Gutmouth by Gabino Iglesias

Jan 02, 2013 Dan Schwent rated it liked it

Shelves: bizarro, 2015

David Dedmon has a second mouth below his navel named Phillipe. How did David and Phillipe end up in the clink and, more importantly, will they be able to escape?

Gutmouth is another rendering of that age old tale of a woman becoming between two men. Only, in this case, it's actually between a man and his mutation, a second mouth with a nine inch tongue and a British accent. Yeah, Gutmouth is a bizarro book.

I periodically dip in and out of the bizarro genre. One of my complaints about the genre i ...more

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May 25, 2018 Janie C. rated it really liked it

In a world run by MegaCorp, morals are ambiguous and consumerism is law. Body modification and mutations are rampant, and physical punishments are extreme. With the right drugs, pain is tantamount to pleasure. In this manically sordid world, those unlucky enough to be caught for not buying their quota of products or for growing their own food are incarcerated. Colossal oozing eyes watch prisoners while guards whip around tentacles and pungent odors. David is in prison for murdering his girlfrien ...more

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Jun 26, 2013 Douglas Hackle rated it really liked it

I read this earlier in the summer so my thoughts on it are not super fresh, but it is what it is. Gutmouth tells the story of David “Gutmouth” Dedmon, a man cursed with a vulgar, perpetually hungry, yet intelligent mouth named Phillipe residing in his gut. In the bleak, dystopian, urban wasteland of this bizarro-noir story, body mutilation and mutation are pursued for both pleasure and punishment, and nearly everything is owned or controlled by a diabolical megacorporation appropriately named Me ...more

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Jan 28, 2018 Leo Robertson rated it liked it

A fast and fun bizarro read :) Definitely makes me excited to read more of Iglesias' work, which my friends rave about, and he seems like a cool guy too. (Which is not necessary to be a good author, but it couldn't hurt, okay? Just sayin' to all those authors reading this :P)

The only issues I had with it were with the bizarro genre itself.

Bizarro stories are often sold by mentioning a fraction of the zaniness that an author can expect.
"This one features an inside-out cat with organs that sing t A fast and fun bizarro read :) Definitely makes me excited to read more of Iglesias' work, which my friends rave about, and he seems like a cool guy too. (Which is not necessary to be a good author, but it couldn't hurt, okay? Just sayin' to all those authors reading this :P)

The only issues I had with it were with the bizarro genre itself.

Bizarro stories are often sold by mentioning a fraction of the zaniness that an author can expect.
"This one features an inside-out cat with organs that sing the bit of the macarena that people pretend is okay not to understand just because they don't speak Spanish." That was legit free association first-thing-that-came-into-my-head.
Maybe if you're a proponent of Ginsberg's "First thought best thought" maxim, that's okay with you. IDK. Then, maybe I'm intrigued to read this story with this cat in it, so I pick up the book and find, in chapter 12, "He looked to see a cat rubbing against his leg. It was a cat, wasn't it? What was that lumpy goo covering it? My God: its organs! The cat was inside out. As he identified kidneys, liver, intestines, tiny mouths erupted over the organs' surface and sang a familiar tune. It was that bit of the macarena he'd never understood. Flunked Spanish after all." Then the next part of the chapter will be, "So anyway, plot-propelling dialogue!"

Because to tell a story, or build a world, that necessitated that cat, well... that's a task that takes more than a throwaway gag here and there. Why, for example, did this cat show up in chapter 12 and not chapter 1, 2, 3...? Why did it show up at all? And, can you really picture this cat? Did I give it enough description? I can't, really, if I'm to maintain your interest in the story itself. Then why oh why oh why include it? Because it's funny? Is it? I'm too irritated by it now to be amused.

I mention George Saunders a lot in reviews these days I see (and especially in reviews of Saunders' work ahahaha.) But we can think of him as the most successful/mainstream/at least lauded author who dabbles in the bizarro genre (the stories "Sea Oak" and "In Persuasion Nation" come to mind.) He advocates the same writing practice as the pure bizarro author, which is, just start writing the thing on your mind without knowing why. Except he'll then painstakingly sculpt the story into a meaning that justifies all of its symbols and logic, no matter how bizarre. That's where he and most authors are differentiated.

