Elect H. Mouse State Judge
A Novel
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A terrible crime occurs in Elect H. Mouse State Judge.
Two young girl are abducted and held hostage by a band of religious fanatics. The girls' anxious father, a politician on the eve of an important election, has reasons of his own not to go to the police, so he hires a pair of shady private eyes to investigate. All the elements of a classic noir—except that the kidnapped girls are mice, the abductors are Sunshine Family dolls, and the detectives are Barbie and Ken.
Part 1970s childhood dreamscape, part Raymond Chandler, this is a world both familiar and transformed. Sex shops, illicit affairs, spies, political hypocrisy, and dangerous zealots may coexist with Barbie and Ken's acrobatic poolside sex, but the crises of faith that Nelly Reifler's characters face are as real as our own. Elect H. Mouse State Judge is an unusual—and masterful—blend of irony and tenderness, and a moving portrayal of a father trying and failing to do the right thing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's hard to know what to make of Reifler's (See Through) strange novella, in which a fat mouse runs for state judge, flirts with a gecko, is interviewed by a fox for the local paper once he clinches the seat, and fails to learn precisely what has happened to his daughters, Margo and Susie, after they are abducted on election day. More bizarre still is the arrival of Barbie and Ken and Skipper the Barbie and Ken and Skipper, who live awkwardly together in their pink townhouse. There, Skipper gazes at her own flat feet and bakes tray after tray of cupcakes while Barbie and Ken engage in disturbing sex acts that involve not just the scraping together of their hard, plastic bodies, but a far more elaborate ritual of taking one another's heads and limbs out of their sockets and seeing what fits in their places say, Ken's arm in Barbie's neck hole or Barbie's leg in Ken's arm hole all of which makes for amusing and surprisingly graphic scenes. Even more odd is the revelation that H. Mouse's daughters have been kidnapped by religious fanatics, members of a very tiny, esoteric cult living in the woods. Not wanting to alert the police and risk bad press, H. Mouse keep quiet, hiring Barbie and Ken to bring his daughters home. While the dialogue and emotion wax and wane with a compelling and human feel, the story itself remains too quirky to trust. Even accepting the characters for who or what they are leaves the question of the cult, which has less logical purpose here than even Skipper's vacant stare.
