Be forewarned! This is no “conventional” novel—it’s a noirwreck at the intersection of East End Avenue, Dashell Hammett, Thomas Pynchon, Max Ernst’s Une Semaine de Bonté, and Firesign Theater’s Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers—a necrophilological fable that, like most nightmares, is by turns horrifying, hilarious, inexplicable, and mesmerizing. Gavronsky’s cracked one-liners, delivered in submarine-gun staccato, lead from clue to conundrum—who’s the rich bi-handless dame? Is Lascaux really for sale? Is that a giant car-lifting magnet? Is Uzbekistan for sale? Will the Blond Bullets be rescued? And what is a guillotine doing in Columbus Circle? From one hanging cliff to the next, this novel is sexy, surreal, and very, very, weird.

    Michael Golston

    Columbia University