I haven't read enough bizarro to know whether or not this feature that I've outlined is a typical misstep of its genre or a basic proponent of it. It requires a suspension of disbelief of the reader that makes the narrative so fragile.

"Hey, wait! Leo, haven't I read this exact fare in your stories?"
"Eeeeeeeeeeeeh not exactly, I would say. I have ways around it that I won't write about here... So then, yeah, sure, you have :)"
Almost everything I ever mention about what other writers do, I end up doing myself.
"But then," I say, "isn't most fiction about the confusion of hypocrisy? The cognitive dissonance of other perspectives?"
And before any of you can tell that that's bullshit, I've thrown a smoke grenade and run off into the nearest lane, bashing my head on a pipe.
I wake up in the ER, head wrapped in bandages, and there you are sat in front of me, still awaiting an explanation. And beside you is—that damn cat! I thought I'd gotten rid of him. Wait, it's a her. What I mistook for male gonads were in fact female gonads inverted. As she licks the blue veins on the back of her paw with her rough tongue, first I cringe then relax a little.
Everything's okay, and I can't imagine my world without her. ...more

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Nov 25, 2012 FabulousRaye rated it really liked it

Shelves: reviewed, own-it, bizarro-brigade, 2013

First of all, the author has a supremely awesome name. Next time you're doing housework or whatever, start muttering "GABINO IGLESIAS" to yourself. It will make you feel better about your chores, your day, and your life.

Secondly, if GUTMOUTH doesn't get the author a contract with Eraserhead Press, I'll be ultra-surprised. This book is ridiculously good. It contains witty repartee, delicious food metaphors and much cleverness and correct usage of big words. (It's not often in the Bizarro genre th ...more

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Dec 31, 2017 Frederic rated it it was amazing

This reads like a collaboration between Ralph Bakshi, Jim Henson, Philip K. Dick, and a young Peter Jackson. It’s completely off the wall insanity from cover to cover, and I loved every second of it. Read Gabino Iglesias!

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Dec 05, 2015 Benoit Lelièvre rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Under this sensory onslaught of extreme body modification and futuristic deviant sex scenes that are both meant to shock you into cognition and as iconoclast banter, lies a very good and pertinent story about self-determination at the age of technological corporate takeover (which we're kind of in right now).

Gabino Iglesias has the natural storyteller gene that all-time greats such as Joe Lansdale and Lawrence Block share and GUTMOUTH, despite its incendiary style, tells and oddly beautiful tale ...more

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Nov 01, 2012 Sheldon rated it really liked it

Shelves: own, fiction, science-fiction, bizarro

Welcome to the future! Consume!

Gutmouth by Gabino Iglesias takes place in a future where everything is run and mutated by Megacorp, a huge corporation that took over from the government by releasing a biological agent that created mutations and only they knew how to control them. Insert Monsanto joke here.

Our hero (as it were) has a particular mutation that caused him to grow an obnoxious talking mouth in his gut. Actually, the author seems to have put a lot of thought into how this could physio Welcome to the future! Consume!

Gutmouth by Gabino Iglesias takes place in a future where everything is run and mutated by Megacorp, a huge corporation that took over from the government by releasing a biological agent that created mutations and only they knew how to control them. Insert Monsanto joke here.

Our hero (as it were) has a particular mutation that caused him to grow an obnoxious talking mouth in his gut. Actually, the author seems to have put a lot of thought into how this could physiologically work. That's a little more disturbing than anything else.

When his hooker girlfriend cheats on him with the mouth, he decides to exact revenge on her. But how can he do this when everything is watched by Megacorp? How does one take out a potentially valuable consumer without notice?

I found this book surprising in more ways than one. To start, the editing is actually quite good. Editing problems are a common complaint I've had with bizarro books, and so far this year's class of the New Bizarro Authors Series, of which this book is a part, has been surprising me in this regard. It bodes well for the future.

This book is bleak. I mean really bleak. It depicts a heavy dystopian future that may turn some readers off. Still, if that's your thing, you'll probably like this book. It's really a matter of taste.

