Would you believe me if I told you that I just read the strangest, most disgusting, horrifically violent, semi-apocalyptic book of all time, and that it cracked me up and I loved it? Most of you cannonballers would, since you are the nutjobs that recommended this one!
The Library at Mount Char isn’t easy to explain. But I’ll try.
One summer day in the 1970s, disaster strikes at a neighborhood barbecue, orphaning 12 kids and leaving them to be raised by “Father,” an older man from down the street who was always a little bit peculiar. He takes them home to his “library” and it begins their formal education and upbringing.
This is no ordinary library. Each of the 12 librarians is given a subject to master, with access to thousands or even millions of books. The librarians are not permitted to share their catalogue knowledge, and really don’t understand much about what the others are working on.
But wait, you might say. That doesn’t seem all that weird.
Throw in kids being cooked alive in barbecue grill shaped like a bull, a psychotic killing machine dressed in a blood-drenched tutu, a duo of kick-ass lions who want revenge on those who have done them wrong, tentacled creatures roaming the highways, and a man being castrated by his sister before being sent to suffer for all eternity while tethered with a rope to his big toe, and it starts to get weird.
So many others have reviewed this book in 2017, I honestly don’t have much more to add.
It was crazy and original and foul and funny. I was grossed out and shocked and I enjoyed almost every second (I did cringe at the castration). I loved Naga and Steve and Erwin (“Erwin gave no fucks.”). I loved the chapter titles (the best being “About Half a Fuckton of Lying-Ass Lies”). I loved the outfits…tutus and army jackets…bike shorts with leg warmers and Christmas sweaters…bathrobes and cowboy hats. It was so weird and yet exactly the way it was supposed to be.
It was like nothing I’ve ever read before and I hope Scott Hawkins continues to surprise and shock us for years to come.
I’m worried about the violent and gross aspects of this book (I get VERY involved in my books, and that could be a problem for me), but I’m also so very intrigued by all the good review. This book is on my reading list for July, I hope I have a strong enough stomach for it.
I don’t normally enjoy violent and gross things in my books either, but here it was those things but also so weird and darkly funny it didn’t matter as much?
Agreed. You get so wrapped up in figuring out just what the hell is going on that the gross and violent stuff kind of gets swept under the rug a bit.
This book is insanity.