Serpent Girl: A Novel [Hardcover]

Matthew Carnahan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 2005

“The guys who were supposed to be my crew, my pals, my posse, had left me for dead, after I had gone above and beyond for them, after I had sussed out the perfect score, after I had done my homework, after I had overcome their stupidity, after I had sacrificed my near-virginity by having sex with the limbless lady.”

When he wakes up naked by the side of the highway in the middle of the desert, twenty-two-year-old Bailey Quinn is only sure of a few things: He’s in a world of testicle pain. He’s tripping out of his head on peyote. And someone seems to have made a half-assed attempt at slashing his throat. He can’t for the life of him remember what happened. And then it all comes back: His boys screwed him over.

Bailey, college dropout and carny, was working props and rigging for a touring tent circus and freak show. The Freaks were the nastiest, most tweaked-out group of misfits Bailey had ever come across. But the Freaks were doing some shady bookkeeping in addition to a boatload of veterinary Quaalude and crystal meth. So to get the inside dope on the circus payroll, Bailey took up with Eelie, the Serpent Girl, and began an unexpectedly erotic and dangerous odyssey.


As Bailey hits the road to track down his “friends” and get his loot back, a black-edged, hilarious caper unfolds. From Tank Deerflower, the drug-dealing rodeo rider, and Arnold, the fire-eater with a temper as black as his charred throat, to Sissy, the beautiful ex-junkie/whore who steals Bailey’s heart, strange characters and stranger events converge in this fast, gritty, and unforgettable novel. Crafted with artistry and deftness, Serpent Girl is a voyage into the darkest depths of carny life–and, remarkably, a tender love story to boot.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Filmmaker and playwright Carnahan's gleefully deranged tale of drugs, deception and bad decisions feels like something Hunter S. Thompson might have written if he'd taken a course in narrative economy. Bailey Quinn, a 22-year-old college dropout, wakes up in the Columbia River Basin high on peyote and sans pants. A scabbed slash across his neck reminds him that his buddies threw him over after they robbed the payroll at Bailey's place of employment, Circus Maximus, a poor man's Ringling Brothers ruthlessly run by its freak show performers. Bailey sets out to find his duplicitous crew and recover his money so that he can once and for all give up "copping free" - a way of life that revolved around robbing insured businesses. What stands in his way are the circuses' Freaks ("the nastiest, most tweaked-out group... I had ever come across"), led by the titular flipper-armed Serpent Girl, whom Bailey had seduced in order to ferret out information for the heist. Several tender scenes between Bailey and the Serpent Girl prove first-timer Carnahan's talent for odd yet poignant juxtapositions, and throughout the novel, he renders both his characters and the geography of the American West in vibrant high style (a heavily tattooed gangster looks as if he'd "rolled in a pile of wet comic books"). Will lovable screwup Bailey finally turn a corner with the help of ex-smackhead and prostitute Sissy? The bang-up ending is pretty happy, and cinematic enough for the silver screen.
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Review

Advance praise for Serpent Girl

“Carnahan can write. He mixes real freaks with freaky West Coast dopers, gets them talking, threatening each other–and it works. I didn’t notice any wasted words.”
–Elmore Leonard

“Smart, sexy, and laugh-out-loud funny. It’s the coolest book I’ve read in years, and in my Top Five of All Time.”
–Mike Myers

“It starts with the best opening line in modern American literature and just gets better–and by ‘better’ I mean more depraved and more fun–from there. If you’ve ever wondered what the hell–and by ‘hell’ I mean hell–goes on with a traveling circus when the tents fold and the sawdust is swept up, my babies, this is the show for you.”
–John Ridley, author of The Drift and Those Who Walk in Darkness


“Only Matthew Carnahan’s own prose can do him justice–he’s ‘as clear as a bell in a Buddhist temple,’ he’s a ‘vigilant, righteous, in-your-face’ writer, his lines are as ‘ripe and perfectly juicy as Xana’s bruised-mango breasts.’ Oh, never mind–just read the first sentence and hold on to your balls (as if they were ‘dangerous little animals that might escape’) and you’re off!”
–Richard Dooling, author of Brain Storm and White Man’s Grave

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Villard (March 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400062705
• ISBN-13: 978-1400062706
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,355,823 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars It's good to have powerful friends, October 25, 2005

By 

Stella - See all my reviews

This review is from: Serpent Girl: A Novel (Hardcover)