A complaint I do have is that there aren't many surprises. Most of the book is told as a noir-style flashback. We sort of know what happened, but we're watching it carried out. And it sort of plays out the way you would expect. Up until the end (and there is a bit of a surprise at the end), it felt a bit like the movie “The Man Who Wasn't There.” But there's not a whole lot else.

In short, the descriptions and imagining of the world are great, but the plot itself leaves a little to be desired and doesn't leave the reader with many surprises or mysteries, which is surprising given the noir-style the author uses.

As I mentioned earlier, Gutmouth is part of the 2012-2013 class of the New Bizarro Authors Series, which means that this is Gabino Iglesias' first published novel. It's a good effort, and it did keep my interest, but by the end I felt a bit deflated. Still, I look forward to his other work to see how he grows as a writer.

Gutmouth by Gabino Iglesias earns 3.5 klepto-roaches out of 5. ...more

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May 02, 2013 sappho_reader rated it really liked it

It surprises me how many reviewers have categorized Gutmouth as Noir.

I have to admit that the cover page illustration does give the impression it is Noir but the story itself has no Noir characteristics.

Is it because a scorned man seeks revenge on his ex-girlfriend for betraying him?
Is it because he is in jail for breaking the law?
Is it because the setting is a bleak dystopian wasteland of a city?

I really do not know *scratches head*

If anyone says 'yes' to the above then a great majority of crim ...more

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Nov 20, 2012 Shamus McCarty rated it really liked it

Shelves: bizarro

I read an early version of this book, not the final edit. If we’re going to be totally honest, the version I read was about a 3.5. However I’ve heard excellent things about Gabino’s editor, so I’m going to assume he added at least .5 stars to the book.

Ok, now that the honesty statement is out of the way I’ll continue with my review of the early version of this book. It was a few years ago so my memory has faded, but one thing burns in my mind. “Gut” (I forgot his Christian name) was awesome. He ...more

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Feb 08, 2013 Kirk rated it really liked it

This is a tale of love and loss, but not in the way that you’d expect after reading the epigraph. The is a story of self love, or one self loving another self encapsulated in a single body, or perhaps the love/hate relationship existing between id and super-ego. In the case of this story our protagonist’s id is imbued with a frightening level of intelligence. In many instances, the sentient mouth growing out of our protagonist’s stomach is smarter than the actual protagonist.

In little time, it This is a tale of love and loss, but not in the way that you’d expect after reading the epigraph. The is a story of self love, or one self loving another self encapsulated in a single body, or perhaps the love/hate relationship existing between id and super-ego. In the case of this story our protagonist’s id is imbued with a frightening level of intelligence. In many instances, the sentient mouth growing out of our protagonist’s stomach is smarter than the actual protagonist.

In little time, it becomes apparent why our protagonist is named “Gut” and the mouth in his stomach is given a more sophisticated moniker: Philippe. These two are the odd couple of the bizarro world, and it is their relationship that takes center stage in this story.  As for the character’s motivation—the three-tit tramp that serves as the object of Gut’s affection—we don’t get a lot of time with her in the story. She comes and goes without much effect, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Most readers are conditioned to expect some degree of connection in a fictional heterosexual relationship, some sort of strife and struggle, perhaps a love triangle. But this story is best read if you treat the girl as a foil designed to help develop the relationship between Gut and Philippe. She is the source of their falling out. She’s the element that makes apparent the fact that Philippe and Gut exist in all of us. They’re the “go for it!” at the bar that becomes the “what have I done?” of Sunday morning. They’re that inner dialogue, that part of yourself that envies and hates another part of yourself that only emerges at the oddest or most inconvenient of times.  But enough about that.

There’s more to this story than a man’s body-turned-metaphor for internal conflict. In the vein of early CMIII works like Adolf in Wonderland, Gutmouth presents the reader with fistful after fistful of bizarro, some of which eventually evolve and become familiar people, places and phenomena. Others pass us by like a stack of View-Master reels at your friend’s house that you only have five minutes to look through before your parents pick you up. It can be dizzying, but for the hard-core bizarro reader it’ll leave you wanting more of this world.  There’s a lot of good action in this story as well, and some solid description of things that could only be rendered from the fabric of imagination, which remains one of the best attributes of bizarro writing. Gutmouth is an excellent addition to the NBAS run, and Iglesias is an author worth keeping an eye on.
...more

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Jan 24, 2013 Matthew Vaughn rated it really liked it

Shelves: bizarro, 2013, reviewed

So the New Bizarro Series Authors are in full effect again for this year. I’m a big fan of this series; I always try to read as many of them as I can. Unfortunately I usually don’t end up reading as many as I would like. So I have read my first, and hopefully not last, of this year’s bunch and I couldn’t have picked a better one to start with.

