Book Review:The Mortuary Monster by Andrew J. Stone

The Mortuary Monster by Andrew J. Stone

Paperback

Published October 2016 by Strange House books

Welcome to the debut of a great new voice in Bizarro. Andrew J. Stone is a young writer just barely out of college who has crafted a very hard to define novel. Sure it is bizarro, but in a genre that has everything from Skullcrack City to the Traveling Dildo Salesman that is not enough to describe a book. MM is a like no other book I have read and since it is a debut I can't compare it to other works by Stone.

The story of Gonzalo who grew up in a cemetery, and inherited a life surrounded by corpses. They are sorta dead and sometimes he has to nail their coffins shut so they don't make trouble. Things change when his corpse bride Fiona is about to give birth. Things have to change and the graveyard needs a little law and order. Help comes from the wise old dead guy named Arthur Oatsplash.

The setting is sorta Victorian but in a great technocolor surreal way that reminded me of being on a hammer films soundstage. That being said the book has witty and stylish prose that at times has hysterical moments of humor. The book is short but a excellent show case of wild talent that is creating a book impossible to compare. The publisher says Corpse Bride meets Eraserhead but that is pretty surface level. While the prose is pretty at times there is also a part that includes a gruesome moment of necrophilia that made me cringe.

I was lucky to read with Stone in LA and he read as one of the characters. This book is a must read if you are interested in high-lit bizarro that raises the genre up with skill, talent and 150 pages of invention. You have a chance to say you read him at the start of his career. Do it!