Banango Lit

Lizzy Acker’s MONSTER PARTY has been a book for almost a year now, but i didn’t get my hands on a copy until about a month ago.

i met her when we read together in San Francisco and she left me with this lovely inscription on the title page: “For Diana! LOL JKBFF BRB (let’s be internet friends 4eva)”

i read the whole thing in about three days, finishing the final story while lying in the grass at Crissy Fields with some engaged couple taking photos a few yards away.

the book has 15 stories, most of them starring a protagonist named “Lizzy.” many times throughout i really wanted to FB Lizzy and ask her if she was the protagonist in these stories or if it was some manifestation of who she wants to be, who she imagines herself to be, or something entirely different. i won’t do that though because that’s annoying.

the first story, “The Basement,” has made me reluctant to go into the laundry room underneath my house. i was already reluctant but now i’m a little more reluctant. don’t let that scare you away though.

“Dave Is Looking for the Devil and He Wants to Be Friends” is one of the few longer pieces. Dave’s a college English teacher — Shakespeare to be exact — and he must be lonely or something, because he gets the narrator (I think it’s Lizzy again) to come by and clean his house even though it doesn’t look like it needs any cleaning.

in fact many of the characters seem to have something missing, or their lives are going nowhere, and I really liked seeing things and people through Lizzy’s (the narrator, not necessarily the author but maybe the author too) eyes.

one of the common threads is Lizzy meeting up with guy friends and kind-of-boyfriends with these sk8r dude names like Ben, Jared, Joe (he makes several appearances), Dave and Mike, or recounting the story of meeting up with one of these guys. sometimes there was a previous romantic entanglement or the wish for a romantic entanglement, and often there’s an absence of climax (no pun intended). things just kind of don’t happen, in a way that i think everyone is familiar with.

i realize that this sounds very carrie bradshaw-esque, but it is not. there’s not a whining rich girl moment in any of these episodes. it’s a collection of small towns and people who were important at one time or another, and maybe are still important but you don’t remember why and you’re unsure how to feel about that.

the title story is another longer piece about Lizzy going back to Oregon to hang out with Joe for his birthday (I’m assuming this one is author Lizzy, because she has an Oregon tattoo and is I think unashamedly all about OR and the Northwest) (with good reason). Twentysomethings get together and drink beer and eat barbecue and talk about whose ex-girlfriend has done a slutty, not cool thing. that’s the TV Guide synopsis.

a few of the stories are shorter, flash fiction-type pieces with a different tone:

“Winter” - driving on an icy road in a 1982 Honda as a metaphor for ill-advised, fumbly sex.

“Bug Attack!” - orange cockroaches. trillions of them. that’s all i’m gonna say.

“Baby” -  really great satirical tone in this one. if the apocalypse happens, this is how i want it to happen.

“Bus” - this could be a prose poem. examination of a simple moment in the kitchen between what i think are two lovers, seamlessly pairing it with a flashback.

TL;DR    basically, you should read MONSTER PARTY.

you can get started on that by clicking here.