Every time we stay in the ice cream shop, the fucking face explodes

Títutulu Original: Every Time We Meet at the Dairy Queen, Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes

Translation: Hugo Camacho

Year of publication: 2016

Valoración: Between recommended (especially for strange) and is fine

This is the premise of Every time we stay in the ice cream shop, the fucking face explodesshort novel by Carlton Mellick III (prolific writer whose work is among the most prominent of the bizarre movement). Novel that works perfectly as an easy hobby to read, extravagant, fun already bloody times, and that even support an allegorical reading about the intensity of the first love of adolescence. Novel that houses magnificent ideas, a couple of frankly powerful scenes and a very little end.

However, I would put a paste. And is that Every time… Overexplains his ideas, a totally unnecessary thing (at least in my opinion) in a work assigned to Bizarro. That is, does it need to know, for example, that webbies are due to the evolutionary changes of its lineage? Do we need to know the origin of the skin grafts that your family uses? All this overexplication, although competent and even creative in its execution, remains absurd and grotesque potential to the whole.

Likewise, this overexplication imposes an internal logic that Melick III is not able to maintain consistent. And I insist, a work attached to Bizarro does not have to have a consistent internal logic. But in this case, as the author tries to justify certain things, many others begin to squeak. And it is not plausible that the peculiarity of the cobweb should be kept secret, but that her father still allows her to go to the Institute or the ice cream shop with her boyfriend, and even less when her face has already exploded in front of witnesses. Nor does it convince me that Ethan cannot see his parents again when he flees with Telara and his family, for fear that the police will follow the track, but still attend both him and his partner to a new school (as if a false name could hide his faces picked up).

Be that as it may, Every time… It is an original and fun novel, which I recommend both Bizarro lovers and, why not, open eclectic readers to new experiences. That he does not just hug all his absurd and grotesque potential does not mean that it is a work for delusional, extremely entertaining and that enjoys a certain subtext. What else can be asked?