“I’m going to tell a truth here.
My friend and I did a library program. As part of it, we made a bet. Whoever did a better job had to read a short Kindle book of the other’s choosing.
I lost this bet. And gained a copy of The Bench Made From Green Recycled Plastic.
Now, to be perfectly honest, this is a lot better than Agent Cold Beer On Assignment and The Time Traveling Racist, the books I picked for my friend to read if she lost. The prose in here really isn’t bad.
But it’s the kind of book I don’t dig, where everything is a little confusing. The narrator is unreliable not only in the events and who’s at fault when it comes to a murder, but also in a lot of other ways. Really, nothing the narrator says is reliable. Which means that I really didn’t have any idea what’s going on at any point. There was a time I read the same two pages twice, IN A ROW, and didn’t realize it until I got to the section break and thought it sounded familiar.
Which kind of says best what I’m trying to get across here. I was seeking structure so desperately, or something concrete, that I latched on to the section title because it’s all there was.
Also, I think I might have done myself a disservice in deciding early on that this story was a combination of two Simpsons things:
Leprechauns who tell people to burn things:
And a murderous butterfly:
Not even kidding. And once you get Simpsons in your head, there’s no unringing that bell. No unexploding that grammar bot. No unseeing the lemon behind that rock. No un-everything coming up Milhouse.”