BUSY MONSTERS
AUTHOR | WILLIAM GIRALDI
PUBLISHER | W.W. NORTON & COMPANY
RELEASE | 8.1.11
Charles Homar’s fiancée leaves him to pursue a giant squid with a squid hunter. To win her back, he’ll chase sasquatches and UFOs, armed only with assault rifles and a difficult vocabulary.
“You speak Shakespeare and have a fondness for sharp objects,” a compatriot says. “You are, I think, ready for voodoo.”
Homar isn’t the typical voodoo-er. A memoirist, he’s serializing this odyssey for a weekly journal. Everyone he meets, having read the previous chapter, demands that Homar not include them in the next one. He agrees—within the next one’s dialogue. Such meta-ness can get too pleased, but Giraldi’s approach is goofier. When Charles joins forces with two testosterized stereotypes, Romp (black) and Lombardi (New Jersey), they debate their un-correctness, while all slipping into Homar’s top-hat-and-monocle dialect. His ludicrous voice propels Busy Monsters, even when the plot loses steam.
“I find you hidebound and homespun,” he tells a Loch Ness enthusiast, “more spunk than smarts. Please refrain from talking to me.”
And a good day to you too, sir.
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