Barbelo's Blood
by Captain Joseph W. Barbelo
Galway Print, 2008http://www.barbelosblood.com
Non Serviam or Job's A Good'Un (?)
The first page of Captain Joseph Williams Barbelo's tornado reads "In Mad Mick We Trust," so naturally I felt all buttered up. Aw shucks, lil' ol me? I dove into Chapter Zero (Yes, Barbelo's Blood has a Chater Zero- two of them, in fact) and into a bloody confrontation in a London underpass in Thatcher's brutal 1980's. Three addicts with a cutthroat razor believe they have an easy mark in an eighty-two year old one-legged geezer pegging back to his tower block from the pub.
Guess again, silly bunnies.
Our foul-mouthed, pint-swilling, horny old narrator Joseph W. Barbelo is a veteran of every British conflict since the First World War. For an ex-black ops commando these punk muggers, gangland enforcers, and random jumped-up social welfare office pricks are but a source of amusement. With an antique sword cane (his "Happy Stick"), lead pipe or even just lighter fluid, vaseline and a bottle of Jif, Barbelo sends 'em by hundreds to the Happy Place. It's all part of the Craft, catch-madrift?
After twenty years in retirement, Barbelo's attempted mugging comes as a welcome awakening. Deciding that he needs a hobby, he tracks down the surviving punks, manipulates them in an amusing fashion into a major confrontation, and then announces that he is taking over their entire criminal operation. Enlisting the assistance of an old war buddy, Sid the Yid, for a pub-lunch summit with these South London Hounds, Barbelo convinces them to restructure their firm into a pyramid with him at the top.
And that all happens in the first sixty-two pages, when Barbelo is not relating whacked-out nightmares or falling for his hot young mad Irish love interest. It all goes completely U-Turn after that. Rather than an offbeat organized crime novel full of mad energy and masterful phrasing, Barbelo's Blood leaps into science fiction, conspiracy theory, political diatribe, and supernatural fantasy. Brid, the love interest of Barbelo and of Sid, introduces them to a whole new dimension of reality where Inner Orders, Illuminati, Dream Masters and Creators are apparently duking it out. Some of the agents of the evil powers, the feharchrove, walk our Earth disguised as Yardies and whatnot. And there's something about a Locale 22 where the Nazis won the war. After exposure to that action, Barbelo begins stockpiling weapons and planning to blow up Parliament. (The one in "our" London, not the one guarded by British SS.)
The IRA, gnostic texts, governmental psyops, assassination of US Air Force generals who look like John Wayne, Satanic child-sacrificing baddies in the House of Lords, Stealer's Wheel, the illegality of the EU, predators who live in houses full of inflatable wank dolls dressed up in Santa gear and tinsel, multidimensional lesbian biker warriors, curing cancer with a nine-volt battery and a matchbox, Operation Northwoods, military-grade LSD, time travel, Paradise Lost, the tarot deck, fate, geothermal energy that could power a planet of fifty billion, MI18 and MI13, the guns of Brixton, Locale 1, Locale 32, Locale 33, the answer to why flouride is in the drinking water- Barbelo's Blood has an anarchaic bit of everything. I suppose that the Dumbo and earless Mickey Mouse hoisting AK-47's on the cover should have been a clue.
Barbelo's Blood reminds me of Chuck Palahniuk and John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces- it's either brilliance or ravings, I'm baffled which. As a novel, it would have carried more impact if it had been disciplined into half of its 439 pages and remained focused on one of its themes- Lawful Rebellion, for instance. It's hard to imagine a mainstream reader getting all the way through this novel with a coherent understanding of what's going on. It will, however, be very popular with the G8 protestors who burn down McDonalds restaurants, drink only the purest bottled water and swallow any illicit chemical that has been put into the form of a pill.
Maybe he was talking about Mad Man Michael-?
Critical Mick says: Barbelo's Blood is a tornado rather than a novel- a mesmerizing tower of bits picked up from everywhere, swirling at incredibly high speeds and leaving a path of destruction. I like my writing spiced pretty high- a supernatural Nora Barnacle slaying bad novelists to replenish her own secret youth, perfect example- but Galway resident Joseph Barbelo's memoir/account/epic/polemic is a Locale or two away from my Happy Place.
Gerard Brennan interviewed Captain Joseph W. Barbelo in August 2009.
Declan Burke of Crime Always Pays plugged Barbelo's Blood in July 2009.
The Broad From Badsville also reviewed and recommended the novel in September 2009
|