Much like the title will tell you this book is about a guy with a mouth for a stomach. He goes by the name of David, his friend’s call him Gut, and the mou So the New Bizarro Series Authors are in full effect again for this year. I’m a big fan of this series; I always try to read as many of them as I can. Unfortunately I usually don’t end up reading as many as I would like. So I have read my first, and hopefully not last, of this year’s bunch and I couldn’t have picked a better one to start with.

Much like the title will tell you this book is about a guy with a mouth for a stomach. He goes by the name of David, his friend’s call him Gut, and the mouth is named Philippe. It starts out with him in prison and for the most part he tells us the story of how he ended up there. But what a story it is. In a future where the corporate MegaCorp (Made me think of Work for MegaCorp and make MegaCorp work for you!) controls pretty much everything. David works as a hunter for the corporation. His job was to bring in the people who didn’t pay their share to MegaCorp, or went against the company somehow. He tells us about meeting Maria, the one-legged stripper/prostitute that works at Ampu-titties and how their strange relationship grows. We meet David’s friends, most of which work at the Genital Mutilation and Erotic Maiming Center at the bottom of his apartment complex. There are mutations and genetic modifications pushed well beyond ones common conception on most of these colorful characters.

Gutmouth is packed full of bizarre and just plain crazy concepts. Gabino Iglesias may have a pretty twisted mind, and I like it! Some parts of this book are so extreme that in a lesser author’s hands it could come off as silly. And that right there may be one of the biggest surprises from him. If you didn’t know going in you would not know this is his first book. Gabino writes with an elegance that might make you question whether this is a bizarro novel after all, that is until you get to the bottled cats or the fetus tacos. I am only touching on the edges of the fantastic and borderline absurd world that Mr. Iglesias has created; I wouldn’t want to spoil anything for a potential reader.

The bottom line is if you like your bizarro awesome, gritty, twisted, a little stomach turning and you want to be severely entertained then this is a book for you. If this is the start for Gabino Iglesias then I am excited to see what he’s going to do next.
...more

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Apr 28, 2013 Anita Dalton rated it really liked it

Shelves: e-book, fiction, bizarro

You can read my entire discussion here.

Here's a snippet:

In this novel, Iglesias creates a perverse dystopia that can best be described as 1984 with extreme body modifications and mutations. Extreme pain is pleasure, pleasure is demented and everyone is amoral and marginally insane. There is a Church of Albert Fish, Carlton Mellick V is writing brutal fiction, people can genetically cross themselves with salamanders and a body modification expert deconstructs his ex-girlfriend into a motorcycle. ...more

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May 03, 2013 Hatchet Mouth rated it it was amazing

Gutmouth is a nice place to visit... Wait, no it isn't... Let's try this again... Gutmouth is a horrible place to visit AND I wouldn't want to live there!

In the future, Megacorp has consolidated everything, every street corner, every brand name. They've replaced streetlights with asses ready to take a shit on rioters who are miserable with the conditions incurred by Megacorp. Drugs of every variety are available, some black market and some Megacorp endorsed, like the endorphinated beers and Algo Gutmouth is a nice place to visit... Wait, no it isn't... Let's try this again... Gutmouth is a horrible place to visit AND I wouldn't want to live there!

In the future, Megacorp has consolidated everything, every street corner, every brand name. They've replaced streetlights with asses ready to take a shit on rioters who are miserable with the conditions incurred by Megacorp. Drugs of every variety are available, some black market and some Megacorp endorsed, like the endorphinated beers and Algolagnix which causes a person's body to interpret agonizing pain as orgasmic pleasure.

