Bats Out of Hell

All right; I hadn't planned on writing a review for this book, but no one else has, and it definitely deserves one. The characters in these many short stories are all too human, from the man who liberates his wife from her sister only to suffer the consequences of a newly independent woman, to the psychotic cowboy who laughs at his pathetic state and battles a woman who keeps her deformed son under lock and key. The situations are almost all surreal, but the characters seem like people you know, only more honest. Hannah shows us the delight people take from cruelty, but also shows us how these people are no worse than us, and their transgressions simply make life more interesting. It's been a few years since I read the book, but I constantly find myself remembering stories, characters, and even lines. Where else would you find a story about a thinly-veiled William S. Burroughs that becomes a South-American voodoo tale? Where else do you find a story that is written solely to fit to the title, "Upstairs, Mona Bayed For Dong"? Also notable is the one about the man whose friend longs for a tragic ending, but the narrator himself ends up involved with the mistress of a German Nazi in the American South. The stories' endings are also worthy of comment: never does a story end the traditional, fairy-tale way, but somehow the stranger, more cryptic endings seem perfect. I admit that there are a few I had to trudge through, but there are also enough gems to make this a necessary purchase.