Another bad book for an anxious new parent

The night before I went into hospital, I started reading The Slapping Man by Andrew Lindsay.

I didn't get far that night. On page one a woman gives birth to a child with a monstrously deformed jaw. On page 2 she's worried he'll bite her boob off while breastfeeding.

Luckily that turned out all right in the end. The baby grew up up to be Ernie, a man with a powerful jaw that could withstand any amount of violence.

This book took me two weeks to read because I kept losing my place.* But this is exactly the sort of self-consciously odd book I find a bit irritating at the best of times. It's set in an isolated coastal community of indeterminate siuze full of "quirky characters". There's Ernie who makes his money from being slapped and his quirky parents and the quirky town butcher who wants to slaughter every different animal and the town publican who's scared of his brother the butcher and quirky Jean who sleeps with everyone but hasn't kissed anyone since her first boyfriend died and finally there's Vronsky the fake town shrink, the quirkiest of them all because he hears all the town's secrets.

It's structured around really short chapters focussed on one character that may not relate to anything else that happens. Some of these are quite poetic but it's impossible to work out how much time passes during the action - it could be weeks or a couple of decades. Yes, I realise this is probably the point.

Anyway I was surprised that even though there was heaps I didn't like, it wasn't that bad. Some of it was even pretty funny. Oh and I liked the cover.

*Admittedly, for most of that time, I WAS heavily medicated, sleep deprived and a bit excited about having a tiny baby of my own to cuddle and wrap up and try to tickle.