The Bend of the World: A Novel
UFOs have been spotted in the sky over Pittsburgh. Legislation has been introduced locally to make it legal to hunt Bigfoots—uh, Bigfeet. Peter’s company has been acquired by an impersonal, international corporation, and his new boss, who always sports a Visitor badge, may be a sociopath . . . or an alien from another dimension. Peter’s best friend, Johnny, is up to his eyebrows in the occult, having fallen in with the seedy author of a celebrated work of science fiction . . . or science fact? Is it the end of the world? Or is it the bend of the world? “There’s more world beyond the horizon,” Peter tells his boss, and the two have a good laugh. Will readers? Well, Bacharach’s surreal novel is inarguably amusing, a trippy exercise in ontology. But because alcohol is imbibed and drugs are ingested, the truth is both clear and unclear. So what is reality and what is imagined or, better, hallucinated? Ultimately, it’s left to the reader to decide, for it’s ambiguity that rules Peter’s world. --Michael Cart