Then there's our main character, 'Gut' for short. He has a mouth for a stomach, and it's always hungry. But you'll learn enough about them when you read the book. Instead, I want to talk about what I personally found to be the most disturbing passage in the book which takes place at the Genital Mutilation and Erotic Maiming Center:

"She's... She's a fucking bicycle!?"

"Yeah, it took me almost two months but she's all done" said Gage, his voice filled with pride. "She's so well put together that you can even take her out for a ride." And the whole time they're talking about this bicycle girl, she's looking at them both with bloodshot, teary eyes.

That is the most feverish passage for me in the book. The whole book is like that. Its predatory imagery never lets up! Gutmouth is literary roadkill. No one wants to get out and touch it. It started with just a dented skull with tire tracks. Now, it's been out in the sun for a few days and people who are in a hurry have run over it, knocking it about. Its bones are poking out, and no one cares to move it to the side of the road or call Animal Control. That's the feeling I got in reading Gutmouth.

Someone should get Frank Henenlotter (Brain Damage, Basketcase) to direct the movie based on Gutmouth. He's the only one who could bring this hypersurreal skid row to life. I still have Gabino Iglesias' submission to look forward to at a magazine where I'm Co-Editor! www.surrealgrotesque.com ...more

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Nov 22, 2012 Ross Lockhart rated it really liked it

Gabino Iglesias's NBAS debut GUTMOUTH is gritty mutant noir, filled with desperation, murder, and a guy with a mouth in his gut. A company enforcer, driven to violence by the lecherous, foul-mouthed parasite Philippe, Gutmouth Dedmon languishes in a fleshy pink jail cell, watched by giant eyeballs and guarded by a squid. Gutmouth's world is one of gruff brutality, genital mutilation centers, amputee prostitutes, and kleptomaniac roaches, all struggling to make it day-to-day in a city shattered b ...more

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Feb 24, 2015 David rated it it was amazing

I love how this has such a convincing detective noir feel (without much detection) at the same time that it's completely off the wall weirdness. It's disgusting, it's revolting, and that's the really good stuff. There is a wonderful amount of cohesion in the strangeness, an order to the freakshow. Iglesias has a hell of an imagination as well, and I dig it. It comes together really well and I dig it a lot. ...more

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Aug 01, 2014 Melanie Catchpole rated it really liked it

A few little typos which gets very distracting for me. (I never know if I should point out any possible errors to the author or not, I think I'd want to know, maybe i'll start doing that from now on.lol) Apart from that a really good story. Really did enjoy this and it has weird shit throughout the whole story. A good example of Bizarro. Would recommend! ...more

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Feb 22, 2015 The Grim Reader rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Great NBAS read

This book provides the perfect mix of horror and bizzaro. It is dark and dirty, just the way I like it. I started and finished reading it in one sitting, the pages just flew by. That is when you know you are on to something good. Gabino certainly has a wonderfully twisted imagination. I hope he will be writing more stories such as Gutmouth. Superb.

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Aug 18, 2013 Raegan Butcher rated it really liked it

If William Burroughs and Raymond Chandler had a baby, the little mutant would have written something like "Gutmouth." There is more humor and imagination on display here than in a whole year's worth of "normal" books.

Hooray for Gabino Iglesias and his hard-boiled Bizarro tale! More please! ...more

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Aug 02, 2016 Tobias rated it really liked it

Shelves: read2016

Corporate near-future dystopias and body horror. And the most unsettling use of a bicycle I've ever encountered in fiction. ...more

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Dec 09, 2017 Robert Rojo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Wow, this book was a blast from start to finish. David is contemplating how he has managed to find himself in jail. He has a mouth Phillipe, that resides just under his belly button that speaks in an English accent and that's just the beginning of this wild and weird adventure. Love the ideas and imaginative way the characters are portrayed and most of all the klepto roaches 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻. This is not a book for the faint hearted as there is plenty of sex and blood and grossness. After all it is a bizz ...more

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Feb 01, 2019 OZ rated it it was amazing

An amazing read!

