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The Average Human
Ellen Toby-Potter. MacAdam Cage: 2003 (hardcover). ISBN: 1931561338. 270 pages.
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The Average Human, maybe, but so far beyond and above the Average Novel! As you might imagine, we encounter a decent percentage of the brand new works of fiction and memoir in the course of a year at Good Books Lately, and we can't remember the last time we were this blown away by a debut novel.
The nebulous heroes of Toby-Potter's novel are the members of the Mayborn family. Every pleasant small town in America is home to at least one family like the Mayborns, social outcasts that suck the class right out of the neighborhood: front yard claimed by discarded household items, sons perpetually in jail, daughters perpetually pregnant. In the small town of Loomis, a fading hamlet in rural New York, the Mayborns are credited for a wide variety of crimes against humanity. When fourteen-year-old June Mayborn accidentally kills the aging leader of a former local cult, the funeral attracts a new crop of visitors and a new focus on just what it means to be a Mayborn. Are the Mayborns so far removed from the average human that all hope is lost? Wonderfully strange and unique, The Average Human will freak you out, not in a creepy, gross way, but in an unbelievably original way. The writing is brilliant, reminiscent of Barry Hannah in the creativity and perfection of images and metaphor. This book would be the perfect choice for any book group stuck in any kind of rut--you will not, we repeat, will not have read anything like this before!
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