Bubblegum (ARC Review)

There are two types of people in this world: the kind that likes books like Bubblegum, and those (the majority of people) who do not.

The synopsis of this book, which describes an alternate world in which the internet was never created and where people have flesh-and-blood robots that fit in the palm of their hand, may make you think that it’s a more or less straight-forward adult science fiction (I did). But it’s not.

This is dense, full-on, experimental literary fiction.

What this book actually is, is the memoir of Belt Magnet, a grown man who still lives with his father and does not know how to do simple adult tasks like banking and driving a car. A man who is infamous for murdering swingsets as a child (because they asked him to), who wrote a book that nobody has read, and who, for some reason, people tend to spew their entire existences to in everyday conversations. On occasion, he speaks to inanimate objects (not just swingsets) but has no idea how he does this.

This book is largely written in a stream-of-consciousness style with many meandering moments, interspersed with mentions and allusions to pieces of media, only a few of which exist in the state they are described in our current world, and the rest of which are either totally made up or completely changed (like The Matrix sans internet…). Other times, we step into lengthy flashbacks, read manuals (sometimes, twice), or transcripts of odd video collages and other such works. Meanwhile, we meet the author several times and are forced to read through gruesome scenes of animal-like-creatures being tortured and killed in pretty sadistic ways with little to no consequences for the torturers (but with the intention of making some grand point…which was not always clear to me).

The story has a very frail, almost nonexistent, plot, as the book is more focused on revealing Belt’s life, and meeting the many crude characters he encounters, which babble on for egregious amounts of time about nothing in particular. Everyone in this book is extremely long-winded, unbelievably strange, and completely unlikeable…except maybe Kablanky…who isn’t actually a person and never speaks.

However, this book is not supposed to be read to be enjoyed but to be understood and pondered. So, if you’re ok with not finding joy in any particular part of a book, but are still willing to hold out for the small hope that you will understand it in the least, then go forth and read Bubblegum. I bid you well.

I kept reading this book with the faintest faith that I would come to some fundamental conclusion about whatever life-changing thing it was trying to tell me. But I never really grasped anything that substantial, and I don’t think many other average readers will either. 

This book is one of those books that comes with prior required reading (Slaughterhouse-Five, etc.) and either a classroom setting in which to discuss it (at times, I felt like I should be back in my experimental literature class in college…), a master’s degree in the subject, or a plethora of notes in order to really register what the point of it all is.

But it’s a very very long version of this type of thing and I couldn’t help thinking that at times it was trying more at the aesthetic of the genre than it was doing anything profound with all of its 784 pages….which seemed like altogether too much time to be spent in such an unwelcoming world.

I find it hard to rate something that I enjoyed so little while also knowing that it may be the best example ever of not being the correct audience for something. Although, I think it’s also fair to say that the real audience for this, the group of people that it is truly accessible to, is a very small group of people. A group of very smart, slightly masochistic, people. The kind of people that like books like Et tu, babe (who I don’t trust in the least and who I’m unsure of the existence of to this day…). 

I rated Bubblegum 2.5 out of 5 stars, after involving some math; taking into account a rating of 1 for my own reading pleasure, a 5 for what I’m sure it’s doing that I don’t understand (and for those few people who like that kind of thing), and averaging them.

If anyone finds notes for this one, so that I may finally feel it was worth the many hours I spent reading it, let me know.

Thank you to Netgalley and Doubleday books for an early copy in exchange for an honest review!