Subject: Review of The Moonhare by Kirk Hampton (fiction, sf)

From: [email-masked] (Steve Brock)
Date: 8 Apr 1996 22:31:04 GMT

THE MOONHARE by Kirk Hampton.  York Press, Ltd., P.O. Box 1172,
Fredericton, NB, Canada E3B 5C8.  222 pp., $19.95 (Canadian) paper. 
0-919966-99-3

        Written (and not really reviewed) by Steve Brock

     "Hell, even a simple wooden spoom believes that.  It 
     believes in itself, as it were, or else it woukldn't 
     be subjokt to that embulpment.  But still I'se gots 
     to tell ya shaggy that this simple ffaith of machines 
     gets deranged in machines as ffiendishly as these 
     headhopping minueting scherzisch moongaren hier."

     It's been three years since the last time I couldn't finish
reading a book for review.  This time, I barely got started with
"The Moonhare" before putting it down in bafflement.  Hampton's
debut novel is a nightmare trip to the planet Wemm, a place where
technology is banned, as the reader is dragged along by Dann
Quuluur in his quest to bring machines (and his daughter) back to
his world.  The story is the easy part.  
     Begging comparison to Pynchon and Joyce, Hampton's writing is
agonizing at best, and the above example is erudite compared to
other passages that have words crossed out, spelled backwards, or
completely garbled.  Need I mention metaphors?  
     While there will no doubt be many that rise to the challenge
of finishing "The Moonhare" with some sort of comprehension, I got
as far as page 31, to a chapter titled "Ergurges," before it
finally dawned on me that the book would never make a bit of sense,
one of the few things I demand from the reading experience.  As an
ex-proofreader, all I could do was wonder how the publisher made
corrections to the galleys.  Grade: D.

%T  The Moonhare
%E  Kirk Hampton
%I  York Press, Ltd.
%C  Fredericton, NB, Canada
%D  1996
%O  paper, CAN$1995
%G  ISBN 0-919966-99-3
%P  222pp
%K  fiction, sf

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