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May 12, 2019 Alex Khlopenko rated it it was amazing

Up there with Marques, Kafka, and Cronenberg's filmography. Modern classic. ...more

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Jun 24, 2013 Sean Leonard rated it it was amazing

Shelves: owned

Published in 2012 as part of the New Bizarro Author Series by Eraserhead Press, Gutmouth is author Gabino Iglesias’ first book. The New Bizarro Author Series has become known for birthing a number of sick and twisted new voices into the world, including Steve Lowe (Muscle Memory), Kirsten Alene (Love in the Time of Dinosaurs), Kevin Shamel (Rotten Little Animals), and Patrick Wensink (Sex Dungeon For Sale, and more recently Broken Piano For President), just to name a few. Well, the same independ Published in 2012 as part of the New Bizarro Author Series by Eraserhead Press, Gutmouth is author Gabino Iglesias’ first book. The New Bizarro Author Series has become known for birthing a number of sick and twisted new voices into the world, including Steve Lowe (Muscle Memory), Kirsten Alene (Love in the Time of Dinosaurs), Kevin Shamel (Rotten Little Animals), and Patrick Wensink (Sex Dungeon For Sale, and more recently Broken Piano For President), just to name a few. Well, the same independent book press has birthed another monster, but this time it more resembles something out of a Frank Henenlotter film. To put it another way, this book is nothing short of amazing.

Gutmouth is at once a love story, a noir-ish crime story, and a dystopian sci-fi horror novella. David Dedmon is in a prison cell. While Ice-T once called prison the “bowels of the devil,” the prison that Dedmon is in appears to actually be bowels, or possibly a stomach. And in place of cameras, there are giant eyes keeping watch. Squid-like, hissing, tentacled creatures guard the halls and cells. And to top it all off (and explain the nickname Gutmouth), just below his belly button Dedmon has a giant mouth named Philippe that speaks in a British accent and is constantly hungry. Dedmon is currently blood-boilingly angry with Philippe because David’s one-legged, three-breasted, now ex-girlfriend Marie inadvertently cheated on him with the very same rude and obnoxious mouth.

As it turns out, Dedmon is in prison for the crime of murder. In this particular dystopia, MegaCorp is the ruler of the land, the judge, jury, and executioner (or, if one isn’t so lucky, the mad scientist experimenter). MegaCorp makes the laws one must follow, names the products one must purchase, and causes the mutations that have scarred the population. And so, MegaCorp is also the group that is imprisoning our unfortunate anti-hero Dedmon.

The intro to Gutmouth feels a bit like if Oldboy had been written by Williams S Burroughs and featured Marty Malt from The Dark Backward. The first few chapters set the stage, showing us the world in which we will be living alongside Gutmouth. After we are given the guided tour of the hell that our characters call home, Iglesias takes us back, and Dedmon tells the story of how he got to his current position in prison. We get the story of how he first met Marie at a MegaCorp-owned cybersex club and it was love at first sight. We meet his friend Tony, a bodybuilder who now resembles a rat due to a black market internet DNA scam. And along the way, we get further detail of the Blade Runner/Bad Biology world around him.

This is a world where treatments have been conceived that turn pain into pleasure, where limbs can be regenerated immediately after they are cut off, where unchecked consumerism has brought about a fascist dictatorship. There are kleptomaniacal cockroaches living in the walls, so everything of value must be locked up or else disappear. Below David Dedmon’s apartment is a Genital Mutilation and Erotic Maiming Center, a place where people can go and have all kinds of things done to themselves in the name of pleasure. It’s a world that takes an imagination that is part genius, part maniacal to create, something I believe Iglesias will take as a compliment. It’s disgusting at the same time as it is amazing.

To call Gutmouth simply a gross-out bizarro story would be doing a great disservice to the author and to the story itself. The writing is fantastic, with great descriptions and word play throughout. As rapid fire fast as the story moves and as short (an easy 87 pages that I devoured in one sitting) and crazy as it is, the characters are not written one-dimensionally. The reader will find themselves feeling for Gutmouth, no matter what he may or may not have done. Iglesias also drops a couple nods to his works influences that made me smile as I read, at one point showing his protagonist relating to the lyrics of Cannibal Corpse’s song “Meat Hook Sodomy,” another time showing Dedmon “watching” a book by Carlton Mellick V.

