Booklist Review of the Day:
BodyWorld.
Apr. 2010. 384p. illus. Pantheon, hardcover, $27.95 (9780307378422). 741.5.
REVIEW.
First published March 15, 2010 (Booklist).
Shaw changes genre and tone from the not unplayful but serious realism of The Mother’s Mouth (2006) and Bottomless Belly Button (2008), folding sf and high-school romance into a grunge-noir continuum sprung from the ancient trope of the stranger coming to town. The burg in question is rigorously plotted (in a perfect square) Boney Borough, and the newcomer is Professor [sic] Paulie Panther, an experiential drug researcher (i.e., for all practical purposes, a professional addict). He comes to inspect a mysterious two-lobed plant growing on the local high-school campus and, as things unfold, to get involved (well, almost) with curvaceous teacher Jem Jewel and later with new grad Pearl Peach, whose athletic swain, Billy-Bob Borg, is already dismayed at her dumping him. If all those alliterative names don’t immediately give it away, the first few pages clarify that this is a black comedy on the lines of 1980s cult film Repo Man, which it most directly resembles in its space-alien conspiracy (the plant’s a Trojan horse) that never physically breaches the plot’s surface (the aliens never appear). Deploying color seemingly pasted-in à la hip 1950s advertising and UPA cartoons (especially impressive in scenes distorted by the plant’s mind-and-body-melding effects) to his trademark art-brut-meets-computer-animation drawing style (his protagonist’s name is probably a tip of the hat to stylistic forebear Gary Panter), Shaw shows himself as adept at dire comedy as he is with midlife and family crises.
— Ray Olson ...
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