs, where millions of people around the world simply vanish. Except that this Rapture, instead of resulting in the disappearance of the Christian faithful, appears to be random. People from all walks of life, and from all faiths disappeared. In the aftermath of the Sudden Departure, as it’s referred to, society tries to pick up and carry on with life. There’s speculation as to what actually happened. Some say it was the Rapture. Others say it was a natural event, such as the planet’s immune response to too many people. Whatever the explanation, it only serves as background, and the novel instead focuses on the social aftermath of the Sudden Departure, primarily focused on one family, the Garveys.

The novel starts (after the prologue) on the three year anniversary of the Sudden Departure as a parade for the Heroes’ Day of Remembrance begins through the town of Mapleton. We are introduced to the characters and how each has reacted to the changed world. Kevin Garvey, the patriarch of the family, has been elected as town mayor, and does his best to continue handling business and juggle his disintegrating family. His wife, Laurie, has left him to join a nihilistic cult known as the Guilty Remnant, who believe that the world has essentially ended and people need to be reminded of the fact that nothing else now matters. Their daughter Jill, who was an eyewitness as her friend disappeared while right next to her, and has gone from being a star student to a rebellious teenager in the vein of the movie “Thirteen.” And their son, Tom, has joined a different cult known as the Church of the Holy Wayne, a cult with a charismatic leader who has recently been arrested on a large number of charges. In addition, another character, Nora, whose entire family disappeared in the Sudden Departure, becomes loosely involved with the Garveys and their story.

The Leftovers follows these characters lives for approximately six months following the third anniversary of the Sudden Departure. It’s a slice-of-life novel about these characters’ struggles and their changing lives during this period. And, with the exception of some minor speculation at the beginning about the nature of the event, the Sudden Departure doesn’t play a big roll in the novel altogether. This novel could be about a family’s struggles after any national or global tragedy. It becomes a fairly generic family struggle in the wake of these events, with the possible exception of a major cult presence.

And this is the biggest problem with The Leftovers. What makes it stand out…is that it doesn’t really stand out. It could have been any disaster that causes people to search for themselves and to lose family members. The Sudden Departure itself turns out not to be that significant to the story, and the family’s struggles are generic if a bit extreme. As such, The Leftovers failed to grip me, which is likely why it took me so long to finish it and the more I read, the more it felt like I was going through my own kind of struggle.

Which is a major problem. It’s so generic that, at the end, I had to ask myself what the point was. Which may be the point itself. I recall that the Center for Disease Control recently issued guidelines for how to prepare for a zombie apocalypse. It wasn’t serious, but their point was that most disasters call for the same type of preparation (food, water, blankets, etc.). This could be the point of the The Leftovers, that being that personal and family struggles during different disasters may change their form, but at the end are all similar.

There’s a certain underlying dark humor to the novel. The language is accessible and beautiful at the same time, and the characters are most definitely believable. Some of the characters are simply average, and others you just downright doesn’t like. In fact, I didn’t like most of the characters. Most of them are too self-centered for me to care about what happens to them.

Ultimately, I can’t give The Leftovers a recommendation. It ultimately felt too generic and near the end I found myself detesting the characters and wanting to give up on the book. There are small elements to like about the novel that prevent me from giving it a bottom rating, and maybe others will find more to like about the book than I did, but in the end, it’s not for me.

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta earns 2 out of 5 stars.

Note: A free Advanced Reader’s Edition of this book was sent to this reviewer by St. Martin’s Press through a Goodreads First Read giveaway. This did not affect this review in any way.

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Love in the Time of Dinosaurs by Kirsten Alene
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Tyrannosaurs carrying three-barreled bazookas!

That is all.

Okay, maybe not all. That would be too short for a proper review, but if the world were a fair place, that’s all that would need to be said about Love in the Time of Dinosaurs by Kirsten Alene.

To start with, the author builds an entire world populated by what we assume are probably humans, although at times I questioned this. The unnamed hero of the novel is a warrior monk fighting off an invasion of heavily armed dinosaurs. Is this Earth’s unknown past? Its future? My take is that it’s an entirely mythical world, but this is open to interpretation.

In this world, all dinosaurs, or Jeremies as they’re referred to by the monks, are vicious killers. Even dinosaurs that have traditionally been considered herbivores will kill and devour people, such as the stegosaurus that ate the hero’s best friend. That is until the hero catches a glimpse of a previously unseen dinosaur (a trachodon) who is peaceful, intelligent, and also a monk, something that the humans believe is impossible since all dinosaurs are animals to them. Armor-wearing, gun-toting, samurai-sword wielding animals. This trachodon is a female named Petunia, and the two are instantly drawn to each other. Hence the “love” part of the title. It’s almost a Romeo-and-Juliet star-crossed lovers kind of deal, except that instead of Verona, it takes place on a world invaded by dinosaurs, and Tybalt is a stegosaurus with cannons mounted on his back.

