Brooks on Books: Go, Mutants! by Larry Doyle

It was hard for me to do, but I stopped reading "Go, Mutants" almost halfway through and dumped it in the return bin at the library before I was tempted to pick it up again. Simply put, reading it felt like a chore, but the completist impulses in me made giving up on the novel a difficult task. If I had paid money for "Go, Mutants," I probably would have finished the thing. Maybe I would have even learned to enjoy it. Instead, I got a "life is too short" attitude and gave up on what was an incredibly disappointing read.

I loved Larry Doyle's previous novel, "I Love You, Beth Cooper," which, mediocre film adaptation aside, was a riotous sendup of/homage to teen comedies. Doyle's prose is often a bit much to take, but with the solid characterization and winning dialogue in "Cooper," it all worked. In "Go Mutants," however, Doyle's style becomes more of an obstacle than a comic device. The deadpan asides and ironic narration are swallowed by the intense detail given to physical descriptions of the aliens and mutants that populate this sendup of/homage to 1950s pop culture and sci-fi movies. I only need to read the word "gelatinous" so many times, after all, and the parody elements of what a promising premise (alternate reality Earth in which an invasion orchestrated by the protagonist J!m's space alien father led to crossbreeding of mutants and humans) just don't stick because we are overwhelmed by details of the appendages, fluids, and processes of the numerous characters, plus the gadgets and gizmos of this alternate reality. It's just way too much.

Also, while parts of "Cooper" did read like a screenplay or at least a treatment for an inevitable movie, the practice stands out more here. Maybe it's because the material is less effective, but the sections of "Go Mutants" that literally read like screenplay are more nuisance than stylistic enhancement. Like I said, reading the novel just became a chore, and while I wanted to like it, I just couldn't get into it. Unlike "Beth Cooper," which featured identifiable characters in the midst of all the jokes, there isn't anyone to latch onto here and pull us out of the verbiage.

The ideas and setting in "Go Mutants" may appeal to fans of 50s and 60s pop culture and especially the science fiction and monster movies of the era, but I warn you: Read the first 10 pages or so first. I read about 100-some more than that, and I never was able to warm up to this one. There may be a great payoff plotwise in the half that I abandoned, but I read enough to feel confident that the prose wasn't going to change.

But it bugs me that I didn't finish it! It really does.