Mushroomhead

by Stephen Toman

After ejecting from a stolen plane, test pilot Frances Novgorod awakens in a motel room with a bag of clothes, a wallet full of cash, a severed arm, and only a vague memory of who he is. Soon rumours of jellyfish babies, animal mutilations, random killings, and a one-armed man who seems to be following him, lead him to believe that a Soviet invasion of the USA is underway. Meanwhile, Lena and Simone, two undercover KGB agents, must find a way to escape the ensuing chaos.

218 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 29, 2024

Reviews

[Foday Mannah]

The best books, in my opinion, are usually the perfect fusion of ideas and style. Stephen Toman's "Mushroomhead" represents the perfect example of this synergy. The novel deftly combines elements of the timeless tensions of the Cold War whilst also veering into elements of the supernatural and extraordinary. With an engaging command of language, we are presented with characters, settings and a plot that will linger long, all the more memorable for the scope and range of the themes addressed. A privilege to read!

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK, I have read a lot of Stephen Tomans' work, and I have to say this is probably my favourite one so far. it's totally out there.it's a bit sci-fi, a bit cold war thriller, and a whole lot of weird. The situation is an odd one. A downed US pilot finds himself in an America that doesn't quite feel right. We follow several characters surviving this strange place.part theme park, part prison, and a whole lot of strange.

if you are a fan of Cold War thrillers and weird sci-fi, this is right up your street.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a problematic read for me. I understood slightly less of this short novel than I do a Kurt Vonnegut novel, the main thing I can compare reading this to. When Vonnegut is jazzing around in his writing, which is most of the time, I can usually see most of what he is up to and trying to accomplish, especially what he is satirizing. (I have given Vonnegut's work less than three stars when I couldn't.) I suspect Toman is doing something very similar here in terms of American culture and the Cold War, but it's harder for me to tell exactly what.

There are elements to this novel I like: the characters (Frank Novgorod, Lena, and Simone), the setting (a fake American small town in Russia), and even the starting premise (American pilot crashes in fake America and has to get back home). But the deliberate Brechtian (the author's favored adjective) narration made the story too difficult for me to understand. In the past decade or so of reading I have learned to tolerate a good deal of ambiguity in the content of what I read, but I still need to be able to understand more than I could here in order to better appreciate a work.

The writing is well-controlled in terms of achieving what the author was going for, I think. There are certain readers who like this type of satire that will get much more out of this work than I will. I would be willing to give another Toman novel (he says he really doesn't do short stories, a shame because Vonnegut was most at home in them) a try sometime in the future, if occasion permits, but I think I will avoid ones written in this full-on Brechtian style. Toman made this work very affordable for reading on Kindle in case anyone else wishes to try the experiment.

[Gabriel Gram · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s a lot of Indie works out there that tries their hand at a first-person narrative, but to date, I’ve never read one quite like «Mushroomhead».

It starts out simple enough, with a drugged-out American army pilot crashing into a Soviet training camp, specifically designed to train agents to act like Americans. Since he’s not aware of where he is, and the camp commanders doesn’t know what to do with him, the pilot spends some confusing weeks dealing with people who are similar to, but subtly different from, the people back home.

What sounds like the opening of a Cold War comedy quickly becomes something considerably darker, with mutated trees, mutilated animals, and an ever increasing concern about background radiation. Severed limbs, random murders, and arthouse films all jostle for attention, weaved into an almost Gonzo-style narrative.

More than anything else, it’s this choice of narrative style that sets the story apart from most examples of weird fiction, and the book has more in common with Samuel Beckett than H.P. Lovecraft. The author himself seems to favour Bertolt Brecht, and given both the size of the training camp and the frequent need for the agents to break character, it’s a well placed reference. Even leaving that aside, it’s refreshing to read an author that can make casual comments about both German Expressionism and Orgone Energy in equal measure.

None of this changes the fact that the book is still squarely placed in the weird (or even bizarre) fiction genre, and as such there is a fair bit of body fluids and entrails being tossed about. It’s not always for the faint of heart, or something you’d necessarily want to read right before dinner, but it never quite tips over into body horror. Overall, it fits the narrative.

I haven’t read the author’s other books, but «Mushroomhead» is definitely one-of-a-kind, and if you’re up for something out of the ordinary, I can wholeheartedly recommend it.