Zod Wallop - Hardcover

Spencer, William Browning

4.1

541 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312136293 ISBN 13: 9780312136291

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1995

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Harry Gainesborough, a children's book author who has written nothing since his daughter's death, fears that his weirdest book, "Zod Wallop," is actually coming to life when a series of horrible coincidences occur

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Review:

There are two versions of Harry Gainesborough's bestselling children's book Zod Wallop: the published version, written second, and the original version, stolen by Harry's zealous fan, Raymond Story, while Harry and Raymond were both patients in a mental hospital. The published version has a happy ending; the private version was Harry's confrontation with the death of his child. And the private version, emotionally true and infused with the power of a group hallucination, ending with the destruction of the world, is becoming real.

It's inevitable that Zod Wallop will be compared to The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll; both are about authors of Oz-like children's books whose literary creations leak over into our world. Both are dark in tone, and in both death and denial are key elements, but Spencer's poignant story owes as much to Philip K. Dick as to Carroll.

From Publishers Weekly:

Sly humor and eccentric characters raise Spencer's third novel (following Resume, with Monsters) far above run-of-the-mill fantasy fare. Since his daughter drowned three years ago, children's-book author Harry Gainesborough has settled into a life of quiet desperation. He hasn't written a word, and though his agent is badgering him to spin out another book or at least to sell the film rights to Zod Wallop, the phenomenally successful novel he wrote just before Amy died, Harry is in no mood to do either, or in fact to have any contact with the outside world. But he can't avoid Raymond Story, an inmate of a local asylum who's so enchanted by Zod Wallop that he breaks out, hunts down Harry and tells him that the characters of the novel are coming to life. And the lunatic seems to be right: Fantastic creatures that have hitherto existed only in Harry's books now seem to take great delight in indulging in acts of antic destruction, from ruining the paint job on Harry's car to blowing up a helicopter. The line between reality and imagination blurs further when it's revealed that Harry knows Raymond through his own psychiatric hospitalization. By raising the question of who is crazy and who is sane, Spencer seduces the reader into considering the underlying question: What is craziness and what is sanity? Happily, this very talented author has not only the irreverent humor, but also the insight into the manic rhythms of madness, to pull this query off.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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