There are only two complaints I have with this novel. The first is that it feels like there’s more to tell. I know that I say this a lot when reviewing books from the Eraserhead Press label, but this is really the case here. It feels like there is a large chunk of the overall story missing, such as why the dinosaurs are called Jeremies, why the half-badger spiritish animals are called Steves, and where the dinosaurs came from and why they attacked. This last one is a question that seems to be creeping around in the back of the hero’s mind, but is never answered, and there are hints dropped that there is definitely something going on here. But it’s never fully pursued. Maybe the author will write a sequel which explores this, particularly as this whole war seems to center around the one monastery and the surrounding area, and we don’t see the much of the rest of the world. There’s a myth in the book surrounding islands floating at the center of the planet with one old man and one old woman on each one who never meet, and of the Great Destroyer Jeremy. If this has to do with something larger, I would like to read it.

The second problem is more of a pet peeve, that being the author completely ignores basic physical (not to mention physiological) laws. At one point, a character who has been cut in half, and generally seems to be okay if only a little upset at losing his lower half, opens his ribcage up after jumping with the hero from a pterodactyl in order to become a parachute and slow their descent (did you get all that?). I can understand and accept some stretching of basic physical principles, but when they’re completely broken like that, it rips me off the page and restores disbelief. Others may be more accepting of this, but unfortunately, I just can’t do it. It’s not in my nature.

Still, Love in the Time of Dinosaurs is a good read. It can be surprisingly deep at times, and Kirsten Alene has an interesting and unique writing style. Her imagery, not to mention her prose, can actually be quite poetic. The novel can also be very gory, so interested readers should keep this in mind before they start reading it, aside from the above issues I mentioned. Because of those aforementioned issues, I can’t say that I loved the book. However, I can say that despite those issues, I still really did like it, and I feel comfortable in giving it a solid recommendation.

Love in the Time of Dinosaurs earns four out of five stars.

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Bobblehead Dad: 25 Life Lessons I Forgot I Knew by Jim Higley
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Bobblehead Dad by Jim Higley is a nonlinear memoir told in the form of 25 lesson the author has learned during his life. In his forties, the author was diagnosed with prostate cancer and had to take stock of his life, the legacy he was given by his family, and the legacy he would leave to his children. He described himself as a bobblehead in the introduction, a plastic figure who always had a constant smile no matter what influences or stimuli were thrown at him and simply bobbled throughout his day, but that it was still a plastic smile and he wasn’t really living. Hence the title of the book.

The lessons are short and seem to be pretty much common sense, although the author acknowledges this near the end of the book. He explains that while most people know these lessons and they may seem easy, they also seem to be difficult to actually put into practice. It would have been better if the author had acknowledged this near the beginning of the book rather than at the end, because it leads to a bit of frustration and forehead slapping.

The author’s story is told in a nonlinear style. Each chapter/lesson is divided into two parts. The first is a personal memory, usually of growing up in a house where he was the youngest of five boys. At the age of fourteen, he lost his mother rather suddenly to brain cancer. Later, he lost his father, and then his brother, both to cancer. He shares personal memories of these particular parts of his life. The second part of each chapter involves how these parts influenced his feelings and reactions during the time he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, the time leading up to his surgery, and his recovery. Each chapter concludes with the lesson that he took away these experiences.

There are some distinct problems with Bobblehead Dad, the first being the title. Higley describes what he means by being a bobblehead in the introduction. This is where the problem starts, however. Through the rest of the book, I just don’t get it. It didn’t make sense as to why or how being a bobblehead related to these lessons. It seems like he forgot what the original motif was shortly after starting it. So, why he chose the title and went to the trouble of describing what he meant in the introduction seemed confusing and ultimately disappointing, like getting literary blue balls.

I can tell what Higley is going for with his nonlinear storytelling in the memoir. It creates an interesting feel, and he’s clearly going for the effect of pulling different pieces of his life together like a jigsaw puzzle to use as teachable moments and ultimate lesson that he has at the end of the book. The only problem is that it…just…doesn’t…quite…work, at least not for this reviewer. Let me be clear that there’s a certain charm to the approach. There definitely is. At the same time, though, it can be frustrating or, at worst, confusing as the reader tries to piece together this life from different non-contiguous and nonlinear parts. It’s a style that I found interesting, but it also feels like it needed more time to cook.

Ultimately, Bobblehead Dad was not without it’s interesting moments or style, and I can’t fault Higley for trying something a little new and in a style that’s not seen often. It’s part memoir and part self-help book. At the same time, it’s not without some major problems and at times falls flat, and while the style of the book is interesting, it felt like the style was also experimental needed more time time and editing. My heart goes out to the author and his family for the struggles they’ve gone through in fighting his cancer and the losses they’ve suffered. But this book feels like it comes up short in telling of this struggle, which makes it difficult to fully recommend.

