Book Review: Scarecrow Has a Gun by Michael Paul Koslowsky

That was… weird. Really weird. And also really amazing and somewhat aggravating and full of some seriously odious characters.

The concept here is marvelous and there are a lot of absolutely brilliant insights and thought-provoking tidbits – including the explanation of the title. Memory and reality as concepts lend themselves to a stream-of-consciousness-ish style, and while it takes some getting used to as far as reading, it does produce some fantastic writing. There are intriguing trains of thought and a lot of meandering realizations that come out in dialogue and monologue, and I really enjoyed those.

The characters were a challenge for me, though… They were seriously unlikable on the whole and made it very difficult to empathize on nearly all fronts. They also felt oddly flat, given the topic. I could never quite tell if it was intentional and that made for an odd dissociation.

The book does drag a bit and I did skim some in the middle – it felt like it needed a strong-handed editor to tighten things up at several points – but I was curious enough throughout to want to see how it would all end. I found the ending an odd mix of satisfying and disappointing. It happened very quickly and a bit too tidily, but it (mostly) worked.