2024-04-24
A man without direction seeks the secret of an exclusive bookstore in Lain and Woodward’s debut novel.
Art Gilthrop is a 29-year-old misanthrope. He’s mean to his wife, rude to his co-workers, and prefers to spend his lunch break drinking alone in dingy bars. One day, he happens upon a business that he’s never seen before (a rarity in his small Indiana town): Mystery Mike’s Bookstore. Rather, he happens upon signs for the business; when he tries to visit the physical store, the listed address appears not to exist. Still, he begins to see references to the shop everywhere, although he isn’t sure if they’re the result of a targeted ad campaign or simply his own habitual inebriation. “World’s largest bookstore of esoteric information and occult knowledge,” reads a bar receipt he finds in his pocket. “There’s something for everybody…even you, Mr. Gilthrop.” He eventually tracks down Lenny Gerbowitz, a New Hampshire transplant to Indiana and all-around sad sack who once bought an amazing dog-training book at the bookstore, but he’s since been cut off from the place. Hoping readmittance into the bookstore will allow Lenny to find a book to save the life of his ill bulldog, Schubert, the two men begin a quest to figure out just how to enter the place. It’s a journey that will introduce them to a personal wellness cult, a married pair of ventriloquists, and a secret with far-ranging consequences for the entire human race. Lain and Woodward’s prose is filled with imaginative descriptions, such as this passage about a strange fruit that Art receives from the cult leader: “Its skin was almost translucent; he could see through the cloudy pulp straight to the core where a small golden seed lay….It was radiant, and seemed to emanate from somewhere very very far away.” The humor is mostly sophomoric—with jokes about bad breath, sex between cousins, and masturbating dogs, among other topics—and the plot is less Thomas Pynchon–esque enigma than screwball randomness. Those willing to go along for such a ride, however, are likely to have fun.
A zany, if somewhat disjointed, postmodern mystery novel.
