It’s no “In Watermelon Sugar”, that’s for sure. Lots more pedo vibes. However, an autistic coded main character and some good humor throughout still made it fairly enjoyable. Super quick read and overall a unique story that could make a pretty cool graphic novel. I’d have enjoyed it way more without the gratuitous seckz scenes and underage girls. ( )

This book was a delight, quick and completely bizarre, I truly never once gained my footing when reading this book. A brief passage from early on in the story may illustrate what kind of incongruous, off beat, and often hilarious tone this novel has:

“The voyage from San Francisco to Hawaii had been the most terrifying experience Greer and Cameron had ever gone through, even more terrible than the time they shot a deputy sheriff in Idaho ten times and he wouldn’t die and Greer finally had to say to the deputy sheriff, “Please die because we don’t want to shoot you again.” And the deputy sheriff had said, “OK, I’ll die, but don’t shoot me again.”
“We won’t shoot you again,” Cameron had said.
“OK, I’m dead,” and he was.


Certainly may not be everyone’s taste or humor, but I would definitely recommend giving it a try if you manage to come across it. It entertained me thorough in the few hours it took to complete.



( )

The attitude is everything in this story, from the author to the characters, to the behavior of the monster. A monster that can change the physical world around it but mostly messes with minds, which is actually quite frightening, though with a couple of exceptions seem satisfied with malicious mischief. Beyond the surface and the ideas, however, there isn't much done with the scant substance that is offered. ( )

This is another book I inherited from my late Uncle’s collection. It’s okay. It’s not as dynamic and entertaining as Willard and His Bowling Trophies or as utterly fantastical as In Watermelon Sugar. It is of the Western genre only in that there are two gunfighters gathered to confront the eponymous Hawkline Monster. The rest is pure Brautigan.
The story is set primarily amongst desert hills upon which rests a gothic mansion surrounded and covered in frost due to the mysterious creature in the ice caves below the basement laboratory with a large pile of black coal next to it – a very surreal image. Rooms are always ice-cold whilst the windows look out onto the sun-seared fields of tall yellow grass and summer sun of Eastern Oregon. Reminds me of those summer days in my childhood when the swamp cooler was especially effective in our cement-block house, and I would be shivering cold while looking out onto a sunblasted yard during what had to be a 100-degree summer day. Anyway, there is a plot so-to-speak.
Plots in Brautigan’s stories seem to be a series of scenes and character interactions that are loosely related, typically strung together on a single premise. In Willard, it was the Logan Brothers’ vengeful quest to recover their stolen trophies. In Watermelon Sugar, the plot is held together via the conflict between the narrator, the rebellious inBOIL, and Margaret the narrator’s ex, and thus between inBOIL’s rebels and the commune of iDEATH between which the climax happens. Here, they are joined together in the first half of the book by the fact that the pair of gunmen guided by Magic Child (one of the Miss Hawklines transformed into a Native American by the monster) are traveling to Hawkline Manor. The second half which occurs within the Victorian manor is an extended setup for the anti-climactic face-off with the monster.
Another significant thing I noticed with this story is that all the primary characters (the house counts as a character in this case I’m pretty sure) come in pairs. The Hawkline women are twins, the gunfighters are a pair of friends distinguished by one having an intense desire to count everything, and the Hawkline Monster and its incompetent shadow, yet another pair, reflect the frosted mansion and its adjacent coal pile (two pairs). The pair of protagonists are described as having the same basic outfit and are even introduced as ‘they’ in the first few lines of the first chapter. What’s the significance? I do not know but I don’t think it was accidental.
I have to say, I did find this one interesting, and took a little while to digest it. However, so far, in my trip through Richard Brautigan’s oeuvre, this is the weakest as it’s the plainest if that makes any sense. I recommend this one as either an entry point into his work or to someone who is already a fan. It lacks a lot of the color and plain weird settings of the previous pair of his books that I have finished: Willard and his Bowling Trophies and In Watermelon Sugar. ( )

In early 1900s Wild West, two partners who specialize in assassinations are approached by a Native American woman named Magic Child with a job proposition. A certain Miss Hawkline, who lives in the middle of the Oregon plains, would like to hire the two men to kill the monster living under her mansion.

I picked this one up off a colleague’s book display: Weird West. And hoo boy, it was both a western (“A Gothic Western” as it’s tag line indicates) and very weird. I loved it. ( )