Literature Review: People Are Strange by James Newman

Posted by pete in General, Literature, News, Reviews on November 19th, 2008

People Are Strange (Signed by the Author and Artist)
Author: James Newman,  lives in the mountains of North Carolina with his wife, Glenda, and their son, Jamie. His novels include Midnight Rain, The Wicked, and Animosity.

Artist: Alex McVey

Foreword by Jeff Strand

Publisher: Croatoan Publishing
1. The Honest - To - God True Story of Earl P. and A Bug Called Abraham Lincoln
2. The Good, The Bad and the Severely Maladjusted
3. Your Cold, Black Heart
4. The Tell-Tale Fart (A Parody)
5. Bless This Meal, O Lord
6. Suffer The Children
7. Keeping Up With The Joneses
8. A Town Called Hatred
9. Holy Rollers
10. Holy Rollers (Graphic-Segment)

As the title states, people are indeed strange and James Newman uses his considerable talents to point that out. There are no monsters in this book except for the human perpetrators. After all there is no species on this planet that does worse things to each other than we humans.

Nevertheless, this book is exceptional (except for the Poe parody, I personally don’t like parodies of any sort). The tales are twisted and decadent, with a perverse sense of humor liberally sprinkled throughout.

These stories are totally off the wall and fun. Newman has a style all his own that kept a smile on my face as I read these stories.  My favorites were The Honest - To - God True Story of Earl P. and A Bug Called Abraham Lincoln and Keeping Up With The Joneses.

Newman also included his previously published but out of print Holy Rollers. An absolute gem of a story about what happens when that inevitable knock on the door from some religious nuts goes very bad. Newman states that this will be the last printing. He also includes a few panels for a graphic novel based on this story that never came to be.

If you like short story collections, this is one to add to your list of must haves. I thoroughly enjoyed Newman’s outlook on the human condition and all its faults and I look foward to delving into his past works.