Beautiful and disgusting and really funny, this book is most like George Saunders writing a Jonathan Safran Foer novel. There is nothing sadder than having a plant for a friend. Worth it for Aranka's river. ( )

So, it got too Kafka-esque too quickly at the end, but things were really pretty good up until that point. Although, if you have a sensitive stomach, a vivid imagination, or, horrors, both, you will want to put this book down at points. ( )

One reviewer wrote: "a truly magical novel that draws the reader into its enchantment from the first page". Well, the first page didn't appeal to me, neither did the second, and the next 48 or so were even less enchanting. I therefore applied the Nancy Pearl rule and returned it to the library.
To me this book is just plain silly. It's as though Ms Anthony set out to conjure up the most bizarre story possible...and then doubled the weirdness by adding a parallel story of equal ridiculousness.

I think I found this book in the library of a LibraryThing friend of mine, RobinDawson. I'll be looking a bit more closely before I add any of her selections to my own library; I think she must be a bit too avant-garde for me. (ETA: I looked up her rating...she only gave it two stars, so maybe we are on a similar wavelength after all.) ( )

This book is all about Rovar Akosh Pfliegmann, a mute dwarf who sells meat out of a bus beside a road in Virginia. Do I have your attention now? His best friend is a beetle, and he yearns for the affections of the pediatrician who tends his (imaginary?) ailments. We look at the world through Rovar's eyes, both in the present day and in the long saga of the Pfliegmanns, reaching from nascent Hungary to the present day. He is the last of his beleaguered kind, and he is going through big changes. Jessica Anthony (whom I have met!) has written a sad book to laugh at, a comedy to make you cry. And it takes a very risky leap in the final few pages, one that she manages with astonishing aplomb. I've no idea what she'll write next, but I want to read it.

How do you review a book like this? This morning (with a pot of coffee and my dog) I read the whole thing. It is one of the strangest books I've ever read...and I loved it. This little dwarf-man lives in a bus selling meat with a pet bug, a pet plant, and a mirror pond. He gives us his own history and that of his people...or? Well, I think it is all up for interpretation and I don't want to sway anyone. Read it! Read it read it read it read it! Right now! Put the coffee on... ( )