Author: Tom Franklin

Published: 2006

Mood: If you’re THE person who enjoys gross-out humour and you don’t think it’s possible that any book could exceed top marks in every single gross-out category.

I don’t even know how to begin reviewing Smonk. I have no idea what it was that I just read. But I owe it to my imaginary hordes of fans to say something about this bizarre entry into the Western genre, so here goes.

Smonk tells the tale of three degenerates of varying levels, and a crapload of other characters who may get less story but are every bit as sick n’ twisted as the leads. Destiny leads the main three to an ultimate event so messed up that it makes you wonder what the f*ck would make someone’s brain come up with this kind of thing.

E.O. Smonk is an unkillable outlaw. He’s got basically every disease and medical condition you could have, from syphilis and tuberculosis to goiters and gout. Parts are literally falling off this man, yet apparently women all want to boink him.

Smonk rides into the town of Old Texas, Alabama, for his trial, but he’s a wise old devil. When the townsfolk go to lynch him, Smonk (and some paid associates waiting outside) kill almost every single man present, and burn down a good portion of the town.

Evavangeline is a 15-year-old outlaw and part-time sex worker. She’s being hunted by Captain Phail Walton and his ragtag Christian Deputies. Eva’s narration sounds like the teenage version of Robin Weigert’s Calamity Jane in Deadwood, and involves a LOT of sex. Young William, son of the bailiff from Smonk’s trial, ends up infatuated with Eva.

Captain Phail is an eccentric East Coast dandy, trying to prove that he’s not just a giant chicken shit by bringing sinners to justice. He thinks that Eva, who looks like a boy, is a sodomizer, so he and his men are chasing her down.

And the town of Old Texas is now FULL of creepy widows hanging out with their husbands’ corpses, kidnapping children, and hiding an extremely messed up secret. That makes it sound tantalizing, but seriously – it takes depravity to stunning new heights.

The description on the back of Smonk promises a weird, graphic, and funny Western. I like all of those things. Those things are my jam. It sounded like my kind of book.

Smonk is definitely the weirdest story I’ve read in a long, long time. The book’s deranged quality stems from it being equal parts Southern Gothic and Western. It has firearms, horseback tracking, explosives, whores, outlaws, and bounty hunters, all tossed in a blender with poverty, racism, religious fanaticism, incest, and some of the most deeply disturbing characters you’ll ever encounter.

Smonk is also most certainly graphic – but not the kind of graphic I was expecting, or am into.

Yes, there’s plenty of violence and gore here. SO MUCH blood and guts and burnt flesh and severed peckers, and church ladies being exploded. But the majority of the graphic details are more everyday kinds of things that you really don’t want to read about in detail, like bodily fluids and masturbation and giant face moles and feces. So much feces.

Smonk is also funny, depending on your sense of humour. It has a wry overall perspective, through the voices of its unique leads. And there are quite a few dark, twisted laughs.

But although I laughed, I found the overall humour to be bogged down with the copious amounts of feces and underage f*ckery. I’m not some giant prude, and I’m aware that kids became adults a lot younger back then (it’s set in 1911), but I still felt icky reading about the genitals and sexploits of a pre-teen boy and teenage girl. And don’t even get me started on all the rape and incest.

Creative? Absolutely. I’ve never read anything like it. Just, not my taste.

Smonk is definitely not the Western that you give as a gift to the Western fan in your life, unless you know for sure they have a deeply perverse sense of humour. Proceed with caution.