ManBug [Paperback]

George K. Ilsley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2006

The first novel by George K. Ilsley, whose first story collection, Random Acts of Hatred, was published to acclaim in 2004. Told in dream-like fragments, ManBug unfolds as a love story between Sebastian, an entomologist with Asperger’s Syndrome, and Tom, a spiritual bisexual who may or may not be recruiting Sebastian for a cult. They navigate their relationship as damaged goods, seeking meaning and value in themselves through the other; they also try to avoid the inevitable toxins around them, both real and imagined—like bugs avoiding insecticide—while asking the question, Just how much poison can any of us absorb? ManBug is a beguiling, tragicomic novel about beauty, horror, desire, and what lurks just beneath the skin.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Though this slim and confounding first novel from Canadian author Ilsley (after the collection Random Acts of Hatred) could be called a love story, it might more accurately be classified, considering its academic tone and scarcity of plot, as a case study, a detached observation of two men in love. The subjects are Sebastian, an unemployed entomologist with Asperger's Sydrome, and Tom, a bisexual into New Age spirituality. Composed of bite-size fragments, the book places the two men and their unlikely relationship under the microscope, largely eschewing conventions such as scenes, dialogue and plot, a daring but failed experiment with digressive meditations on the world of insects, the way to awareness and male sexuality. Ilsley delivers the odd, compelling tangent (e.g. Sebastian's fascination with bugs occasions a deliciously creepy description of lard worms), and strikes humorous notes poking fun at the New Age movement or discussing Sebastian's attraction to men's armpits ("hidden bonsai gardens"). But while clearly the product of a unique and active intellect, the book lacks direction and narrative pull.
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Review

You may never again think of lipstick or your nose or chocolate-covered raisins in quite the same way.
—Xtra! (Xtra! )

Sexy, funny, and daring—a bug's eye view of how we invent and elude one another, how we try to capture the ineffable with words and are left only with mantras. Reckless, unflinching, and just crazy enough, Ilsley fights his way toward a new taxonomy of the real, one of the few steps forward for gay fiction in many years. People will call this book postmodern, but it is something much finer and harder: modern, and assigned reading for everybody.
—Mark Merlis, author of An Arrow's Flight and Man About Town (Mark Merlis Mark Merlis )

This fractured love story is captivating ... [with] moments of transcendent beauty.
—Calgary Herald (Calgary Herald )

Ilsley's larky and radiant story provides more than the anatomy of a disorder. There's lots of winking humor ... along with emotional spelunking, fun bug facts, and even a little Sanskirt, all within the context of a love story that yields an unexpected universality.
—Out Magazine (Out Magazine )

What fascinated me about ManBug was the way in which Ilsley tells the story.
—Echo Magazine (Echo Magazine )

A work of sophisticated intelligence, grappling with the world's big, refractory mysteries.... an elegantly accomplished love story.... a book that works impressively on many lvels and delivers keen intellectual and aesthetic pleasures.... ManBug serves notice its author is going to be around for the long haul. Ilsley has important things to tell us all.
—Tom Sandborn, The Globe and Mail (Tom Sandborn The Globe and Mail )

Wry and often funny ... George Ilsley makes us fit together the puzzle pieces of Sebastian's romance with Tom.
—GLBTRT Newsletter, American Library Association (ALA GLBT NEWSLETTER )

ManBug saved me. I read it in one sitting, one giant gulp of pure bliss. Here is a book composed of fragments and fancies, a book that utterly disdains anything resembling a traditional plot, a book full of voice and vigor, a funny book, a sexy book, a book so well constructed, so carefully controlled that it would be easy to miss how deadly serious are its idea and themes. When I first read Manbug, I knew I'd finally found the book to kill my inner conservative.
—Matt Cheney, Litblog Co-op (Matt Cheney Lit-Blog Co-op )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press (June 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1551522039
• ISBN-13: 978-1551522036
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,579,717 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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