I will make two salivating points in my review of this book by Roger Kennedy:
- I have no idea why anyone would write a book like this
- I have no idea why I continued to read it after the first ten pages
It all began a couple days ago when I was hanging around inside one of those dollar stores. I was not there to buy anything, that is beneath me. What I was there to do was to harrass and intimidate shoppers with very aggressive approaches, movements, and word choice. I knocked the stuff they were looking for out of their hands, ridiculed them for being poor, and threatened (with a plastic knife) a kid in the cosmetics aisle because he had no business there.
Things were slow in the post holiday times, and this is not the 1970s when our malls flourished and everything was absolutely perfect for everyone. So, there weren't too many people for me to weaponize my superior social standing against. While I waited for an old lady I could lead out into the alley and really work over, I noticed this book sitting on a shelf. It wasn't near any other books. It was near the nut clusters. It was thrown haphazardly on the shelf as if someone had perused it and then tossed it aside after losing interest. Inevitably, I picked it up and leafed through it (as one might do with a pamphlet or interesting tract you are forcefully handed on the street).
My left leg, which was replaced with a table leg a couple weeks ago due to an incident, was itching and I went up to the loser working at the register and asked him for the key with the big piece of wood attached to it. They had those in the 1970s when everything was absolutely perfect for everyone, but now they just leave rest rooms unlocked due to lackidaisical attitudes around here. He didn't have any bathroom I could use so I asked him where his shitting was done and he says "at home." So, I asked if he worked eight hours and he said he did and I asked what he did about penile urinary activity during that time period. Did he lock up and go home? This tatted up motherfucker tells me, "Just for staff."
Normally I would have taken him out then and there, but with the leg thing it can get tricky. Instead I spotted two twelve-year-old kids outside smoking cigarettes and went out to round them up. I told them I would help them become millionare businessmen like me but the first step would be robbing the store and murdering the clerk. They asked me why I wasn't wearing any pants. I was, but I wear extremely thin material pants and when the sun is directly behind me they are fully transparent and all my good man stuff is right there for the viewing.
The kids eventually gave in and I told them the plan, which was that they would take the plastic knife and get the clerk to open the register and give them all the money in it, then they would take him back in the alley while I snuck in and used the crapper. I had the book in my hand and I wanted to read it, but how can you read a book without being in a public rest room with it? That is like wearing white after Labor Day. It just isn't done. They did their part and I was able to slip into the employee bathroom with this book, A Trip Down Mammary Lane. Now, I will endeavor to get to my important points as noted at the top of this informative and scholarly review.
Why would anyone write a book like this?
Very good question. First of all, the cover has a close-up of a woman's chest in a really low-cut dress. That is what attracted me to it. I thought I was going to be reading about something like that. Instead, I start reading and this guy in the book is alone in this creepy apartment and it is filthy with dog crap all over the floor (and no dog is mentioned). I'm not sure why I'm reading about such a character. Then he goes out to this bar and he sees this woman in a low-cut dress and I think, maybe he's going to go over and talk to her? No, he watches her while sitting drinking imported beer and running his tongue over his big lips. His tongue and mouth are described in so much detail I was left wondering "Why?" No answers were forthcoming. This was just how this sicko liked to write, I guess.
She gets up to leave and he follows her outside. While she is getting into her car, he pulls this contraption out of his van. It is some kind of weird laser thing that is described in over twenty pages of detail with technical jargon I couldn't make any sense of whatsoever. Something about "isometric engineering" which apparently has to do with instantly freezing people and things. Anyway, this weird loser shoots the laser and it freezes the woman and her car. He goes over and takes her frozen body and puts it into his van.
I figure he is doing some dirty sex plan, but that isn't it either. He keeps her frozen, but then defrosts her breasts only. And they are out of the bag, right out there naked. And then he has this other weird device that is described as being "from an abandoned meat processing plant outside of Detroit." He uses this device to slice off her breasts, which he then puts in a big pan. From there, he sits down, removes his clothing, and fetches a sewing kit. We read that there are already four sets of breasts sewn onto his body in different locations. He is about to start sewing in the fifth set. He is covering his entire body with women's breasts, horribly sewn to his body with heavy thread. Many pages are spent describing in really intimate detail the sewing process.
This continues, with him hunting and freezing women in different settings. It gets fairly predictable. Then, once his entire body is just a collection of boobs, bouncing all around as he walks, including the breasts under his feet that he sewed there, he goes out into the world. He announces himself like this. He runs around for days like this until he suddenly dies.
And so, I cannot answer the question. I have no idea why anyone would write a book like this. It is more than six hundred pages long.
Why would anyone continue reading after the first ten pages?
This is a most interesting question. As I sat in that cramped, dollar store employee bathroom reading A Trip Down Mammary Lane, I was uncertain as to why I didn't just stick it behind the toilet and force myself through the bathroom window and out into the alley before the cops showed up. At first, I believed there had to be more. This couldn't really be what the book was about. It had to be like the beginning of a James Bond movie where a lot of action happens that has nothing to do with the story you are about to watch unfold. But, alas, this was all there was.
Once I realized that, about a hundred pages in, I continued because I could no longer look away. Already I felt unwell about the experience I was having, not just reading the book but my overall experience in that dollar store. The afternoon was a let down accordingly.
Yes, I finished it. At the end where he falls over and dies at the beach with no explanation, just a cut to a sunrise and a happy couple on the beach drinking tequila, I knew I'd been had.
This book is NOT recommended. 0 out of 5 stars.