Family Romance, by Tom Bradley, with Art by Nick Patterson (A Review by Ally Nicholl)

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Until a few weeks ago I had never heard of Bizarro fiction. A relatively new genre, it bills itself as the cult section of the literary world and boasts titles such as Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland, Shatnerquake and The Haunted Vagina (all of which, frankly, sound like contenders for Best Book Ever.)

The Bizarro movement exists to provide literature for lovers of weird reads, and reads surely don’t come much weirder than Family Romance, by Tom Bradley and visual artist Nick Patterson. Taking Patterson’s deviantArt as a starting point, Bradley has fashioned a darkly humorous, sexually perverse and satisfyingly gruesome tale of life in and around a none-more-dysfunctional family.

As mysterious creatures eavesdrop at the window, Mom fills her children’s heads with ludicrous doctrine and instils fear of the pathogens that can attach themselves to the back of your head and make you sneeze so hard it blows your whole face off (the ‘Sneeze Catastrophic’). Dad, meanwhile, has abandoned his family and his religion and joined the side of the Relic Amalekites, heathens who are said to wipe their assholes with both hands and worship false deities. Little Sissy swears Dad is buried in the garden; but then, she hasn’t been quite right in the head since her visit from the Grand Religiopath.

The story is narrated by the elder son, who drip-feeds us details of his family’s history, explores the facets of the peculiar religion he and his sister were baptised into while still in the womb, and puzzles over the inconsistencies between the Sovereign Theocracy’s teachings and the field reports he is sent in secret letters from his father.

There is no denying the imagination on show here, both in the excellent artwork and in Bradley’s interpretation of it. Patterson’s pictures are an unsettling mix of body horror, twisted erotica,1950s sci-fi and biblical iconography; an angel is disembowelled by a sentient tree, a grinning gargoyle removes its brain with one hand while fisting its scrotal hole with the other, and bacterial monsters glare at the reader with their tentacled eyes. It is to Bradley’s credit that he manages to create a cohesive story around these visuals, often surpassing them in gross-out strangeness.

Thankfully there is meat under all the blood and amniotic fluid. Family Romance works both as a coming-of-age story and a critique of organised religion. There are nods to the most recent war in Iraq- the Sovereign Theocracy justifies the ‘smiting’of the Relic Amalekites by claiming they have illegal weapons poised for attack, while Dad insists they don’t have the technological capacity-as well as the medieval crusades and numerous holy wars in between.

Of course, the grotesquery will not be everyone’s cup of tea. Nor will the writing style. Either you’re prepared to wade through sentences like

my angle of vision is furnished through the meatus of one of those viddy-cams penised on the tip of a tubular endoscope stalk, and screwed into the maternal umbilicus in order to spelunk the ribbed mater-vault

or you aren’t. Sometimes the offbeat language works well, but there were quite a few times when I felt interesting ideas or funny moments were being smothered by overcomplicated prose.

I suspect it’s very much a matter of taste, however. Bizarro is, after all, a genre where the aim is to be as weird as possible, and Bradley’s style certainly fits the bill. Family Romance may not be an easy read, but for those that can stomach it there’s much to enjoy.

Ally Nicholl lives in Scotland and writes things for fun. His work has appeared on Twitter @coulterscandy and occasionally on his website,www.allynicholl.com.