Review: Trippy and different
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 29, 2011
This book is hard to put into a category..is it a mystery? Horror? Psychological thriller?  It's a little of all of those things..and more...Richard Coldiron is a man born of a bad childhood...An alcoholic and abusive father, a mother who's also battered but would rather that than be alone...the only way to cope is to make up an imaginary friend.  Not unusual for a kid to do that, especially one that has that type of trauma to deal with...even those with 'normal' childhoods have had imaginary friends...it's when the imaginary friend that turns into a companion in your teen and adult years that it becomes a problem...then when you start adding more imaginary friends to deal with each and every situation you have in life...well, that's a problem on top of a problem..Richard has the Bone House..the place he retreats to when something comes up he doesn't want to or can't deal with.  The Bone House is also the home for his multiple friends...his head's a pretty crowded place.I won't give up too much of the plot.  I will say that this is a weird book.  That's the best way I can think to describe it. This book is told in the first person through Richard's point of view.  It is his 'autobiography' after all.  'The worst ever written..rejected 117 times'.  That in itself makes it interesting.  Seeing the protagonist struggle through daily life as he's trying to tell his story and have it published.Is Richard a serial killer? Is he crazy? Is this all just 'revisionist' history?  A great many questions are raised during the telling and frankly not a whole lot of them are answered.  This isn't a book that will give you solid answers.  But that's ok.  It's written so well and at times it's just laugh out funny.  Some of Richard's 'friends' are pretty hysterical.Filled with dark themes, witty dialogue, puns galore that should at the very least get a chuckle out of you, this was a very entertaining book.