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Mammother
The people of Pie Time are suffering from God's Finger, a mysterious plague that leaves its victims dead with a big hole through their chests. In each hole is a random consumer product. Mano Medium, a sensitive, young cigarette-factory worker in love, does his part by quitting the factory to work double-time as Pie Time's replacement barber and butcher, and by holding the things found in the holes of the newly dead. However, the more people die, the bigger Mano becomes.
br>XO, the power-hungry corporation bent on overtaking Pie Time, and Father Mothers, the bumbling priest, have their own ideas about how to capitalize on God's Finger. By contrast, and powered by honoring his own lost loves, Mano fights to resist this exploitation by teaching death to those who can't afford to survive it. As Pie Time and Mano both grow irrevocably, Mano must make a decision about how he can best fit into his own life.
br>With a large cast of unusual characters, each struggling with their own complex and tangled relationships to death, money, and love, Mammother is a fabulist's tale of how we hold on and how we let go in a rapidly growing world.
br>XO, the power-hungry corporation bent on overtaking Pie Time, and Father Mothers, the bumbling priest, have their own ideas about how to capitalize on God's Finger. By contrast, and powered by honoring his own lost loves, Mano fights to resist this exploitation by teaching death to those who can't afford to survive it. As Pie Time and Mano both grow irrevocably, Mano must make a decision about how he can best fit into his own life.
br>With a large cast of unusual characters, each struggling with their own complex and tangled relationships to death, money, and love, Mammother is a fabulist's tale of how we hold on and how we let go in a rapidly growing world.
328 pages, Paperback
First published September 12, 2017
17 people are currently reading
621 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
September 23, 2017
Holy fucking amazing! Featherproof Press and Zachary Schomburg have something absolutely breathtaking here.
A mysterious plague called "God's Finger" takes most of the people of Pie Town much too soon, leaving behind a unique death gift within a perfectly circular hole in their chests. Young Mano begins to collect these gifts, and stores them all over his body, which begins to disfigure itself grotesquely around them.
Its pages are full of catastrophe and catastrophic love. It's simultaneously gorgeous and utterly gonzo. And I'm disappointed that it ultimately came to an end.
A mysterious plague called "God's Finger" takes most of the people of Pie Town much too soon, leaving behind a unique death gift within a perfectly circular hole in their chests. Young Mano begins to collect these gifts, and stores them all over his body, which begins to disfigure itself grotesquely around them.
Its pages are full of catastrophe and catastrophic love. It's simultaneously gorgeous and utterly gonzo. And I'm disappointed that it ultimately came to an end.
March 14, 2019
The Anti-Review: All the fine things to be said of this super-fine book would prematurely exterminate your enjoyment in uncovering its secrets. Well, not so much uncovered qua “solved” as encountered, found intact: there it is, yes that is indeed a secret, I know what they look like, an alluring enigma that stares back with commensurate, implacable fascination. It is a masterstroke of minor literature. Accepting the words and names as they come allows for the revelation of some stunning sentences which congeal into a beastly and sublime narrative. Schomburg displays an intense and discerning acuity regarding the functions and possibilities of prose to vehiculate something altogether novel yet familiar--uncanny, in a word. Equally surprising are the book’s playful dreamy humor and deadly nightmarish anxiety, interwoven and inextricable. Few are the experimental works which treat with such savvy aplomb everything within its scope: family, love, money, death, work, religion, sex, nature, society, and of course language. “Mammother” is an exemplar of writing that thrives on the autonomy of language while registering, with impeccable sensitivity, its echo within us, variously called intimacy, desire, loss, and self. Weird in all the right ways, this was a thrilling find. Featherproof Books has my attention.
October 24, 2017
If you mashed together Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, Shane Jones' Light Boxes and Robert Hill's The Remnants, you'd get something like this insanely excellent debut novel from Zachary Schomburg.
Part whimsical fairy tale, part dark chimera, part astute dissertation on death, part droll study of human nature, Mammother is *all* genius. It is other-worldly and fantastical, and Schomberg's unbelievable talent will leave you thrilled, breathless, and heartsick for more. Just dive in blindly -- do it now!
Part whimsical fairy tale, part dark chimera, part astute dissertation on death, part droll study of human nature, Mammother is *all* genius. It is other-worldly and fantastical, and Schomberg's unbelievable talent will leave you thrilled, breathless, and heartsick for more. Just dive in blindly -- do it now!
January 16, 2021
Probably the weirdest thing I've ever read, but I loved every second of it. The writing was deeply poetic, magical and just flat out beautiful. The reoccurring themes of death, love, sexuality, gender, religion, and consumerism were profoundly explored in a subtle way; nothing felt forced or out of place. I really hope Schomburg will write another novel in the near future. And i will definitely re read this in the future.
July 3, 2020
This book is beyond. Absolutely bonkers. I just finished it. I’m raw, y’all.
The poetry in this book is mind-blowingly gorgeous. The quiet poignancy of every word whacks you in the face. The characters in this book are singular, expertly crafted, and deeply memorable.
This book is sad: so, so sad - but even with the melancholy, it remains defiantly hopeful. I love a good sad book. Remember A Little Life? Mammother isn’t anything like A Little Life except for the fact that I left the book feeling the power inside of loss and pain.
Mano Medium is one of the greatest protagonists I have had the pleasure of following. Rooting for Mano feels like rooting for myself, and this wasn’t just because Mano was struggling with his sexuality and grief. Mano held on to his mourning out of fear. He was afraid of letting go of the love when he let go the grief.
The world in Mammother boasts a level of simultaneous poetic detail and social critique unlike so much modern fiction I’ve read recently. Severance and Mammother were two pieces of fiction that blew my mind 2019. Mammother might be one of my favorite books I’ve ever read.
