Pygmy, a review
When I find an author I like, I read as many of his or her books as I can. I am sure everyone does the same thing. My last trip to the library netted me books that were written by authors I know and love.
I have yet to be displeased by anything written by Chuck Palahniuk, though my current read came close. When I first started reading it, anyway. Pygmy is a good book, don’t think for a minute that I didn’t enjoy it, I just had to get past, what I thought was, a bit of a problem.
The chapters are written as mission debriefings, which makes them interesting to read. The issue I had (again, at first, I warmed to it) was the actual writing. These debriefings were written by someone to whom English is a second language, the titular character Pygmy.
The grammar was incorrect, and it was basically Engrish. It wasn’t really funny Engrish (a la engrish.com), though. At first it was a bit of a nightmare to make sense of everything. The character was basically detached from the whole thing. Being a briefing, though, I guess that it could be expected.
After I got a hang of the odd language, I really enjoyed these debriefings. Pygmy, as he is called by everyone, is one of a number of child operatives from a totalitarian government. They were sent to America to live with small-town host families, and put into action a covert operation called Operation Havoc.
Each of the kids is a specially trained operative that knows how to kill. With their skills, they hope to infiltrate American families, and ingratiate (to a point) themselves into them. By collecting money, which they steal from church collection plates, their goal is to spread a neurotoxin throughout America via a science fair project. Death of many, or all, Americans is the actual goal of Operation Havoc.
Interspersed with the mission briefing chapters are flashback chapters, which are also given in the briefing format. These chapters usually pertain to the training of the kids, but as the novel goes on, they also show a bit of what Pygmy has lost, due to his training: his family.
The story itself is, at heart, a satire of strict totalitarian governments, and the brainwashing of their residents that sometimes happens. It is also a satire of American culture, as well. The American characters, aside from Pygmy’s adopted sister, are American stereotypes. The father is an overweight slob, the mother is highly sexual (and masturbation obsessed), and so on down the line.
When I finished reading the novel, I was ultimately satisfied with it. It went from something that seemed like a chore to read, to another of Palahniuk’s great works. I don’t have a hard time recommending it, unless the way it is written isn’t something you would enjoy.
Next week, I should have a review of an interesting, eerie novel called The Town That Forgot How to Breathe, by Kenneth J. Harvey. I say “should”, because there is a bit of a family reunion going on this weekend. Normally that would interrupt next week’s flow, but my older brother is flying up from Florida to be here. So I may not get a lot of reading done while he is here. We’ll see. Until then, later!
