H's Reviews > Hawkline Monster

A miniscule, oddball masterpiece. Essentially functioning as one extended deadpan joke, "The Hawkline Monster" is a strange story told straightforwardly. Structured in Brautigan's characteristic fragmentary chapters (which average about two pages and sometimes contain little more than one singular thought), the plot begins with contract killers Greer and Cameron being approached by a stranger named Magic Child. She has a job for them: come to Hawkline Manor, a house in eastern Oregon but near nothing of note, and kill the monster that lives in the ice caves below the house. The wholly original voice Brautigan creates depends in large part upon the originality of his story, which, in large part, depends on its weirdness. In the book, this weirdness takes two forms, which alternate: first, the setting and circumstances are inherently weird, as if they have always been that way, and the characters simply accept them for being weird; second, additional weird circumstances pop up along the way and the characters call them out for their weirdness. There's something inherently satisfying about the off-the-wall creations Brautigan comes up with here, but you'll also be reading for their comedic payoff. Some of the laughs come from the audacity of the story's twists and turns, and some come from the ways in which he gets out of the situations he puts his characters in. And though the book can be read in one sitting, I found myself extending it for five days because I didn't want it to end. I can't remember the last time a book made me slow down to finish it. If there's any higher mark of praise you can give a book, I don't know what it would be.