Marsha Sprinkle: Suitcase thief. Scammer. Master of disguise. Dogs and children hate her. Her own family wants her dead. She’s smart, she’s desperate, she’s disturbed, and she’s on the run with a big chip on her shoulder. They call her "Liarmouth"―until one insane man makes her tell the truth.
If Liarmouth had a plot, this would be the inciting incident. Instead, the novel unfurls as a tangled ribbon of manic events untouched by the logic of cause and effect ... You don’t go to the films of John Waters for a tidy three-act structure, and you don’t go to his essays for elements locking into place with the organizational splendor of a magic square. Naturally, there are qualities you shouldn’t seek in his fiction either. These include understated punctuation, expressions of interiority and sociohistorical breadth ... Like all novels, this one is bounded by the subjectivity of its creator. But Waters doesn’t even bother to throw his voice; every character thinks and speaks exactly like the author. This move only works, as it does here, in rare cases ... crotch punching, exploding televisions, geysers of blood, deviants, wackos and reprobates ... Waters writes toward the funny bone and the gag reflex. He is not at the mercy of political correctness or good taste or spelling conventions. Like any true weirdo, he seems to consider himself normal. When you read a book like this, you’re wandering into a maze of anarchy that is fully legible only to its creator ... For real strangeness in novels, you usually have to voyage to lands that still tolerate the obdurate, the sleazy, the resentful, the offline and any other attributes presently considered unmarketable. Liarmouth is a good novel. It is a better gateway drug.
Nasty, violent, and obscene? Over-the-top, ricocheting, and hilarious? All of the above describe the self-described Pope of Trash and Filth Elder’s first novel ... an uproariously explicit tale about a smart and vicious serial liar and criminal mastermind with a silly name ... Waters revels in misfits, including a tickle maniac, a dog inciter, Daryl’s talking bisexual penis, and Marsha’s perpetual-motion-freak daughter and her bouncing-and-shimmying followers. Their misadventures are absurd, vulgar, bloody, comic, and weirdly sweet as devilish Waters keeps the pedal to the metal, toys with the possibility of anyone opening psychopath Marsha’s hard-clenched heart, and slyly advocates for acceptance and love.
... nothing short of stunningly outrageous—a nonstop smorgasbord of theft, deceit, and rancor fueled by an unrelenting, unabashedly sexualized comic genius ... recommended for intrepid readers cognizant of satire.
