Eating Mammals

by John Barlow

Book Overview

In the tradition of T. C. Boyle, Steven Millhauser, and Michel Faber -- with a penchant for the macabre worthy of Irvine Welsh -- comes Eating Mammals . Gypsies, businessmen, servants, masters, and unwise children come together in three mythical tales from Victorian England. Eating Mammals evokes a lost time and place in which the realm of the magical seems almost too possible: a winged cat wreaks havoc in a Yorkshire workhouse and then in the minds...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060591757
• ISBN13: 9780060591755
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

It was hilarious--but also sort of gross.

I bought the book just a few days ago and managed to read it in its entirety in just two days. The writing is excellent--quick-witted and even a little bit tongue-in-cheek at times--and the stories themselves are great. Yes, at times they are quite gross, but, really, the humor outweighs it by a landslide. This book is definitely worth a read.

EEeeewww! (and I mean that in a good way)

The three novellas of this book's title are: the title story 'Eating Mammals' which is about a professional eater called Captain Gusto, (kind of like Kobayashi Takeru only he'll literally eat anything), 'The Possession of Thomas-Bessie: a Victorian Melodrama' about a strange cat, born with a pair of small wings (don't worry, it's not in the least cutesy or cat-fancieresque), and finally 'The Donkey Wedding at Gomersal, recounted by an inhabitant of that place' about a rather odd wedding (I'll let you guess what exactly was odd about it). They're all good solid stories, engagingly written, but the title story takes the cake, so to speak. I don't want to spoil it, but one of the last scenes is so perfectly, viscerally, stomach-churningly written that I literally felt sick reading it. Anyone can write a gross-out scene, but this is different, it was kind of a gross-out elevated to the level of art. I recommend this book to all comers (provided they have a strong stomach) and I invite you to check out the author's first full-length novel 'Intoxicated', which I'm eagerly looking forward to reading.

Read it!

Come on! This is a great, great read. Witty and stylish writing, but warm hearted. read it, y'all! It reminded me of Edgar Allen Poe, but funny and pacier. Cool.

True work of imagination

I have only read the first novella in the collection, the one for which the volume is named. As there are no other reviews on this item, I figured what the heck. I picked up this book because it looked totally different from other things I've seen. And it is. I was amazed, flabbergasted, disgusted, and touched. So all in all, you should pick it up and check it out.