I’ll start, so as a teen I stumbled across a book called," Someone comes to town, someone leaves town." The synopsis caught me as it’s about a man with a mountain as a fathera washing machine as a mother and one brother that is dead and trying to harm him. I’ll admit some of the technical terms were too much for my developing mind but it has stuck with me all these years.
What is the wackiest / craziest book you’ve read and did you enjoy the ride?
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Story of the eye
The Story of O
The Library at Mount Char was insane
I recently read “The House Across the Lake” by Riley Sager. I’m not sure why I picked it, except that it felt like it might fit the “Woman in the Window” vibe.
Book was totally normal and built decent enough suspense around the disappearance of the model wife in the house across the lake. Obviously the tech husband is suspected because violence had been witnessed by the recent widow. She had turned to drink after her husband was found to have drowned while fishing on that lake.
Spoiler: the lake consumed the soul of the drown husband after the drunk widow figured out he was a serial killer and killed him making it look like a fishing accident. The serial killer husband’s soul then entered the body of the model wife as she swam across the lake one day and nearly drowned. Technically she did drown which allowed for the soul swap. Drunk widow has to redrown the model wife in order to swap the souls back.
House of Leaves
“Trout Fishing in America” is genuinely strange. But fun, and not 800 pages long (looking at you, Pynchon.)
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki.
There is a demon, a pact to trade a soul, an abused trans girl in search of safety, an alien family (ALIEN alien, not foreigner!), an AI that presents a nuanced ethical issue, a witchy housekeeper/ cook, and a violin maker who seems cursed. Is it too much?? Yes, it is too much. And yet. I never thought I would be saying this, but it somehow all works. Is it weird? Yes. Oh, yes! AND it’s also nice and readable. I enjoyed it!
The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brian is pretty far out.
Tender is the Flesh
The Breast.
I know you said one book, but to me, Steven King’s Dark Tower series is the craziest shit ever. He literally incorporates a lot of his other major works into the odyssey, including the accident that almost killed him in real life. It’s so wild, and I love every second of it.
“Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the world”, for now
I read a novel told entirely from the perspective of a crow.
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks The Bad Place by Dean Koontz
Chouette by Claire Oshetsky. I picked this one up in the store because the cover drew me in. I read the back of it, shook my head, read it again, shook my head again, and opened up. Here’s how it starts
I dream I’m making tender love with an owl. The next morning I see talon marks across my chest that trace the path of my owl-lover’s embrace. Two weeks later I learn that I’m pregnant.
You may wonder: How could such a thing come to pass between woman and owl?
I, too, am astounded, because my owl-lover was a woman.
And, oh yes, it gets so much weirder from there.