Customer Reviews

Zanesville: A Novel

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ZANESVILLE by Kris Saknussemm
October 31, 2005

Amazon rating 4/5

Reviewed by Marie Hashima Lofton

"Kris Saknussemm's Zanesville is a satire of the not too distant future, a dystopia where most people are addicted to drugs, California has fallen into the ocean, and crime and murder are commonplace. Bioengineering has its day, with altered creatures of all kinds, part machine and part animal. And alternate food sources are abundant (beef doesn't seem to be on the menu any more!)

It is Post-Bigfoot (the earthquake known to all as THE BIG ONE) and the world is run by a Cultporation called Vitessa, which is close to the Big Brother that Orwell predicted. A man with no identity (named ClearFather by one of his rescuers) seeks a clue to who he is and how he got where he landed in New York City's Central Park. ClearFather arrived via a tornado, and that is all he can remember. His past has been wiped out, and the world in which he finds himself is frightening and bizarre. On his journey to discover who he is, ClearFather meets various people including: Aretha Nightingale, a black drag queen; Kokomo, the beautiful woman/child who does not speak; and others who befriend him along the way or pass him on the road to a newfound identity.

The reader sees the world through ClearFather's bewildered eyes - his knowledge seems to have come from a time long ago." - Complete review found at BookLoons dot com - M Lofton

ZANESVILLE is a very different type of novel, not for the faint of heart. Those who enjoyed books such as Margaret Atwood's ORYX AND CRAKE may appreciate Saknussemm's futuristic story.

Where to begin? If it wasn't so well written you'd say this was completely wacko. If you like stories that are really out there and make you think, this ones it. It's a nightmare, but it's funny. It wil make you even more worried about America and the future--and yet it will uplift you too. Definitely a book to remember.

I'd read the rave review for this book in LA CityBeat and was curious about how it would match up against expectations. The answer? Zanesville is one of the funniest, lewdest and most disturbing books I've ever read. I can't think of a book in recent memory that displayed such a unique quality of imagination. The fictional world, and it is a world, is brought to life with such intensity of detail. Even if you're not a fan of out-there new fiction, you will enjoy and admire the humor. At several points I laughed out loud and had to read passages back to myself. Really fun, inventive
stuff. This is one of the few new books that lives up to the rave reviews.

Zanesville is like bluetooth text transmission, wireless, no big spikes through the back of your skull like in the matrix. And this old historic world Saknussemm paints, that hints of the absinthe soaked debaucheries of Baudelaire and dreadful biblical forebodings, already reeks of the techno-paranoia that is to follow. This is a world of the putrid stenches that linger beneath the sanitised vinyl seats of a busy commuter train. Strange albino children obscured in sedative fogs. Butch pixies. Cracked lips oozing collagen. Adventures in the Patrick Swayze Center for Serious Depression. Overnight stays in the Will Smith Hotel. Flesh and machine unified, bodily secretions and digitised DNA sequences. This is not a map-on-the-first-page fantasy novel, these biomechanoids that hang around in derelict factory precincts aren't carrying your light sabre, they want to wear your face. It reminds you that plastic is made out of oil and oil is made out of dead animals and rotten trees. It's a anarchistic spiritual journey this text, a satirical metamorphosis of our dystopic 20th century fondness for infomercials and the latest gadget into a twisted nightmarish future of drug dependency, addiction to superficial surgery and bioengineering, a broken urban landscape littered with the remnants of an exhausted consumerist ideology, a slapped stick insect leaking its green guts onto grandma's favourite lace tablecloth, or a smashed flatscreen monitor oozing liquid crystals onto an autopsy table.

Saknussemm has shoved his way into the broken line of my favourite authors, he writes with the mastery of the greats, Baudelaire, Lautremont, Philip K Dick, William Burroughs, JG Ballard, Umberto Eco to name but a few. He creates a new version of the old familiar world, a new fractal of the possible direction we could all slide if this dimension continues as it is. Do yourself a favour and read Zanesville, read it three times.

This is a condensed version of my full review and interview with the author Kris Saknussemm at Retort Magazine.

Saknussemm sets in motion an army of bizzarre characters and conditions that make for intense reading that will get under your skin. I found myself seeing strange scenes in my sleep, which I could only account for as a result of my reading Zanesville the night before. There is an underlying intelligence to the writing that will keep you as stimulated as the action. Of course, as with all strong futuristic fiction, the commentary on our world today is clear and cutting. So the story is clicking on multiple cylinders simultaneously. Interesting to see what the author comes up with next.

I love this book so much that I've read it four times now--one of those times aloud to a friend over the phone over the span of a couple of weeks. He liked it too, in case you're wondering.

It caught my attention in a library a few years ago. Being from Ohio, I was curious what a book named for the city of Zanesville could possibly be about and the blurb on the back of the book immediately sold me. How could I resist "a surreal odyssey of self-discovery across an America that resembles a vast amusement park designed by some unholy trinity of Walt Disney, Hunter S. Thompson, and Hieronymus Bosch"?

Saknussemm is not simply a novelist, he is a creator, a master of language. He has not only done a masterful job of weaving a completely convoluted, though not altogether unbelievable, tale peopled with endearing characters--he has appealed to my great love of language and philosophy and created a work of art full of potent quotables. When I read, I tend to underline my favorite parts of a book, things that I feel are quotable for one reason or another, and my well-thumbed copy of Zanesville is riddled with pen marks.

Zanesville is packed with humor and wit, deep insights, punctilious puns and wordplay, delightful cultural, political, historical, literary, and musical references, conspiracies and inspiracies, amusement parks and bemusement parks, cults and resistance movements, fascinating futuristic technology and holographic characters, the finest modes of travel (a Wienermobile, a flying haggis blimp, a genuine Indian Motorcycle), spies and masters of disguise, fear, confusion and real human tragedy. Everything you could ever ask for in a novel. It is at once hilarious, deeply moving, horrifying, and uplifting.

I've been recommending Zanesville to everyone I know since the first time I read it and I will continue to do so for many years to come, I'm sure. I really feel that almost anyone could find something enjoyable in this book.

A relentlessly imaginative novel that sheds painful light on contemporary problems through a surreal projection into the near future. Unlike many satires, however, and much "end of civilizaiont" fiction, Zanesville also contains a powerful personal narrative about the search for love, family, and spiritual identity. This is one of those major works that will continue to gain an audience in years to come.

This is not the kind of book I would normally pick up. But I did pick it up, and once I was into it I could not put it down. This is a book for a thinker who loves humor, wit, and having his perceptions of the world challenged.

The main character, Clearfather, was engaging and intriguing, and I enjoyed finding out more about him as he found out more about himself. The supporting cast were funny and odd and endearing and ... well, very enjoyable.

The multitude of cultural and political references is amazing - and the genius of how Saknussemm did it was that I could not really tell whether I didn't `get' something because I was simply ignorant of it, or because he made it up. He weaves fantasy and reality together so skillfully that I was completely taken in, in a way - I felt as if I just had to keep reading to see if I could figure it out.

I'll definitely be reading this again - it made me think in such an enjoyable way!

For anyone who thought there weren't any more smart, druggy cult books being written, you have some serious fun ahead of you. I was reading a chapter on a bus and I started laughing so hard I had to get off. Now I'm on the bandwagon. Some people will think what the F#$k? Others will defend this book with their lives.

"Nineteen-eighty Four" meets "Through the Looking-Glass" and "Naked Lunch" on acid! Saknussemm offers an original, powerful, and disturbing vision of America in the not-so-distant future. R.P. Young