The Conspiracy Kid by E.P.ROSE, author of Beyond The Valley Of Sex & Shopping, tells the story of the earliest members of The Conspiracy Kid Fan Club, which may or may not be some kind of a new species of religion – depends, as most things do, upon your point of view.
The Conspiracy Kid (slogan: “You don’t have to be kiddish, but it helps.”) is a cheerfully meandering literary soap opera of a book, featuring a large and loosely interwoven cast of characters, all of whom deal in different ways with love and lunacy and loss – and doom and death and disaster and string. So, clearly, it’s a comedy. Edwin Mars, the poet, who features in the novel as a semi-fictional version of himself, has kindly written what he calls a “synoptic” sonnet, which neatly sort of sums the whole thing up:
This is the story of Joe Claude and me,
And of my son and the sisters he loved,
And of their father, how he came to be
In a graveyard - naked and uni-gloved;
Hamburgers, hurricanes, murder and string,
Werewolves and waiters and barmen and cooks,
From Maine to Biloxi, Mayfair to Pring,
Furniture, ketamine, golfing and books;
Marriages made and broken and mended
Under the shadow of loved ones who died.
See how the grieving billionaire ended
Up in that prison where laughter’s proscribed.
Will he be rescued then? Read and find out
What The Conspiracy Kid’s all about.
That’s Joe Claude, the billionaire, in case you’re wondering. Edwin’s son is called Richard and he’s in love with Iris Cohen, but then goes and opens a hamburger restaurant (Red, White and Blues) with her sister, Muriel Cohen - and their father, Lionel Cohen, is a golf pro, which explains “uni-gloved”, but not how he comes to be naked in a graveyard .......