Book Review: A Town Called Suckhole, by David W. Barbee
A Town Called Suckhole by David W. Barbee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Love is a strong word. I've met David W. Barbee in real, non-Internet life. I've quaffed beers shoulder to shoulder with the man and his wonderful wife. I've marveled at the awesome vision of David reading from his masterpiece, A TOWN CALLED SUCKHOLE, and how people lined up afterwards to get their hands on this book.
I mention all this for transparency's sake, but I also want you to know that I love David W. Barbee. I love him in the bromantic way that two men can love each other without the risk or promise of orificial penetration. And I love this book he has written.
Love it.
You've read a million times in reviews where an author has "rendered a rich world filled with depth and layers" and all that sort of jazz, right? Well, David Barbee's world of SUCKHOLE is deep-fried in a batter of bizarro ingenuity and served up on a stick of post-apocalyptic Southern gothic weirdness that you won't be able to resist sucking down. (I swear, I'm not gay for David Barbee.)
Barbee fully imagines SUCKHOLE, which makes it so easy to get lost in that world of nuclear fallout mutated rednecks and swamp monsters. But then he does what so many authors of the fantastic struggle to do, and he peoples SUCKHOLE with actual characters who have depth, emotion, dimension, and story arcs that we want to follow through to the end and screech out a rebel yee-haw for.
Did I mention I loved this book? Because I do. And I love David Barbee's sweet, Southern, robot-bizarro-writin' ass. Still no homo here, just some good ol fashion man love.
