James's review
Severance: Stories
by Robert Olen Butler
James's review
Severance: Stories by Robert Olen Butler
James's review
rating:
I thought these stories were pretty great, although, you have to be willing to look past the gimmicky factor involved. All the stories here are first person narrations of the protagonist's decapitation, and they are all exactly 240 words, his estimate of how long a head could talk before the loss of blood and oxygen kick in. A far fetched conceit, but when it works it works beautifully. Our protagonists range from John the Baptists to a chicken (oh, yes, Butler really couldn't do this collection without the old joke about a chicken with its head cut off--although Stephen Merritt does it better in 69 Love Songs.) The downside here is the relentless monotony of the form. Butler, as in other collections, never dares to push or even tweak the boundaries of his self-imposed form. A great book to throw in your bag for waiting-rooms, or perhaps shelved in your bathroom, but cover-to-cover reading it is not.
