Every morning
the sun rises, waking Awful, Ohio, overlooking all of its residents, guiding
them towards another productive and profitable working day. The economy is
strong and the money is abundant, all of which are offered to whomever produces
and profits the most product. The masses rejoice daily over the informed
opportunity, with the exception of Troy Slushy.
Troy Slushy wakes every morning to the intrusion of the sun abruptly charging
into his home, removing him from his enchanting dreams. The sun exposes his
collection of worthless possessions, his depressed wife seeking salvation, his
withering home struggling for support, and the life-decimating job that is
undesirably forced upon him daily. This is Troy Slushy's existence in Awful,
Ohio, and because of this exposure to this monotonous misery, Troy's enemy is
the sun.
Heavily sedated by a dream-enriched epiphany, Troy removes his concerns for the
demands and priorities of Awful, Ohio, replacing them with the objective of
permanently removing the sun from his existence. He gathers his wife and begins
a quest to save them both from their sun-exposed lives of suffering in Awful,
Ohio, concocting plans and blueprints of various sun-destroying methods.
Unfortunately for Troy, this proves to be easier said than done. But luckily,
Troy discovers that perseverance is much more eminent in accomplishing a goal
than feasibility, as he is able to assemble a massive scheme to achieve perpetual
darkness, but not without affecting Awful, Ohio and all of its production,
profits, and population.
REVIEW:
Troy Slushy
wakes one day within a midlife crisis. He is miserable with how his life has turned
out, and the sun shines every day to expose his failures. Troy’s ultimate
correction for his over indulged life is to destroy the one thing that exposes
his misery – the sun.
Troy lives in a
world of overabundance. The economy is booming, unemployment is low, and
everyone is spending money. We are shown the inside world of a factory where
the owner is obsessed with efficiency. Your punishment for not working efficiently
is humiliation, and your reward is the euphoria of gaining money to buy more
stuff that you don’t need.
Jeff Neal makes
it blatantly obvious that the story is based on materialism. Troy Slushy’s
biggest objective is to rid himself of it one way or another, by destroying the
sun that exposes it all. At first his plans are completely ludicrous and
unattainable, but as the story moves on, he fashions a plan that could work, if
the odds weren’t completely stacked against him. Another character’s biggest
objective is to take out the materialism at its source, the efficient factory
owner that pays out the cash in the form of weekly paychecks. The author’s
depiction of store owners selling their products out of trash cans only hammers
the basis of his story:
The judge was
in bewilderment at what he was hearing. How could a human being not understand
currency in exchange for product? The judge kept listening to Samuel Amiable’s
ignorance. The boy had no parents, no home, or any documents verifying his identity.
Samuel Amiable had become the mold of a bum in the judge’s mind; an aimless
vagabond stealing from the hard working store owners who were innocently
selling items of fabricated value from their trashcans. The judge sat silently,
building an image in his mind of Samuel Amiable haphazardly and deceitfully
deconstructing all of Awful, Ohio’s honesty and integrity and values.
The strange
descriptions of the characters left them looking cartoonish in my mind. Some
are described as having flipper hands that are permanently wrapped around
pistols, facial features that are pieced together like a drunken puzzle, and
ponytails and ears that wiggle on their own, and attack other people.
I picked this
book because the story seemed so outlandish that it had to fall into the
‘Madness’ category that I love, and I was right. I was reminded of something my
editor told me once after only reading a few pages. Stephen King was quoted to
saying: “The road to hell is paved in adverbs.” Luckily for Jeff Neal, the road
is not paved with adjectives too.
Although I did
find it somewhat repetitive, I didn’t mind the excessive descriptions. The
author’s outrageous characters and unlikely story line create a cartoon quality
to the story. The book was overstuffed with a lyrical web of depictions, and it
left the story wanting to be a poem in my eyes. With a Dr. Seuss-like quality
to the writing, and a Willie Wonka madness to the story, we get an idea of what
living in Awful, Ohio is really like. This book takes you off a beaten path,
and it may not be for everyone, but if you are looking for bizarre and
different, then look no further.
