MY REVIEW OF LIBBA BRAY'S "GOING BOVINE"

GOING BOVINE. By Libba Bray. Delacorte, 2009. 480 pages.

Fun and funny enough to have kept me going to the end, but geez, Bray, in line with her name, paints with a broad brush. She gets by on brashness, and tosses out anything that is even close to subtle. Forget about nuance with Going Bovine.

The premise—sixteen-year-old slacker from severely dysfunctional family gets mad cow disease and goes on hallucinatory quest to find Dr. X and save the universe with hypochondriac midget, talking gnome lawn ornament, and riot-grrrl angel as sidekicks—should have warned me about what to expect.

The tilting-at-windmills quality of someone on his deathbed accepting an impossible mission should clue the reader into Bray’s nod to Cervantes, but in case the reader doesn't get it, the author lets you know that she does, more than a few times. She also leaves you in no doubt about how she feels about the crass, shallow, humorless, merciless, materialistic culture of consumerism in which she is marketing Going Bovine. '

Bray is so consumed with setting ‘em up and knocking ‘em down that her protagonist, Cameron, who might be kind of sweet if he just poked his head out of the cloud of pot smoke that continually surrounds him, hardly seems to matter. He’s just a vehicle who can enter places like CESSNAB (Church of Everlasting Satisfaction and Snack-’N’-Bowl), so that Bray can rip into the sleazy superficiality of it all. Balder, the Nordic yard decoration, has more personality, and integrity.

It’s Vonnegut on steroids, and Bray leaps into the fray with such gusto that she pulled me along for the ride, even as I tried to dig in my heels and slow things down enough to jump off. Sheer outrageousness is worth something. Libba Bray milks every last drop. She’s determined to be the most unwimpy YA writer on the block. I’d have to say she’s pretty successful.

Recommended for seventh graders on up, if you feel comfortable with substance abuse, iterations of the F-word, a graphic description of crummy copulation, and a coy recounting of celestial sex.
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