Spungunion - Painful and Emotional Horror
John Boden was kind enough to get a signed copy of Spungunion into my eager hands. This man knows how to write pain and emotions with a depth that cannot be compared to any other writer.
This story is about Deke Larch, a man who lost his wife to a tragic and senseless murder. He is a trucker whose life has been spent on the road, in and out of diners, and only having experienced one true love: Lucille, the woman he lost. His goal becomes to find Lucille’s killer and use any means possible to get his revenge. This includes meetings with supernatural beings and seers who provide him with information about Lucille’s death, but are unable to give him the means to process it.
This story is really about humanity’s inability to see the big picture because of our inherent tendencies towards dwelling in our own pain. By the end of the book, I felt like I was personally the target. However, I know anyone who reads this will feel the same way. Like a warning from the ghost of Christmas future, I took away from this short book a message to keep my emotions in check no matter what tragedies befall me in this life, lest I hurt the innocent in the pursuit of ill-gotten vengeance.
This book is written so well. John Boden has proven to me yet again that less is more. Every sentence he writes is carefully chosen and saturated with meaning. Every word goes deeper than it should. There were a few lines I want to quote that particularly struck me:
“The reality is this: Life is just a balloon floating dangerously in a roomful of lit cigarettes. At any moment, second, day or week, Pop! And then everything as you know it is different or gone. Sometimes both.”
“And when the plate of country fried steak and potatoes was set before him, his eyes followed the slender hand that delivered it up to the shoulder that met the neck that held the head which had the sweetest smile he’d ever seen. Beneath the palest grey eyes. She killed him in that moment, stabbed his heart with a spike of love-at-first-sight that one only sees in shitty movies. His heart hurt so bad, he almost looked to make sure he wasn’t bleeding into his food.”
“His stomach was a knotted jumble of quiver and nerves, a globe of slippery eels. He had a sense of unease that felt like the leaded apron draped over an X-ray patient.”
I loved this book. I love John Boden’s writing. It is certainly painful and emotional, but it feels so good to read it. It carries a kind of catharsis. Like if John Boden can get these feelings onto pages for the rest of us, we can read them so we might not hurt as hard later, when our time comes. And if we still hurt exceptionally hard, we can at least find some comfort in knowing we’re not alone in those feelings.
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