The novel follows the aftermath of Jetty's vendetta against John, and the ensuing implosion of the worst family ever. I think it does, anyway.is a page turner, but it's not always easy to follow. For one thing, there are the names — besides Jetty, John and Janet, there's Jotty, Julie, JanineJoshuatine, JohnJoe, JesseJudges and JimmyJesus. There's also the mysterious narrator, who's forever going off on odd tangents about the family and the town.
It's a successful technique. The reader, at times, feels dizzy, almost nauseated by the book's freewheeling narrative, and that feeling is intensified when Burns writes about the violence that John and his associates mete out to just about everybody. The targets are frequently women, but also men who throw an uncareful glance at one of John's"girls":"He had these romances, Doe, and after he'd had them, the women he had them with, they became his ladies ...
It seems as if Burns is deliberately throwing the reader off track in an attempt to illustrate the confusion and unreality that are the product of lives spent in the midst of unrelenting violence. John is the epitome of toxic masculinity, and Burns uses him to explore how men have historically regarded women: both as chattel and as objects of hate and derision. In one horrifying scene, John casually strangles his daughter while simultaneously insisting to his son that"I've never been violent. Never hit any of you."
These chilling moments are leavened, very slightly, with the narrator's odd and sometimes acidly humorous observations about gender."Such things as women exist," the narrator says at one point."I know you're thinking, oh, if only we could get our erections and total sexual, emotional, spiritual and intellectual satisfactions from guns, bullets, postage stamps and suchlike controllable essences.
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