{"id":121633,"date":"2022-08-03T15:35:25","date_gmt":"2022-08-03T20:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=121633"},"modified":"2022-08-03T15:35:30","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T20:35:30","slug":"book-review-by-conor-hultman-tentacle-head-by-rick-claypool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/book-review-by-conor-hultman-tentacle-head-by-rick-claypool\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review by Conor Hultman: “Tentacle Head” by Rick Claypool"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tentacle Head
by Rick Claypool
Bear Creek Press ($15) – preorder here<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Balancing humor and horror in an appropriate admixture to get a childlike sense of dread is hard to do. Kafka could do it. Fabulists like Hans Christian Andersen could do it. Stravinsky could do it. Rick Claypool<\/strong> can do it, because he has done it in his new novella, Tentacle Head<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The scene is the ruined outskirts of a medical-industrial complex. The characters come from the population of mutated monsters that starve for limited food outside the complex. They are impish, weak and silly, with descriptive names: \u201cYellow Fluff,\u201d \u201cGreen Grapes,\u201d \u201cPurple Gum.\u201d This kindergarten class of genetic trash is all watched over by Myco, a compassionate pinecone with limbs and a myriad eyes. One day, the little monsters discover a \u201ccorpse,\u201d that after playing with it for several days, begins coughing; they dub the \u201cnot-corpse\u201d Tentacle Head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The imbalance set off from the title character\u2019s introduction into the group creates a chain of
nightmarish events, written in crayons and blood. Claypool has written his story with that particular concision and tone found in the classic children\u2019s picture books: The Velveteen Rabbit<\/em>, Goodnight Moon<\/em>, The Giving Tree<\/em>, and so on. It is a style that betrays larger depths of feeling with commonplace words and simple sentences, arranged poetically, with a flower arranger\u2019s aptitude for suggestion, to deliver potency via extreme economy. In the case of Tentacle Head<\/em>, the feeling is horror, in subject matter an adult horror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not in any way a book for children. But by using the form of a children\u2019s book, it can attack that part of the reader that remembers being read to as a child. In a beautifully sick way, this book desecrates what is for most people a locked set of memories, those earliest childhood reading experiences. The effect is a rare one for horror, and for the distinguishing horror reader, a delight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The illustrations by Sarah Allen Reed<\/strong> seal the deal for Tentacle Head<\/em>. They are peppered throughout the sixty-something pages, and they are a perfect fit for the contents, exactly as good-naturedly twisted. The dramatis personae character sheet in the beginning of the book will be all you need to see to know if this book is for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for my responsibility as a reviewer, I will say that Tentacle Head <\/em>is creative, messed up, cute, and a lot of fun. But, don\u2019t leave it around for your kids to get a hold of, unless you want them to grow up to be another sick puppy like yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tentacle Headby Rick ClaypoolBear Creek Press ($15) – preorder here Balancing humor and horror in an appropriate admixture<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123467,"featured_media":117396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20522],"tags":[22066,22063,20523,22065,22064],"class_list":["post-121633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-bear-creek-press","tag-book-reviedw","tag-conor-hultman","tag-rick-claypool","tag-tentacle-head"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/2022-02-03-Book-Reviews.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123467"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}