Celebration: A Novel
At Forever and Forever, a Florida trailer park, the old folks wait passively for the ambulance to take them to the morgue. And that's the way its one-armed owner, Stump, likes it. For him, "Forever and Forever equals quiet and solitude and stillness and death." But Too Much, the voluptuous young woman who shares Stump's bed (and bathtub), has other plans. Proud of her power to "bring life where there had only been death, to bring joy and celebration where there had only been resignation and despair," she grimly sets out to do just that. From the author of The Mulching of America (LJ 11/15/95) comes another savage satire with the usual Crewsian elements: grotesque characters, bizarre situations, and black humor. Unfortunately, it lacks another element found in Crews's best novel, The Gypsy's Curse (LJ 4/1/74): humanity. The characters here are so repulsive and nasty that the reader doesn't care what happens to them. Even Too Much is too much. And for all the talk about joy and celebration, there is really very little. For larger fiction collections.- ?Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.