The second book by Martiny I’ve read. This one was very different from Night of the Long Goodbyes.
Both were singular in their content, and contained a mix of traditional and non-traditional techniques. I would call this a hysterical picaresque novel infused with mesmeric weirdness, peppered with quirky satirical aplomb and sensual, imagistic fabulism.
The sarcastic title is carried into the text, given new weight, and the author leaves very little time for the reader to breathe, since the laughter he induces will be fairly constant.
Frank, polished, memorable, nostalgic, wise and innocent at the same time. A gift for detail marks the first half of the novel. The second half slides into an uncanny valley of sexual frustration and fulfillment.
Extraordinary straight-faced humor draws the reader in to the overabundant Montcocq family, bilious with their modern trappings, but far more unstable than the average 2.5 kid-Lower? middle class fin de Twentieth siècle domestic unit. Martiny charms with multilingual literacy, very rapid jokes in every paragraph, outlining unique family dynamics using sophisticated language while commenting plentifully on religiosity, societal complacence, Irishness and Frenchness, playing with narrative distance, playfully reminding the reader of key details, and addressing them directly with instructions and apologies when necessary. I found this to be the antidote to the tiresome clichés of everyday life. The historical perspectives offered, the sexual revolution enacted on the scale of an individual, the tongue in other cheek feminism, conveys ecstatic enthusiasm for the richness of human life, though it is rife with digressions, with mazelike brambles of commentary. It purports to be a memoir by our first person narrator – every plot development might turn out to be a joke, keep your ears peeled for corny moments, as outrageous, vivid descriptions assail the senses, at times masterfully capturing an absurd but touching moment, in quick-paced, haphazard bildungromanesque fashion.
The author can milk a situation for all it’s worth, and historical recaps provide grandiosity, albeit excessively, while being morbid and hilarious footnotes to the events in the life of our hero. It is also anti-idyllic, a sort of anti-Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, charming childhooddom pervades even the adolescent and pseudo-adult time periods he covers, with impeccable comedic timing, ranging from elevated storytelling from the perspective of an infant, and juxtapositions which are thrillingly relatable. Resistance, repression, not much guilt, familial bureaucracy, eccentricity, overpopulation of the household, deliberately wordy descents into momentary madness, proliferation, excess, overproduction of testosterone, all make for a chockablock barrel of laughs. The lengths his parents go to to live out their ideals is astounding, while the naivete, cruelty, childlike sense of awe and horror, the ridiculous levels of character quirks, the domestic insanity, schoolhood days, and bizarro-lucid maniacal categorization of psychologically disturbed behavior as symptoms of societal conditions, all make more a good read. It is Wodehouse uncensored, Bill Bryson, but unhinged, complete with body horror, male adolescent egregious over-sexualization, and a bulbous, generous, beating heart.
L. S. Popovich 