Mammoth Books

203 Pages, 15.95

Review by Morris Collins

Dimitri Anastasopoulos’s pyrotechnic new novel, Farm For Mutes, explores the collapsing relationship between Luther Bouquie—a film restoration expert—and his wife, Sybil–a germaphobe suffering from a mysterious disease.  Luther works to restore an early recording device whose purpose was to capture, but not replay, sound, while Sybil waits in cloistered withdrawal reliving the choices that led her to her sickbed (though Anastasopoulos remains wary of narrative causality). Meanwhile, an extraterrestrial observer—serving as chorus in all senses of the word—watches, hunts, and abducts via a frequency-altering scream the inhabitants of the Bouquie’s Buffalo, NY neighborhood.

So, this is what “happens” in Farm For Mutes. Or, anyway, this is the novel’s situation, but unlike conventional novels, it is a situation that does not produce narrative consequences. It is all epilogue: Anastasopoulos welcomes us to the moment just after his characters’ last possible choice, an aftermath unfolding at the end of their marriage. The “events” we witness are the consequence, perhaps, of previous actions–some of which we experience in flashbacks, unreliable memories, and travel logs—but the novel’s present tense remains pure reckoning.  Or, maybe more accurately—pure echo. Continue reading →