Eating Mammals

A man scrapes mulched dog fat from the roof of his mouth. A mother cat licks the slime from her mutant spawn’s head. A woman cuts into a gigantic meat pie filled with 6 live, squealing piglets. If such images leave you nauseous, take some pepto bismol before consuming this collection of three novellas from British author John Barlow.

The eponymous first story is worth the indigestion. It’s a rollicking tale about a man who eats his way across 19th century England with his trusty sidekick Captain Gusto and “The Machine,” a portable device that grinds brass plaques and bar stools into edible shavings. As bombastic and assured as a Ringmaster’s boasts, the narrative churns ahead unfailingly, and is as entertaining as the main protagonist’s stomach is resilient. Barlow’s scholarly tone and learned description of such sophomoric efforts drizzle a humorous glaze over the already ridiculous proceedings. Morality lessons concerning greed and excess that could have easily sunk this lithe morsel are relegated to the back of reader’s minds, being only hinted at as this digesting duo gleefully gorge their way through pub after Victorian pub.

Unfortunately, the next two stories only serve to bore those now tantalized literary taste buds. In “The Possession of Thomas-Bessie,” a winged cat causes inexplicable madness and violence to erupt in those around it. One scene actually portrays the beating of a dead horse, the cliché given life in fiction. If only the rest of the prose was as lively as the flogged equine. Certain passages shine, like the description of an enormous gypsy matriarch(“she spilled over the arms of the chair and out on to the floor in rolls and odd-shaped dollops of woman… her flabby mouth speaking not for a human being but as a mouthpiece for the whole dwelling”), but the rest of the text is so overblown and excessively dramatic (even for a “Victorian melodrama” as the subtitle suggests) it caused this reviewer to often laugh out loud, more in abhorrence than in reaction to anything comedic.

The last tale, “The Donkey Wedding at Gomersal,” offers a bit more meat, but only when it focuses on the couple at its matrimonial center. Too often it loses momentum, meandering on about the history of nearby towns and other minutiae, or the insatiable villagers whose revelry grows quickly tiresome to both the wedding party and those reading about it.

In the afterward, we learn that the Paris Review originally printed the story “Eating Mammals” three years ago, prompting Barlow to write two more stories for a book-length collection. The laws of the animal kingdom unfortunately do not apply to short fiction; if it did, this “Mammal” might have eaten its nutrient-deprived progeny before letting them out into the world.

(This review originally written for the Ann Arbor Paper, Volume 2, Issue 4, Nov. 2004)

A man scrapes mulched dog fat from the roof of his mouth. A mother cat licks the slime from her mutant spawn’s head. A woman cuts into a gigantic meat pie filled with 6 live, squealing piglets. If such images leave you nauseous, take some pepto bismol before consuming this collection of three novellas from British author John Barlow.

The eponymous first story is worth the indigestion. It’s a rollicking tale about a man who eats his way across 19th century England with his trusty sidekick Captain Gusto and “The Machine,” a portable device that grinds brass plaques and bar stools into edible shavings. As bombastic and assured as a Ringmaster’s boasts, the narrative churns ahead unfailingly, and is as entertaining as the main protagonist’s stomach is resilient. Barlow’s scholarly tone and learned description of such sophomoric efforts drizzle a humorous glaze over the already ridiculous proceedings. Morality lessons concerning greed and excess that could have easily sunk this lithe morsel are relegated to the back of reader’s minds, being only hinted at as this digesting duo gleefully gorge their way through pub after Victorian pub.

Unfortunately, the next two stories only serve to bore those now tantalized literary taste buds. In “The Possession of Thomas-Bessie,” a winged cat causes inexplicable madness and violence to erupt in those around it. One scene actually portrays the beating of a dead horse, the cliché given life in fiction. If only the rest of the prose was as lively as the flogged equine. Certain passages shine, like the description of an enormous gypsy matriarch(“she spilled over the arms of the chair and out on to the floor in rolls and odd-shaped dollops of woman… her flabby mouth speaking not for a human being but as a mouthpiece for the whole dwelling”), but the rest of the text is so overblown and excessively dramatic (even for a “Victorian melodrama” as the subtitle suggests) it caused this reviewer to often laugh out loud, more in abhorrence than in reaction to anything comedic.

The last tale, “The Donkey Wedding at Gomersal,” offers a bit more meat, but only when it focuses on the couple at its matrimonial center. Too often it loses momentum, meandering on about the history of nearby towns and other minutiae, or the insatiable villagers whose revelry grows quickly tiresome to both the wedding party and those reading about it.

In the afterward, we learn that the Paris Review originally printed the story “Eating Mammals” three years ago, prompting Barlow to write two more stories for a book-length collection. The laws of the animal kingdom unfortunately do not apply to short fiction; if it did, this “Mammal” might have eaten its nutrient-deprived progeny before letting them out into the world.

(This review originally written for the Ann Arbor Paper, Volume 2, Issue 4, Nov. 2004)