Bucket of Face

I read this book towards the end of January, and I've read a lot of stuff since then, so I'm not 100% crystal clear on what I thought of this book when I read it, but it did leave a good impression. And considering this is part of the New Bizarro Author Series, I sort of feel obliged to have my little say on it and encourage more people to give it a read.

So, where to start...

Bucket of Face follows the story of an innocent bystander to a Mafia deal gone wrong, and the turn of events change his life forever. That aspect of the story seems pretty reasonable, right?

Well, I should probably mention the mobsters are a banana and an apple, and the merchandise they're dealing with are faces.

Ok, I'm just going to let that sink in.

Got it?

Right, well the protagonist, the 'everyman' donut shop employee has these two dead fruits, a briefcase of cash and a bucket of faces in his posession. He takes this as an opportunity to start a new life with his kiwi fruit girlfriend, go somewhere exotic where he never has to work in a donut shop again.

It's all set up for a cracking bizarro mafioso story. I'm sure you're still wondering about the apple and banana mobsters. And the kiwi fruit girlfriend? I will get to it soon. You see, Bucket of Face is not your average bizarro mafioso story. It's brilliant and clever, it's such a well thought out story. The hitman sent after the protagonist is a tomato obsessed with Michael Jackson.

It works like all good bizarro should. It sounds random and incoherent, weird elements tossed in to make things entertaining. It's not until you get sucked into the story, the seemingly weird-for-the-sake-of-weird story, when you get these plot points that take the story to the next level. Something so strange as fruit-people, you'll find actually makes perfect sense. The bucket of faces? Well, yeah, of course. It's got a charming central plot line that blows out of proportion, that is quirky and humorous, and then you know it was thought out in much greater detail than you first guessed. And it's not spelled out for you. It's clever. It's funny. It's entertaining and it's well written.

Get it, read it, love it.