Review: Pee on Water

Read 11/10/10 - 11/12/10

3 Stars - Recommended for readers familiar with genre

Pgs:143

Rachel B. Glaser has a unique way of looking at the world. She sees beyond the surface, into the blood and marrow of things, and she exposes that through the people and things that populate her collection of short stories in Pee on Water.

In the story THE JON LENNIN XPERIENCE - Our main guy's sister purchases him a Beatles reality video game. He is anti-everything technological and ignores the game for many days. Eventually he decides to give it a whirl and ends up becoming obsessed with being John Lennon.

In THE TOTEMS ARE GRAND - a family comes together to celebrate their terminally ill grandmother's life by creating totem poles out of the trees in their yard.

THE KID is a story about a bored guy who takes his dog and his girlfriend on a road trip to deliver drugs for his dead brothers friend. On one particular drop off, someone holds the kid and his girlfriend at gunpoint - and forces the kid to choose between his girlfriend, who he loves having sex with, and his dog, a loyal sidekick who he has raised since it was a puppy.

THE MONKEY HANDLER deals with the complicated and tragic ending of a puppy-dog crush in the confined quarters of space travel.

The title story, PEE ON WATER, takes a creative look at the process of evolution.

These stories were my favorite - by miles. They had the perfect pace. They were pretty straight-forward. They snagged my attention from the first sentence and held it throughout the entire story.

Some of the others, like ICONOGRAPHIC CONVENTIONS OF PRE- AND EARLY RENAISSANCE, INFECTIONS, MY BOYFRIEND BUT TRAGIC, and MCGRADY's SWEETHEART, appeared to take on too much all at once. They confused and frustrated me, and in the case of ICONOGRAPHIC and MCGRADY'S - turned me off so much that I stopped reading them and moved on to the next one.

Rachel takes the english language and makes it her own. No matter what story you're reading, you can see her fingerprints all over them. I would be very interested to see what she could do with a full length novel.

Many thanks to Publishing Genius for sending me the review copy! Check out Pee on Water for the Kindle and Nook. And check out this interview with the author from WeWhoAreAboutToDie.