Review: Disturbing, but fascinating
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 28, 2013
This is a pretty short piece, so I'm going to skip the synopsis for the most part. Let's just say it's about some severely deranged folks and the way they interact with themselves and each other and leave it at that. Any more would spoil the fun and the punchline.As is my usual style, first the good points: The entire first section - from the character called Fat Boy's point of view - was fast, intriguing and well layered; I felt like I was really getting into this character's mindset, feeling the panic and well-buried self-loathing. The writing was jumbled, crude and vulgar, but in a way that seemed to be intentional; stream of consciousness from a deeply disturbed mind.The scene where the killer is revealed, their motivation uncovered and the truth of what happened one dark night was handled well and was suitably twisted; perhaps because I've got a family history full of mental disorders and have been in more than my share of abusive relationships, I always enjoy a twisted love story and I felt this delivered on the theme.Now, the downsides: Past the first section, the jumbled language continues but seems to be less authentic and more of a case of hurrying without going back to edit later. The characters seem too calm for their heads to be so messy - broken and half-psychotic, yes, but manically fractured, no. I think either a little more fleshing out of the characters - to show that the style fits their mindsets - or a good edit job would help significantly; it would also address two of my other concerns, those being the punctuation - which turns spotty halfway through - and the formatting - which has several instances of extra white space, often mid-sentence, a random duplicate and hyperlinked word, and odd "checkboxes" that would seem to be image placeholders of some kind scattered throughout the manuscript.While I enjoyed the "screenplay" sequence - anything that gets us into a given character's head is good, especially in a brief piece as this one is - the final sequence felt somewhat tacked on and unnecessary; had the overall work been longer, perhaps with more references to the screenplay or the apparent real-life figures it's referring to, it might have had a place, but as it is, it seems to just stick out like a rudimentary tail.Some folks are going to read this and be disgusted; they probably should be. All these characters are, in their own ways, repulsive human beings. But isn't half the point of fiction the ability to step into someone else's shoes, particularly someone who you could never (and probably wouldn't want to) be? Crawling into the minds of Fat Boy, Dylan, Becky and Sam is an uncomfortable experience... and it should be. To me it's always a good thing if the author can make me feel something for the characters, even if that something isn't exactly nice; Columbus does this admirably.Overall, for someone looking for a quick read with seriously warped content, this is probably worth at least a poke, but only those with strong stomachs and a willingness to overlook the rules of English for a bit should apply. With a bit of work - cleaning up the punctuation and formatting, maybe some tweaks to the presentation, and dropping the "epilogue" - I'd be willing to give this a slightly higher score... but I honestly think that an overall expansion - going more into these character's psyches, their daily activities without the feeling of being rushed through them, or more about the people in their lives that led them to this point, perhaps with more focus on the screenplay and the ultimate punchline - is probably the best course, and something I'd definitely be interested in seeing.