文章基本信息

标题：Everybody Scream!
作者：Nancy Jackson
期刊名称：Reviewer's Bookwatch
出版年度：2004
卷号：Nov 2004
出版社：Midwest Book Review

Everybody Scream!

Nancy Jackson

Everybody Scream!

Jeffrey Thomas

Raw Dog Screaming Press

ISBN 0974503193 $15.95 290 pages

Everybody Scream! is very much like a carnival. On the outside it's a whole world of eye candy, visually appealing colors, unique people, smells of greasy concession stands, and the thrill of the rides. Inside the carnival it is very different, secretive, disturbing, and rarely what it seems. Amid the bevy of faces, the smiles hide the demons, and they never work alone. All walks of life are welcome, but there are still the freaks among the freaks. Jeffrey Thomas gives us an unusual but eventful day of an annual fair set in the neurotic and infamous Punktown.

We're introduced to a surfeit of characters that manage to get themselves into one catastrophe after another. Where one addiction starts, another follows, like a worm that eats its way through their apple-flesh. No one is spared, but that's all part of the deranged fun. Behind the rides, among the roller coasters and flying machines, the inhabitants of Punktown troll the fair with all their angst, insecurities, and disgust for life tucked not so neatly away. It's about the next thrill, the next victim, and the next conquest while life itself becomes the blur you experience on the super fast rides.

The body count rises, people are missing, suspicion mounts, and still the park is alive and full with the melodic sounds of screams to mask the truth. From Del and Sophi, a couple with a multitude of problems in their relationship, to Pearl a performer with a parasitic twin, an entity she both takes care of and envies; they are just a few of the racy pawns in this wild game of a story.

Jeffrey Thomas has a surreal ability to get to the heart and deep in the headspace of every emotion his characters experience. Each sentence is a clear depiction of thought and inner voice to make me care about the person, even if I don't want to. For every vile act, there is still the human inside, and whether I agree with their actions or not, I'm along for their journey. Throughout the book I'm either cringing or smirking at its taut balance of lyrical disorder. Everybody Scream! will speak to everyone a little different. Full of edge, honesty, pain, and eroticism, it will satisfy any insatiable appetite looking for a damn fine read.