Obsession
The stories are filled with obsessive characters. Hormonally-charged teenager Kevin is so obsessed with beautiful cheerleader Madeline that despite stalking her every waking moment he can, he fails to see she is nowhere near “The Perfect Lawn” his delusional illusions make her out to be. The lesbian lover of a deceased mother called Aunt Victoria is a bloated lump of near-humanity whose obsessive eating finally catches up with her. “The Sudden Development of Debra Dupuis” is a biting social commentary on America’s nearly century-long obsession with big breasts. Likewise, the real star of the story “Shifting Gears” is the Ford F-250 pickup truck that symbolizes the obsessive quest to feminize motor vehicles
Freaks
The stories in the book itself are obsessed with examining the nature of freakdom. The natural home of the freak—the traveling circus—is the setting for the opening story, but it won’t be the last. “Circus Matinee,” “Gorilla Girl” and “The Smallest Man in the World” all prominently feature circus settings but the freak show extends well beyond this limitation. “Eating Aunt Victoria” features a title character who would be right at home in a display between that miniature version of a man and the “Gorilla Girl.” Oddly enough, however, the most beautiful girl in the bar who narrates the tale of the smallest man is a self-confessed freak and one of the things which makes Kevin’s idealization of Madeline ironic is that one of her nicknames for him is “Kevin-the-Freak.” The freak show that populates the stories in this collection are not weirdos in the traditional sense, but characters that call into question exactly what it means to be a freak in the modern world.
Michigan as Microcosm
Or, at the very least, what it means to be a freak in modern Michigan. These stories are set in places like Kalamazoo, and with locations found on Red Arrow Highway, and where characters are preparing to go to college in Ann Arbor and where Lake Michigan is almost omnipresent. “Sleeping Sickness” opens with information likely surprising to those unfamiliar with Michigan: that summer in Alexander is miserably hot and humid. The reader will also learn that the vulture population is increasing in the state. Mostly, however, what they learn is that the pastoral regions of Michigan away from the population centers of the state are home to the same kind offbeat weirdos struggling in desperation to find some meaning and happiness in their lives that can be found in the pastoral regions away from the population centers in any other state. The character in these stories are often strange, sometimes grotesque, but absolute in no way defined simply by living in the wolverine state.
