In spite of this, I will most definitely NOT be giving a copy of this book to my mother-in-law. Here are the main reasons why:
The 12 Main Reasons I won’t be giving Marvellous Hairy to my mother-in-law:
- The novel contains “adult” language.
- The book uses colorful descriptive language, and I mean beyond describing a room as having been painted “belligerently pink.”
- I’m talking about sentences like the following:
He had long greasy black hair that clung to his head like an octopus humping his skull, and then fell onto his his shoulders in oily post-coital exhaustion.
- The book has sex in it.
- The book has sex and monkeys in it.
- My mother-in-law would be fairly scandalized by something that induced me to compose a sentence including both the words “sex” and “monkeys.”
- My mother-in-law has probably never spent any significant amount of time contemplating what it would be like to grow a tail.
- It is extremely unlikely that the phrase “Release the monkeys!” would make her giggle.
- She wouldn’t know what to make of a playful romp of a novel that is described as “part literary fun-ride, part fabulist satire, and part slapstick comedy.”
- Especially one that has been called “deeply, unsettlingly weird.”
- She certainly would not take well to the suggestion that she get in touch with her “inner monkey.”
- She would probably much prefer some lavender-scented hand soap.
Disclosure: Since I’m a big fan of The Skwib, Mark Rayner’s humor blog, I was all set to buy a copy of this book. (Though not for my mother-in-law.) It was already in my Amazon shopping cart and everything. But then Mark offered to send me a copy. (For FREE! Sucker!) How could I resist? (The monkeys made me do it.)
(Monkey images from wpclipart.)
collecting tokens 
I think I would probably prefer the lavendar soap myself; my daughter keeps trying to lure me into reading this type of humour, but after a couple of pages I tend to doze off. Mind you, a couple of pages of anything and I tend to doze off. I guess I need vitamins or something.
ooh- a disclosure! So that new FTC regulation on endorsements applies to you as well?
I hope it is signed. LOL. I feel greasy for some reason after I went thru the list. I feel… hairy… I also feel the urge to check it out. Definitely not for MILs. I was going to say tis a lucky gal who could see giving this to her MIL. But on second thought, how open-minded, non-conventional, and wild do you really want your MIL to be? Mine made me gift her and later made me read “Christmas Sweater”… (BUT that’s before I know who Glenn Beck is…) Perhaps as a revenge… Nah. That would result in a divorce I am pretty sure…
I’m sending my mother-in-law a calendar with photos-photos-photos of Munchkin in it. No oily post-coital octopus arms. Wow.
:-)
Alejna, I think I love you now just a little bit more than I did five minutes ago.
i think i dated a guy with hair like that, alas. :)
“The monkeys made me do it” shall live forevermore, shoulder to shoulder, beside “Pants.”
That’s was great. book sounds fantastic. will have to check it out.
Sounds like a good call. LOL.
That list sure makes sense as a why not for your mother in law but it sort of makes it sound like a yes for me LOL!
great post!
5.The book has sex and monkeys in it.
Damn, any book that has sex and monkeys in it is required reading for me. Off to Barnes and Noble now.
For the rest of my life, I will judge hair by the extent to which it falls to one’s shoulders in oily, post-coital exhaustion. Brilliant.
Monkeys also enjoy throwing their own excrement. She probably wouldn’t like that very much. Perhaps, if she worked in a nightmare office environment like I do, she’d totally appreciate that fact. :-)