Lacy Dawn is a little girl who lives in a magicalforest where all the trees love her and she has a space alien friend who adoresher and wants to make her queen of the universe. What’s more, all the boysadmire her for her beauty and brains. Mommy is very beautiful and Daddy is verysmart, and Daddy’s boss loves them all.

Except.

Lacy Dawn, the eleven year old protagonist,perches precariously between the psychosis of childhood and the multipleneuroses of adolescence, buffeted by powerful gusts of budding sexuality andinfused with a yearning to escape the grim and brutal life of a ruralAppalachian existence. In this world, Daddy is a drunk with severe PTSD, andMommy is an insecure wraith. The boss is a dodgy lecher, not above leering atthe flat chest of an eleven-year-old girl.

Yes, all in one book.

Rarity From The Hollow is written ina simple declarative style that’s well- suited to the imaginary diary of adesperate but intelligent eleven-year-old – the story bumping joyfully betweenthe extraordinary and the banal.

The central planet of the universe is a vastshopping mall, and Lacy Dawn must save her world from a menace that arrives inthe form of a cockroach infestation. Look again and the space alien has madeDaddy smart and happy – or at least an eleven year old girl’s notion of what asmart and happy man should be. He has also made Mommy beautiful, givingher false teeth and getting the food stamp lady off her back.

About the only thing in the book that isbelievable is the nature of the narrative voice, and it is utterly compelling.You find yourself convinced that “Hollow” was written as a diary-basedautobiography by a young girl and the banal stems from the limits of herenvironment, the extraordinary from her megalomania. And that’s whatgives Rarity From The Hollow a chilling, engagingverisimilitude that deftly feeds on both the utter absurdity of the characters’motivations and on the progression of the plot.

Indeed, there are moments of utter darkness: Inone sequence, Lacy Dawn remarks matter-of-factly that a classmate was whippedto death, and notes that the assailant, the girl’s father, had to change hisunderpants afterward because they were soiled with semen. Odd, and oftenchilling notes, abound.

As I was reading it, I remembered when I firstread Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” at the age of 14. A veteran of Swift, Heller,and Frederick Brown, I understood absurdist humour in satire, but Vonnegut tookthat understanding and turned it on its ear.

In the spirit of Vonnegut, Eggleton (apsychotherapist focused on the adolescent patient) takes the genre and gives itanother quarter turn. A lot of people hated Vonnegut, saying he didn’t know therules of good writing. But that wasn’t true. Vonnegut knew the rules quitewell, he just chose to ignore them, and that is what is happening in Eggleton’snovel, as well.

Not everyone will like Rarity From TheHollow. Nonetheless, it should not be ignored.

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

http://www.amazon.com/Rarity-Hollow-Robert-Eggleton-ebook/dp/B007JDI508

http://electricrev.net/2014/08/12/a-universe-on-the-edge/ - http://electricrev.net/2014/08/12/a-universe-on-the-edge/