Welcome to Hell. The toilets are backed up, a new Wal-Mart opened today, and the weather forecast calls for scattered sulfurous fiery storms. There are cockroaches everywhere, but no trees or animals (but they don’t deserve to be here, do they?). There are lots and lots and lots of people—Stalin and Hitler (no surprises there) and J. Edgar Hoover, singing his favorite Bee Gees tunes (not all that surprising, in hindsight), and Jerry Seinfeld.
Wait. What? Jerry Seinfeld? What’s he doing here? Since when is “mildly annoying” grounds for eternal damnation? And is that Ernest Hemingway over there? What’d he ever do? Why is Anne Boleyn here, and the poet Virgil, and Shakespeare, for crying out loud, why is Shakespeare down here?
And the crux of the novel: Why is Hatcher McCord here?
News anchorman Hatcher McCord was a celebrated journalist in the earthly plane, and here in the afterlife, he maintains his profession, broadcasting the news to all the denizens. His journalist’s instincts tell him that something big is about to happen. A whisper here, a rumor there, a biblical prophesy fulfilled (at least according to Judas Iscariot, who should know)—the signs are there: finally, after an eternity of torture and suffering, there may be a way out.
Not, of course, that Hatcher dares articulate this thought, not even to himself. Wouldn’t do to have Satan read his mind. Satan is all-powerful like that… or is he? Is there a chance in Hell that Hatcher can deceive the big guy and make a break for it?
Apparently I’ve been living in a cave, not to have encountered Robert Olen Butler before. He’s won a Pulitzer, so it’s safe to rank him among the literary giants—but I would have realized this even if “Winner of the Pulitzer Prize” weren’t emblazoned on the front cover. Butler’s mastery is apparent from the first page. He has a sharp prose style, intelligent and sophisticated, even when he meanders into stream-of-consciousness writing. (In my opinion, practically nobody can write good SOC, but Butler pulls it off.) He is satirical and absurd and darkly humorous, and he’s a smashing good storyteller.
Do avoid this, however, if you object to strong language, sex, violence, and irreverence (as I may have mentioned, the story is set in Hell).
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[…] that crumbles because the two partners cannot communicate with one another; as we discovered in Butler’s previous novel, not being able to say “I love you” is the very definition of hell. But just below the […]
[…] on BFGB – John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things and Robert Olen Butler’s Hell. Unlike the latter though, I would feel comfortable suggesting this to older teens. Most of all, […]