Gabino Iglesias creates a horrifying world in which he throws his characters, then adds to it by throwing them into equally horrible circumstances. Gutmouth is one of those books that has been getting a lot of buzz lately (currently in contention for the Wonderland Book Award), and going into it I had heard a lot of good things, so I had high expectations. I’m happy to say it met and exceeded most all of those expectations. Any writer that can disgust and impress you within the course of a sentence is a writer to watch out for. I’m definitely marking down Gabino Iglesias as a writer whose next book I’ll be impatiently waiting for.

(Originally published at Horrornews.net, 6/18/2013 ...more

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Dec 01, 2012 J.W. Wargo rated it really liked it

Id Says:
Halitosis vomit!!! It's death row for the stomach mouthed, whore fucking murderer! MegaCorp doesn't appreciate it when their consumers are killed. They need everyone to keep buying useless shit all the time to keep this new economy of the future going.

Well this guy, this tummy toothed insubordinate, goes and woos himself a beautiful amputee hooker from his favorite cybersex club and then gets royally pissed off when she does a bit too much grinding on his belly, enjoying the mouth's tong ...more

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Jul 26, 2013 Michael Allen Rose rated it really liked it

I’m a sucker for dystopian stories, tales of a future where science, love, and humanity have failed us and we have created a horrible, twisted world. In books like Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World, civilization has lost its empathy in addition to its capacity for pleasure, outside of government mandated diversions. In the cyberpunk worlds of Dick, advances in technology have turned our cities into crime-ridden, soulless nightmares of hedonistic anarchy. These stories have a common thre I’m a sucker for dystopian stories, tales of a future where science, love, and humanity have failed us and we have created a horrible, twisted world. In books like Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World, civilization has lost its empathy in addition to its capacity for pleasure, outside of government mandated diversions. In the cyberpunk worlds of Dick, advances in technology have turned our cities into crime-ridden, soulless nightmares of hedonistic anarchy. These stories have a common thread in that the societal circumstances are so well drawn and detailed in their implications that they practically become a character in themselves. Gutmouth, the first novel by Gabino Iglesias, sees the author taking the idea of futurism and dystopia to a noir-soaked and terrifying conclusion. In doing so, the book becomes a disturbing window into a sexually twisted, morally corrupt universe with many dark stories to tell.

Iglesias chooses to focus on the story of the titular Gutmouth, a hard-living hunter, tasked with tracking down criminals for MegaCorp, the corporation that rules society from the top down. These mostly aren’t your typical crimes like rape and murder, but instead such infractions as “growing your own food” and “not paying enough tribute to the corporation.” Like the dystopian stories mentioned previously, the world itself becomes a character here, expertly detailed and fully fleshed out and dripping with fluids. The punishments for crimes in Gutmouth go far beyond anything rational. We see men and women stripped of their skin, whipped and beaten, mutilated and sexually destroyed. The twist is, not all of this is punishment. Some people undergo horrific procedures almost exactly like the penal system dishes and actually pay for it at a “Genital Mutilation and Erotic Maiming Center.” See, there’s this drug called Algolagnix, which turns pain into pleasure at the level of the nerves themselves. Add to that the salamander DNA treatment that allows people to grow back limbs, and it’s perfectly normal to have a fetish that involves your genitalia being sawed in half. Remember kids, always go to a professional.

Gutmouth has enough to deal with between his job and trying to avoid getting on the wrong side of the law. He has a toothy, disgusting, British-inflected mouth living in his gut. Things really go off the rails for him when the mouth in his stomach ends up having sex with his girlfriend, a three-breasted hooker with a heart of gold. The classic trope of the girlfriend cheating with the best friends takes a twisted turn when the “friend” is living inside the protagonist’s torso. Can he bring himself happy revenge through murder? And will that help him with his mouth problem? Iglesias deftly weaves these plot points and characters into a sick and funny noir for his readers. It’s evident that Iglesias is a horror aficionado in addition to a new bizarro author, as the language and concepts he utilizes to describe this crazy world of sex and gore is truly stomach churning. I mean that in the best possible way, this one is a must for fans of off-kilter horror, especially if they enjoy sci-fi twists and fetishistic sex craziness.

