You might think Sex Dungeon For Sale! is as strange as Louisville penman, Patrick Wensink, could get. But you would be wrong. His newest waltz into the weird is Black Hole Blues, an irresistible dive into a world that revolves around country music and astrophysics.
The plot centers around country music sensation and insomniac, J. Claude Caruthers and his twin brother Lloyd. Claude has set himself upon the seemingly impossible task of writing a country song for every woman's name, and now he is stuck on the letter Z. Meanwhile, Lloyd, who doesn't speak to his brother and vice versa, has created a black hole in his lab in an attempt to upend his hero, Einstein. But an inability to sleep and a black hole-creating brother aren't Claude's only problems. He has an intense hatred for all things Kenny Rogers, an addiction to club sandwiches, a rival singer who is attempting to write a song for every man's name and a missing sister, Zygmut, whose name is the very key to finishing the song cycle. The reader never knows what is coming next, but within the first few pages you know you will be entertained throughout.
Everything in the book is a character, from sandwiches to protons and everything in between. Even the reader feels like a character immersed in this imaginary world, as if in the middle of a Kafka plot, struggling to make sense of a baffling situation and discover a rational explanation in a system that is absurd. Except that there is no rational explanation in Black Hole Blues and that's the fun of it. It is a Christopher Moore-like world, with all the zany entertainment and character quirks you could ask for. Yet, underneath it all, there is real substance and real issues being raised about loneliness, mortality and identity. Crises which every person must deal with in their own individual way.
Comments