Rating: 3 stars
Mark Rayner’s satirically-bizarre Marvellous Hairy is a chaotic collection of the deeply philosophical and the randomly silly.
Rob (the narrator) is consulting for Gargan Enterprises (big business) on a super-secret project that looks to be a device that can control weather. Nick (a sometimes novelist and oft-time volunteer for random research testing; as well as friend of Rob) has volunteered for yet another experiment, this time at Gargan whose fearless leader, Ted Schute (The Man) is taking his God-complex one step further and mixing monkey with human DNA—in this case Nick.
As Nick begins to get even stranger than he was before the testing, Rob is trying to figure out what Schute is up to regarding Nick and the super-secret project so he can derail his plan. Meanwhile Schute is this close to derailing himself, due to visits from Johnny, a ghost from his murderous past.
Throw in a few incompetent thugs—one with a mind-blowing hygienic dysfunction—a sad little rich girl, a hooker, a few monkeys and komodo dragon and there you have it. Confused? Good; that means you’ve been keeping up.
Marvellous Hairy has so many story lines that they almost appear stream-of-consciousness, but are actually well-thought out and cohesive. Rayner’s prose is succinct and exudes humor and wit that only comes with real talent and careful planning—he isn’t just throwing a bunch of one-liners on the page, each sentence has meaning and purpose; and the fact that he gets a laugh for it is just a bonus.
Though Nick’s first visit to the lab to get his initial injection was worth the price of admission, the story-line of Spider and Seedy sort of dragged things down and I found myself rushing to get through it.
Rayner’s characters are quiet interesting to say the least. For all his crazy talk, Nick is actually… if not “deep”, then very intuitive and quite philosophical in a schizophrenic sort of way. Rob is very likeable and Ted Schute is perfect for the guy you love to hate.
Marvellous Hairy was so many things that it’s tough to nail it down. Reading it was fun and entertaining, but at the same time it felt like a frivolous use of time; but maybe that’s part of Rayner’s plan. When you’re writing a satire on corporate greed as it relates to chaos theory and embracing your inner monkey, it’s probably just assumed that any thoughts of productive use of time goes right out the window.
------------------------
Paperback: 276 pages
Publisher: Monkeyjoy Press (June 18, 2010)
ISBN-13: 978-0986662706