I should have listened to the guy at the book store who said I should not spend the twenty bucks on this book. I figured the salesman must be an embittered unpublished author because after all, on the back of the book there are props from the likes of Elmore Leonard, it's called "funny" by the very funny Mike Myers and John Ridley claims it's got the "best opening line in modern American literature and just gets better". The best thing about the book is that it's short and simple so at least MC doesn't seem to take himself as seriously as his supporters do. By the time I was done I couldn't help but wonder if the fact that Helen Hunt is this guys girlfriend not only helped him to get the blurbs but a publishing deal in the first place. It's not the worst book I've ever read, just very half baked. Aside from a thin story, the characters are nothing but faded caricatures. Not only does the writing show MC is far from a literary genius but his return to his Hollywood roots provides a predictably flat ending. It just occured to me that MC reminds me of a grungier male version of Gigi Grazer in that they both writes books with potential but no ambition.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent Pulp Fiction, October 12, 2005

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Serpent Girl: A Novel (Hardcover)

First of all, be aware that this is not a novel, it is a novella that has been padded out to 200 pages via generous line spacing, broad margins, and a small book size. This is not a criticism in any way, just a forewarning that I read this book cover to cover in well under two hours. To Carnahan's credit, he doesn't waste a lot of words and manages to stuff a fair amount of vivid imagery and wacky action in a small package. When a book comes blurbed by Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiassan, and John Ridley, you pretty much know you're going to get an outsize crime caper populated with bizarro characters, snappy dialogue, and some kind of anti-hero -- and that's just what Carnahan delivers

Protagonist Bailey is a 22-year-old slacker on break from college and in the midst of a run of larceny. From the moment we meet him, lying in the desert, holding his genitals, whacked out on peyote, and bleeding from his neck, we are propelled into an ultra-lurid cartoon underworld. The story flashes back and forth between Bailey's actions after getting off the desert floor, and giving the backstory as to how he got there. Basically, the story revolves around a payroll heist Bailey planned at the skanky circus he was working at. This was going to be the long con that would pay his college tuition and allow him to return to the normal world. It's a pretty standard neo-noir genre tale, with Bailey on the run from some nasty circus freaks (owners of the circus, they want their money back plus a pound of flesh), while also trying to track down his double-crossing partners in crime.

This quest leads him to LA, where he meets an awfully nice hippie-chick/recovering addict named Sissy. She ends up tagging along with him to a Tarantinoesque climax at a SoCal biker meth lab where the freaks also manage to catch up with him. There's a rather predictable bloodbath of an ending, and it all ends rather neatly. The one major complaint I have with the story is that Sissy's presence at the end proves vital, but makes no sense based on her character. Carnahan establishes her as being tough, common-sense, and heavy into recovery, and yet after a single night with Bailey, she's going to tag along to a meet with some heavy biker meth dealers out in the middle of nowhere? A meeting that even Bailey admits has a good chance of ending with him dead? Even cartoons need to have internal consistency, and this is the one part of the ride that doesn't work.

In any event, it's a mostly fun little diversion, if somewhat disposable and forgettable. The outsize characters are almost all given enough personality to stand on their own. I especially liked the weirdo who picks up hitchhiking Bailey at the start, and the titular Serpent Girl (a woman with no arms and legs) is a creepy but affecting character, and Carnahan manages to fulfill the clown stereotype with extreme nastiness. In the end, although the characters are pretty nifty, and there's some really nice descriptive moments and dialogue, the book still manages to feel derivative and lacking in something. It's perfectly fine pulp fiction, but not something I would recommend to anyone I know unless they like to read anything and everything relating to circuses.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hip Pulp Art for the Daily-Show Generation, June 13, 2005

By 

Dirk Ward (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Serpent Girl: A Novel (Hardcover)

This circus-heist-gone-wrong makes nods to Hunter Thompson and Carl Hiaasen, as others here have said. But this stylish Gonzo road trip leads into Elmore Leonard territory. As with Leonard, the dialogue is laconic and on-the-nose, and the three main characters transcend genre. For example, the Serpent Girl herself is a limbless circus freak capable of unspeakable violence – but just try to get through Carnahan’s story without seeing her as poignant, authentic, and at just the right moments, desirable.

There are at least 2 books worth of page-turning plot, thick with meth-dealing biker gangs, evil circus freaks, gang-raping clowns (suspicions confirmed), and enough betrayals for a Sopranos marathon. We’re steered through this surreal terrain by good-natured anti-hero Bailey Quinn. Bailey’s a smart slacker who’s simultaneously selfish, amoral, and basically decent, while dishing out the best comic political incorrectness this side of Southpark. Several times, when I caught myself laughing out loud, I had to scramble to avoid telling others the embarrassing passage I’d found so damn funny. And as dark as the story gets, Carnahan’s tone is as fatalistically breezy as Vonnegut whistling a funeral mass. More, please.