Synopsis
When a sensuous free spirit by the name of Too Much arrives at a Florida trailer park for the over-sixty-five set, she unleashes new life and stirs up trouble for her fellow residents. 17,500 first printing. Tour. BAKER & TAYLOR
Reviews
The once reigning champion of redneck fiction continues his decline with yet another one-joke novel, a farce of hippy-cosmic dimensions. Set in a Florida trailer park for retirees (``a warehouse for the nearly dead''), this crude tale focuses on the life and peculiar powers of a white-trash beauty named ``Too Much,'' a girl who grew up with her anarchist granddaddy in the Florida swampland and whose name refers to her ample bust and bottom. ``Full of the curious and the strange,'' Too Much likes to drive the trailer park's owner to horned distraction. Stump, as he's called for his amputated arm, finds himself ``neck deep in kink'' with the young vixen, who clearly uses her wiles to a greater end, what she calls ``the chance of ultimate possibility,'' which comes from ``hope, faith, and the power of imagining the possible.'' Relying both on ``revealed knowledge'' and plain old madness, Too Much turns around the lives of all sorts of old-timers, from the octogenarian couple who can't stand the smell of each other to the ancient lumberjack who finds within himself the strength for one last job. Part of Too Much's plan is a Mayday celebration, complete with maypole and costumes, all intended to bring the ``touch of life'' to the old folks. With the help of a retired carpenter, a former bank president, and an itchy old pickpocket, Too Much takes over the community. Her can-do philosophy often works as shock therapy for the more stodgy residents, but most simply find joy in her exuberance. Stump, meanwhile, drowns himself in booze, waiting for his next session of outrageous sex with Too Much, who dispenses her favors shrewdly. Not unlike what's done in the film Cocoon, Crews (The Mulching of America, 1995, etc.) faces ``age and death and time'' with lots of simple bromides, barely disguised by all his tough-guy posturing and his primitive sexual notions. Lowbrow comedy, not literary wit. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Crews is a Rabelaisian satirist who toys with the more gothic aspects of southern literature, particularly in this kinky tale. Readers will know that they've entered the realm of the absurd as soon as they meet Too Much, a flexible and lusty beauty right out of Lil' Abner, tight cutoffs, big boobs, and all. Too Much descends on a Florida trailer park called Forever and Forever like a hurricane, riling everyone at this purgatory for old folks who are too raggedy to enjoy retirement but not quite broken down enough for a rest home. Too Much easily seduces Stump, the bitter, one-handed vet who owns this depressing settlement, then unceremoniously deposes him while stirring up long-forgotten appetites in the Old Ones, with her five-alarm body and nihilistic faith in what she calls the "chance of ultimate possibility." Crews is funny, his plot is nearly surreal, and his playing with our notions of good and evil is clever and entertaining, but this is, at base, a very silly novel. Donna Seaman
At Forever and Forever, a Florida trailer park, the old folks wait passively for the ambulance to take them to the morgue. And that's the way its one-armed owner, Stump, likes it. For him, "Forever and Forever equals quiet and solitude and stillness and death." But Too Much, the voluptuous young woman who shares Stump's bed (and bathtub), has other plans. Proud of her power to "bring life where there had only been death, to bring joy and celebration where there had only been resignation and despair," she grimly sets out to do just that. From the author of The Mulching of America (LJ 11/15/95) comes another savage satire with the usual Crewsian elements: grotesque characters, bizarre situations, and black humor. Unfortunately, it lacks another element found in Crews's best novel, The Gypsy's Curse (LJ 4/1/74): humanity. The characters here are so repulsive and nasty that the reader doesn't care what happens to them. Even Too Much is too much. And for all the talk about joy and celebration, there is really very little. For larger fiction collections.
- ?Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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