Spanking New by Clifford Henderson

This is the second time I’ve read this book. It’s an odd ball kind of book, and as I noted in the start of my previous review – somewhat impossible to pin down genre-wise. Previous review is probably good enough ‘what this book is about’, so I just ramble here, yes? No? Well, I’ll think of something.

Bare bones: the main character is someone who is quite knowledgeable about certain things, not so knowledgeable about other things. They are a spirit like entity – pre-birth. And that’s their mission in this book – find parents, be born. Once born, they’ll lose their memories – a barrier would be passed and they’ll enter the ‘land of forgetting’ (or however that was worded). The book follows the spirit entity on this journey.

I liked the humor on display in this book (though a lot of it is ‘in context’ vaguely humorous, not out of context humorous). Like when the entity (later named Spanky by parents unsure of what name to pick, so I use Spanky from now on) spots potential father for first time and has certain thoughts:

Surely I’m not going to take just any dad, one who would lie to a best friend, a soldier about to risk his life for his country. Then again, I really like his hair.

Hmm. I only have one other highlighted bit of humor and it is even less easy to see the humor in it out of context so I move on.

I really like the characters on display here. Most of them would not normally be my type of character I’d want to spend time with, but, in this book, they work quite well. From the somewhat ditzy, flighty ‘mom’ character with her fixation/obsession on one of her male friends and her ability to ‘forget’ that he’s gay; to the ‘dad’ character who still lives at home, works in a car shop, and has a music degree; to the borderline-but-not-stereotype gay best friend; to the ‘refusing to accept the fact that she’s a lesbian’ other best friend; to the gang of friends the ‘mom’ type was friends with; to the incredibly socially awkward, nervous sister, who is quite selfish and stubborn, but shows hints of many great traits hidden beneath; to . . . well, many more great characters who, on a surface glance, fall into a category of ‘nooo’, but aren’t what they seem.

It’d be neat to see the ‘next’ part. As in, this book shows an individual ‘pre-birth’, to humanization, to birth. Then ends. It’d be neat to see what happened next in their life. And no, they didn’t end up getting ‘Spanky’ as a name – well, I didn’t see a birth certificate or anything, but the parents did agree, eventually, on the name Lucy. (note to self: the action in this book takes place in 2007. The next book by this author, not yet published, involves a Lucy character - but includes action from 1989, so, different Lucy)

Great book.

Rating: 5+

April 4 2018