PositiveAkimbo Bookshop... an uproarious cautionary tale/celebration of what can happen when a household is governed by a philosophy of extreme tinkering, written in prose that has itself been heavily hammered, soldered and jimmied into weird and wonderful shapes. The translator Emma Ramadan has clearly had enormous fun (along with not a few bouts of confusion and exasperation I would imagine) rendering it into English and the overall effect is Tom Sawyer by way of Molly Bloom ... The action is breathless, noisy and often grotesque ... Underneath the childish bravado; which includes a plethora of war metaphors, the narrator being an enthusiastic albeit selective student of history, Garreta has trowelled layer upon layer of linguistic, political and cultural symbolism whose subjects range from social inequality to homophobia and racism. While the tone of the novel is essentially playful, there’s plenty of profundity if you’re of a mind to look for it and if you find some of the set pieces described preposterous or are frustrated by that quintessentially oulipian trait of always going for one joke too many, ask yourself how much of the world around you isn’t shaped by one megalomaniacal tinkerer or another; you might well conclude that there’s plenty that could do with some serious waxing and buffing.