Bobblehead Dad earns 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Note: A free Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book was sent to this reviewer through a Goodreads First Read giveaway. This did not affect this review in any way.

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Your Voice in My Head by Emma Forrest
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Your Voice in My Head by Emma Forrest can be very uncomfortable to read, not because it is a memoir about mental illness, depression, mania, cutting, attempted suicide, and death, but because it is a humorous memoir about mental illness, depression, mania, cutting, attempted suicide, and death.

To start, I have a confession to make. I didn’t know who Emma Forrest was before reading this book. She’s published a few other books, written screenplays, blogs, worked as a journalist, and has been involved in a high-profile Hollywood romance. And yet I didn’t know about her before now. So I started reading this book without any foreknowledge of who she is or what she’s done.

The book follows the author’s journey through being diagnosed with mental illness (more particularly as a manic/depressive) and meeting with a therapist, identified simply as Dr. R, who she credits with saving her life and being an eternal optimist. At one point, she calls his office to make an appointment and gets a machine saying that the office is closed, and then receives an email a couple of weeks later informing her that her therapist had died suddenly. None of his patients knew he was sick and was fighting lung cancer for several months. The book is sprinkled with short testimonials from Dr. R’s other patients about what he did for them or their relationship with him (these patients are not identified except for a first name or an initial to maintain confidentiality, as Dr. R is said to have had some high-profile patients).

Emma Forrest could be described as a serial dater, at least by her descriptions of her relationships in this book. During her dating trials, she settles into a relationship with a man she refers to only as her “Gypsy Husband,” or GH, who is a popular actor and celebrity. He is never actually named otherwise in the book, but it’s fairly obvious who it is, and you can find out who through a quick internet search. This relationship does not last, and is dealt with as one of the most heartbreaking moments in her life because they had been planning a family and they truly seemed to love each other. Be warned that this is not a tell-all book. Only the emotional parts of the relationship are described in detail, and only for a short time until the break-up. In fact, much more time is spent talking about the aftermath of the break-up than the relationship itself.

The writing style in this book is engrossing, to say the least. At times, it’s hard to say what’s real, what’s artistic license, and what is simply in the author’s head. Most of the time, it seems fairly obvious, but at times, I’m not too sure. But it’s also extremely disjointed, which may be a symptom of the author’s mania. The book is not told in an entirely linear manner, which sometimes gets a little confusing, but not too much so that it takes away from the book.

The voice in the author’s head is obviously supposed to be the therapist, to whom the book feels as though it could be written to as a single long letter. However, this sometimes becomes questionable as the author hears several voices in her head, such GH (especially post-breakup) or her parents. It can sometimes be downright scary as the reader genuinely wonders if there really are voices in her head, or if these voices are the same ones that everyone imagines at some point while they think things through.

Even with all of this, the story is generally told in a rather funny style. The author uses side thoughts and quips throughout the narrative that indicates that she has a sense of humor about herself and her own foibles. She’s genuinely able to look back and laugh at herself, even at times that seem inappropriate. During these humorous parts, the reader can feel weird or bad by laughing at things that it would be otherwise inappropriate to laugh at if the author hadn’t been describing it in a funny way and obviously laughing at it herself, and even then you can feel a little guilty about it. However, the book gets more serious and loses most of the humor near the end, which made the book very uneven. While the author ultimately moves on with her life, it still makes the book end on a down note.

I can definitely say that I liked the book, but I don’t know that can say that my feelings extend much beyond that. While the book is humorous and interesting, and it explores aspects of therapy and mental illness that aren’t often explored, such as what happens to the patients emotionally when a therapist suddenly dies, it’s also very uneven and feels whiny after a while. My sympathies extend to the author for her struggles and for her heartbreak, but it reaches a point where I don’t want to read about her self-pity anymore. It feels excessive. Other readers may feel differently, much like how different friends will have different tolerance for their friends’ self-pity during hardships. I feel for the author, but my pity can only go so far.

Overall, it’s a decent book with interesting aspects, but can get very frustrating at times, especially in the second half after her break-up with GH. It’s a personal story told from a unique perspective that deals with the emotion aspects of therapy and relationships and when they go wrong rather than simply the practical side of these events. But the author begins to wallow in self-pity so much that it becomes difficult to get through as you get to the end. This is what I would describe as almost a purely emotional memoir. Most of what we’re told is what the author is thinking or feeling, rather than what is going on in the real world. An interesting look inside the head of someone in mental and emotional turmoil, but frustrating, nonetheless.

Your Voice in My Head earns three out of five stars.

Note: A copy of this book was sent to this reviewer for free by the publisher (Other Press) through the Goodreads First Reads program. This did not affect this review in any way.

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