Fern King by Kevin Maloney, 2021
The magic trick:
A surprisingly enjoyable combination of borderline-offensive cynicism and saccharine-sweet sentimentality
Welcome to the wacky world of Kevin Maloney, where things are both borderline-offensively cynical and super-saccharine sweet. Either one of those qualities might be a problem on their own. But in combination, as they are here very nicely in “Fern King,” the result is actually pretty great.
And that’s quite a trick on Maloney’s part.
The selection:
Six months ago, Jane discovered my weakness: silence. I can take anything else, but when she doesn’t reply to my texts, I feel like my guts are pouring out of my stomach and birds show up and eat them, so that even if I managed to get them back inside, they’d be full of holes and I’d have to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of my life.
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