The Inflatable Volunteer Book

This is like nothing you have ever read before--except, perhaps, the last Steve Aylett novel. Slaughtermatic did cyberpunk in a weird, parodic version; this short, poetic novel brings to mind the work of the early novels of William Burroughs in its innovative linguistic style and its violent form and content. With the occasional refrain of "O my brothers" Aylett also acknowledges a debt to the future-speak of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. Aylett's imagination offers a bleak, nightmare world in a narrative which operates in a dream-logic of random shifts, puzzling conjunctions, sudden islands of clarity, and absurdist word-play. The narrator pours out his story in a sequence of interlinking confessions. He seemingly has an ability to conjure demons through mirrors and this gets him a job in the campaign for Mayor. The manifesto for the job includes such helpful pledges as: "Wooden skulls don't work for long", "A severed head will become bleak when dropped underwater," and "Bones from polar bears make grand mallets". Such conjuring talents produce the minor problem of invoking the devil himself, John Satan. Lying somewhere between science fiction and avant-garde prose poetry, this is an intriguing read, sometimes funny, sometimes utterly opaque, but always provoking if you relax and enjoy some the surprising juxtapositions and shifts of register Aylett has become increasingly adept at using. --Roger LuckhurstRead More