The Museum of Love

Like the whimsical/ repulsive image from a Brothers Quay film that graces the cover, "The Museum of Love" is a nightmarish, hallucinogenic quest novel. It crackles with a strange, hypnotic energy. Mixing Catholic mysticism, the brutal reality of the Canandian physical, pyschic and cultural landscape, the novel defies description. It is remenscient of the strange bildungsromans of Hesse, Genet, and Kafka. In an era of PC, cookie-cutter fiction, "The Museum of Love" is deliberate, surrealist and elusive. The protagonist is homosexual, but you won't find a "feel-good" resolution. And Weiner's black, bleak humor and startling imagery raises the book above any simple explaination. Having the logic of a dream, the tension of a suspense novel, horror strong enough make Stephen King look like a wimp, and the depth of Joyce is hard to pull off. Weiner's first novel is a work of genius. I'm looking forward to his next novel