Flea Circus

Flea Circus: a brief bestiary of grief
Mandy Keifetz
New Issues/Western Michigan University, 2012.

Izzy has a hard time coping with her grief after her entomologist lover Tim commits suicide by falling down a tenement airshaft. As she works through her loss with the help of another entomologist, Pudge Goroguchi, she goes to her banker job and also helps out at Tim’s brother’s bar while doing mathematical equations and wondering if she’s pregnant. Tim left behind a flea circus, so Izzy befriends Pudge, who also loves fleas, as a fill-in lover. As each short chapter unfolds, the reader will either delight in the “whip-smart narration,” like one reviewer did – or become frustrated with the too-witty urban hipster language that goes nowhere and does little to move the plot forward, like I did.

I started this slim volume with high expectations but quickly grew tired of the clever writing and lack of plot. I felt like Izzy was trying too hard to impress the reader with her smartness and her hipness. She did not feel like a real person to me. Reviewers used words like “enthralling,” “hilarious,” and “a must for fans of literary fiction” to describe this book. This reviewer, on the other hand, believes other terms, like “tedious,” “nonsensical,” and “not worth the paper it’s printed on” would be more accurate.

Needless to say, I did not finish it.

Rating:

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