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2nd out of 23 books
—
50 voters
Swallowing a Donkey's Eye
by
Paul Tremblay (Goodreads Author)
Join Farm today! It's only six years of your life! Farm is the mega-conglomerate food supplier for City, populated with rabidly bureaucratic superiors, antagonistic and sexually deviant tour guides dressed in chicken and duck suits, and farm animals illegally engineered for silence. City is sprawling, technocratic, and rests hundreds of feet above the coastline on the crea...more
Paperback, 337 pages
Published
August 14th 2012
by Chizine Publications
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oh, what, is that me and paul tremblay?? it most certainly is!
Trudi: haha! saw that title and my first thought was "oh noes, she has officially reached rock bottom with the monster porn!" You have corrupted me. I have been corrupted.
i loved this post so much, i had to use it to start my review. i hope that is okay.
i love that you people thought this was erotica. and i think paul will love it, too.
it is not erotic, though, despite a golden-shower scene. it is hard to say what it is. this book is...more
THIS REVIEW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT THE NERVOUS BREAKDOWN.
Paul Tremblay’s Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye (ChiZine Publications) is a contemporary version of Animal Farm amped up on bitterness, future technology and sad realizations that things are not going to end well. Our unnamed narrator is forced into situations beyond his control, a reluctant hero in search of his mother, an angry youth who has little love left for his father, a boy not quite ready to be a man.
As a teen, he runs off to work...more
Paul Tremblay’s Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye (ChiZine Publications) is a contemporary version of Animal Farm amped up on bitterness, future technology and sad realizations that things are not going to end well. Our unnamed narrator is forced into situations beyond his control, a reluctant hero in search of his mother, an angry youth who has little love left for his father, a boy not quite ready to be a man.
As a teen, he runs off to work...more
“The idiots are shutting off this part of the fence. They’ll beep us when they’re ready.”
I notice angry-proletariat-guy Jonah is back. But I don’t say anything, I just nod, and stare at the fence. Wonder how far I can run before security nabs me; nabs being a more pleasant word than the phrase summarily executed. Let’s pretend I’m able to make it past the initial hurdle of the fence and Farm security, how would I make it through the checkpoints and into City?
Jonah says, “What a fucking mess, huh...more
I notice angry-proletariat-guy Jonah is back. But I don’t say anything, I just nod, and stare at the fence. Wonder how far I can run before security nabs me; nabs being a more pleasant word than the phrase summarily executed. Let’s pretend I’m able to make it past the initial hurdle of the fence and Farm security, how would I make it through the checkpoints and into City?
Jonah says, “What a fucking mess, huh...more
A young man manages to escape Farm when his mother goes missing in City, scared that she has gone homeless and been sent to Pier.
Upon arrival, he stumbles upon his father, who left the house when he was a teenager, who tells him, City wants him...as a mayor.
In a very dark and dystopian world, we come to follow the journey of that kinda rude character, entangled between gouvernment pressures, political issues and his personal beliefs.
I really liked how the characters were developping, in that ver...more
Upon arrival, he stumbles upon his father, who left the house when he was a teenager, who tells him, City wants him...as a mayor.
In a very dark and dystopian world, we come to follow the journey of that kinda rude character, entangled between gouvernment pressures, political issues and his personal beliefs.
I really liked how the characters were developping, in that ver...more
With post-modern echoes of "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," (also a young man's journey to find word of a missing/departed parent) this novel leads the reader deep into the underbelly of a perfected Capitalist dystopia. The slapstick, stylized, and colorful (in the way that an abandoned, haunted amusement park is colorful) tone is a change of pace for Tremblay—while maintaining the author's tongue-in-cheek (or in this case, tongue-in-beak) irreverence that makes the pointedly harsh lessons...more
It's not that George Orwell needed a makeover, really. He's probably more pertinent today than he ever was. What Paul Tremblay did with SWALLOWING A DONKEY'S EYE is to twist ANIMAL FARM into a strange, trapezoidal object of wonder. Unlike Orwell's fable, this is an all-out dystopia that talks to people of our age. Maybe it won't age as well as the classic, but it speaks louder to our generation.
Tremblay goes over the most troubling issues of our age from corporate work environment, to our relat...more
Tremblay goes over the most troubling issues of our age from corporate work environment, to our relat...more
This was a terrific read and it just kept getting better. It’s funny, sad, smart, and continually surprising. A young man in a dystopic world of theme parks and arbitrary decisions breaks out of the Farm and finds that he’s in an orchestrated run for Mayor. He’s also on a quest to find his mother, who’s disappeared—apparently to the Pier, the underworld beneath City, where all the refuse and homeless are tossed. It’s a magnificent world, screwy and awful and touching. Tremblay’s vision is sardon...more
What an odd and awesome book this is. What starts out as a kind of madcap dystopia turns much deeper and weirder as it goes on. Some of it is hilarious, some of it is profoundly disturbing, but it kept surprising me and defying my expectations, which is excellent, and under the duck suits and golden showers....well, let's say beyond the duck suits and golden showers, there's a novel with serious ambitions and some very challenging ideas about life and death and love and forgiveness.
Paul Tremblay's SWALLOWING A DONKEY'S EYE is an odd story. It's funny, artisric, real and dark. The protagonist id on a journey. Sometimes your sitting right next to him and other times your in another car along side observing.
The generic settings of Farm and City serve both as chatacters if tbe story but also insignificant stories. The story itself feels detatched at times yet the plight of the protagonist pulks you through the plot undaunted.
This is an interesting story that takes place in an...more
The generic settings of Farm and City serve both as chatacters if tbe story but also insignificant stories. The story itself feels detatched at times yet the plight of the protagonist pulks you through the plot undaunted.
This is an interesting story that takes place in an...more
I can't even begin to tell you how excited I was about this book. I've read most of Tremblay's other stuff and really loved the initial forays into to the City/Pier world. A full-blown novel in the same setting? Awesome. The addition of Farm to the world? Brilliant. It was different than I expected, differently dark and horrific than some of the stories, but I enjoyed the hell out of it nonetheless. My only wish is that I'd waited just a liiiiiiittle longer to devour it. I read it right when it...more
My review is available on my podcast: http://www.bookedpodcast.com/2012/08/...
Hear our complete review here: http://www.bookedpodcast.com/2012/08/...
A strange book with a surprising amount of heart. Part dystopia, part Animal Farm, part 1984. If you like any of those "parts," you'll like this book.
Review forthcoming at The Crow's Caw.
Weird dystopia, elements of Animal Farm. Not sure if it would appeal.
Another charming, funny, sad, strange tale from a very talented writer.
May 15, 2013
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| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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| Page count 337, not 275! | 1 | 4 | Sep 06, 2012 03:10am |
Paul Tremblay is the author of novels The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland.
He is a two-time nominee of the Bram Stoker award has sold over fifty short stories to markets such as Razor Magazine, Weird Tales, Last Pentacle of the Sun: Writings in Support of the West Memphis Three, and Horror: The Year’s Best 2007. He is the author of the short speculative fiction collections In the Mean Tim...more
More about Paul Tremblay...
He is a two-time nominee of the Bram Stoker award has sold over fifty short stories to markets such as Razor Magazine, Weird Tales, Last Pentacle of the Sun: Writings in Support of the West Memphis Three, and Horror: The Year’s Best 2007. He is the author of the short speculative fiction collections In the Mean Tim...more
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Sep 16, 2012 09:14pm
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