Swallowing a donkey's eye

You could call Tremblay’s novel the Ani­mal Farm or Nine­teen Eighty-Four for a new gen­er­a­tion, but that would be easy, and not quite right. Like our other two entries, there’s a great deal of sur­face enjoy­ment here, just enjoy­ing the ride, but Trem­blay con­tin­u­ally digs to find hid­den deposits of emo­tion beneath the crazy, usu­ally in ref­er­ence to the name­less narrator’s child­hood. There’s a lot of Orwell scat­tered about, yes, but Aldous Hux­ley and Dou­glas Adams are def­i­nitely present in spirit, result­ing in a delight­fully neu­rotic search for self and human­ity in a uni­verse that couldn’t give a rat’s ass whether you live or die.

Read the full review here.