The book itself, like all new bizarro author series books, is fairly short, but Iglesias uses his space with the efficiency and deft handling of a veteran. The book is a completely mad ride, tells a simple story with great descriptive effects, and overall is the perfect way to spend an evening in the company of some truly disgusting and awesome characters. ...more

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Nov 26, 2013 Vincenzo Bilof rated it really liked it

A body horror story asks readers to become hyper-aware of their flesh; we must become attuned to a variety of sensations that will make us feel uncomfortable and disgusting. Combine this philosophy with bizarro sensibilities and a Dystopian setting, and we have the ingredients of a book that languishes in the dismembered, reorganized, and reimagined structure of a human body. Iglesias gives us the consumer-Dystopian nightmare with a population that is obsessed with consuming itself; the body is A body horror story asks readers to become hyper-aware of their flesh; we must become attuned to a variety of sensations that will make us feel uncomfortable and disgusting. Combine this philosophy with bizarro sensibilities and a Dystopian setting, and we have the ingredients of a book that languishes in the dismembered, reorganized, and reimagined structure of a human body. Iglesias gives us the consumer-Dystopian nightmare with a population that is obsessed with consuming itself; the body is nothing more than an object that can cause pleasure or pain, a means to an end.

The setting is hardly unreal to our characters, and the presence of a mouth inside the protagonist’s stomach is more inconvenient than horrifying. Here is where Iglesias manages to infuse an original idea into a variety of tropes; what is uncomfortable and appalling to us is nothing more than a way of life.

Gutmouth’s greatest strength is its relevance. Advertisements for breast augmentation and other surgical enhancements have become acceptable properties of our culture. “Look what my husband bought us/me for Christmas!” a woman might say to her guests while showing them a new pair of boobs. These transformations offer us new opportunities to experience pleasure and pain; we can become young again, perhaps even immortal, if we can purchase new parts as easily as we can order fetishist pornography.

Theme is irrelevant if the story itself is terrible, but I didn’t care about the characters, because they felt like helpless extensions of the world they lived in. Iglesias has a writing style that is very strong for a new writer; the synonym-adjective storms that made up entire paragraphs were both satirical and vicious. Individual paragraphs became heavy metal lyrics that describe an awful world that everyone has accepted with little complaint.

The “lack of control” and fetishist tendencies displayed by our inseparable characters provides humor and revulsion; this book is not for the faint. Dismemberment and disfigurement are just as normal as a cement driveway.

If body horror/bizarro/Dystopian/speculative fiction genres are remotely interesting to you, a combination of them are rolled into one beast that has four arms and six legs, until they’re removed and replaced with mouths or eyes. I’ve interpreted this as a bizarro satire, although this story may just be about a man who has a mouth inside of his gut.
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Apr 30, 2015 David rated it really liked it

Skipping into a nasty corporate-controlled future, I read Gutmouth by Gabino Iglesias. In a world in which Megacorp has overthrown all governments with bioweapons and now requires extreme consumerism of everyone (while encouraging every vice and body modification imaginable … for a stiff fee), David Dedmon is a sort of corporate enforcer, tracking down those who don’t pay into the corporate coffers. Dedmon falls in love with the amputee prostitute Marie Wilcox; shortly thereafter, a strange, cru ...more

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Aug 13, 2013 William Pauley III rated it really liked it

It’s Sunday night and I just cracked open my first beer of the evening. I need it – not because of the two baskets of dirty laundry staring at me from across the room, and no, not because I just finished a massive assignment for one of the four classes I am taking this semester (although both of those things are true and very real) – but because I feel I have just trudged through the soupiest swamp of a fleshy, living land I’ve ever experienced and somehow lived to tell the world about it. This ...more

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Dec 22, 2013 J.D. Estrada rated it it was amazing

It's not every day you can read something as smart, nasty, twisted, crazy, convoluted and overloading as Gutmouth. At times, it's almost as if each sentence insists on upping the ante of how much you can take and it's delightful from start to finish.

Think of the Aristocrats joke and pass it through a cyberpunk neo noir bizarro filter with a future you DON'T want to live in, but can't help but stare at. Gabino Iglesias wants you to laugh and become nauseated in one sentence, and he achieves this ...more

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