Customer Reviews

The Shanghai Gesture

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Gary Indiana's first novel since Do Everything in the Dark is a hilarious satire, the most linguistically exuberant work yet from an author already deservedly admired for his astonishing prose. Giddy anachronisms abound in this bawdy tale that features a drug-addicted doctor accompanying a Scotland Yard inspector in pursuit of the fiendish Fu Manchu, who may or may not have something to do with strange occurrences in the seaside town of Land's End, a damp pocket of sleaze that time forgot, whose denizens sleep during the day and emerge for depraved revels come nightfall. Along the way there are all sorts of wonderfully sketched cameos, including Thalidomido the dwarf, Dr. Philidor Wellbutrin, "the fartsome abortionist," and Earl Sludge, the garbage truck driver turned opportunistic necrophiliac. Among the most comically inspired bits are the gossipy phone conversations between the diabolical Fu Manchu and his mercenary employee, the club-footed ex-STASI Roswitha Klebb, whose logistical discussions concerning Fu's campaign for world domination get continually sidetracked by their shared passion for the labyrinthine plot of a Brazilian soap opera. Ribald satire, narcotic phantasmagoria, a gruesome Cronenbergian transformation, mysterious portals in spacetime, corrosive (and hysterical) social commentary all amazingly cohere in a satisfying narrative due to Indiana's prose mastery, simultaneously flamboyant and rigorously controlled. This is a wonderfully unhinged book, Indiana totally unfettered.

Narcolepsy is a strange disorder. It's stranger when it takes an entire community by storm. "The Shanghai Gesture" is a comedic mystery thriller following Weymoth Smith and Obregon Petrie, who are out to stop the world domination plans of one Fu Manchu. As if one madman was not enough, they also must deal with being behind on the times, and the cravings of their own bodies. "The Shanghai Gesture" is a fun romp that's sure to entertain many a reader.

Gary Indiana's most recent novel, "The Shanghai Gesture" treads a delicate line between side splitting satire and classical lyricism. The resurrection of Fu Manchu could not be more appropriate as could not be more relevant the plight of those living at "Land's End". The struggle is not about power and it shows, in blaring contrast to conventional story-telling, that it's not about whether there are winners and losers, but rather, everybody always loses... some more than others.
A great read - written in a form that can only be described as eloquent and cutting.