What Schomburg has created is a landscape of magic and sadness. It’s gorgeous. Read this!
The poetry in this book is mind-blowingly gorgeous. The quiet poignancy of every word whacks you in the face. The characters in this book are singular, expertly crafted, and deeply memorable.
This book is sad: so, so sad - but even with the melancholy, it remains defiantly hopeful. I love a good sad book. Remember A Little Life? Mammother isn’t anything like A Little Life except for the fact that I left the book feeling the power inside of loss and pain.
Mano Medium is one of the greatest protagonists I have had the pleasure of following. Rooting for Mano feels like rooting for myself, and this wasn’t just because Mano was struggling with his sexuality and grief. Mano held on to his mourning out of fear. He was afraid of letting go of the love when he let go the grief.
The world in Mammother boasts a level of simultaneous poetic detail and social critique unlike so much modern fiction I’ve read recently. Severance and Mammother were two pieces of fiction that blew my mind 2019. Mammother might be one of my favorite books I’ve ever read.
What Schomburg has created is a landscape of magic and sadness. It’s gorgeous. Read this!
March 13, 2018
Strangest book I have ever read. I loved it.
September 27, 2020
To have lived in the town of Pie Time for the short time Zachary Schomburg allowed felt not long enough. Though the ending was perfectly sweet (and appropriately bitter), I did not want to take my hint and leave. I wanted to live in the fabulist, Lynchian, and absolutely unique world where birds are myth, where consumerism and homogeneity manifest like a disease, and where fathers leave their families to hunt mammoths––regardless of it they’ll find them or not.
Mammother is a novel mostly about Mano Medium (a boy who started like a girl) as he (maybe) shifts from naive young personhood to a very conflicted, confusing, and challenging adulthood. He navigates the town of Pie Time and all its inhabitants (so many that the book comes with a character list––which is almost unnecessary as Schomburg balances their appearances so well that they are each unforgettable). But the town’s conflict comes in the form of a disease knowns as God’s Finger: folks are struck dead, a cavity in their chest like the index finger jab of God, and in that cavity is an item––cast off or refuse. Mano takes it upon himself to start collecting these remainder items, fusing them into his body. Those that die are sent downstream on a river called The Cure, a pilgrimage to the afterlife (which is a cure for the pains of life), even though that turns out to be totally wrong.
The novel uses a Dickensian narrative style, floating away from Mano, the focal point, to give us glimpses of the towns other inhabitants. Such as The Barber, The Florist, The Landlord, The Butcher, characters who have no identity other than what they do. There’s also Pepe Letz, who is the love of Mano’s life and the center of Mano’s internal struggle throughout the novel. But toward the end, this narrative focus drifts away from Mano and instead follows two characters who hold Mano close to their hearts, unaware that Mano holds his closest and very dead friend, Pepe, in the place where God’s Finger may or may not touch.
The world of Mammother is established on page one. It has one of the most astounding opening paragraphs––maybe ever. It goes:
If you felt ready to die, wanted it bad enough, and had little enough to live for, The Reckoner would grant your wish and fall on you. It would crush your skeleton deep into the ground. No one in Pie Time would hear it fall, and no one would know when it stood itself back up. But it would always stand itself back up. The blood on its bark would wash away in the rain.
If that’s not for you, keep reading. Because Mammother is a chameleon, changing with every act break. I say acts because there are three parts, and each one is a separate element that, combined, make up the entire story of Mano Medium and the people of Pie Time. Each part feels episodic, each part a complete story. And yet each is tethered to the previous moment in a way that doesn’t feel convenient. It’s a bigger story. It goes from being a Twin-Peaks-esque town story to a ghost story to a consumerist/gentrification invasion, and finally to a myth-like sexual awakening that verges on body horror.
There’s been comparisons to Richard Brautigan, and while the complementary parts are true, I think this is an epic with episodic restraint that is beyond the scale of most of Brautigan’s work. Like Brautigan, the core of the book is about death and life. But to Schomburg’s credit alone, it’s also about transitions, gentrification, consumerism, nature vs. man, and fact vs. myth. It’s a labyrinth of truth and confusion. But mostly it’s about Love: familial, romantic, and the desperate love of needing to feel wanted or seen or loved back. It’s about loving someone and not being able to tell them before they are gone forever.
When Mano asks about his absent father who’s gone off to hunt mammoths, his mother says, “Only the greatest hunter can find something that doesn’t exist. Why bother spending your time for something that can be found?” And at the heart, this is the compass to navigate Mammother. Because it seems each of its characters search for something that can’t be found. Mano searches for love in those that are dead. Others search for answers to God questions. They search for love in loveless places, for individuality, religious purpose. They search, knowing that what they want likely isn’t there.
Schomburg publication history consists mostly of poetry collections and chapbooks. His poems are surreal and absurd, but direct in their observations. With Mammother, he uses that poetic language to craft a novel that feels biblical, passages that float lyrically from one moment to the next––like the reader is a ghost passing through these events. And though the novel can be at times incredibly sad, everything is laced with his signature absurdity. Moments of death and depression are written in a way that, (again) like David Lynch, made me laugh out loud while being simultaneously disturbed or saddened.
I bought my copy of Mammother at a name-your-price book festival in Portland. The guy I buy the book from takes it from me and writes on the inside. He asks my name and I tell him. It’s Portland, so I don’t think anything of it. I thank him, and then we are gone to each other. As I walk to the car, I open the book to the author photo and realize the guy who wrote in my book was Zachary Schomburg. I flip to the front and read:
To Tom, Who I feel like is my friend, from now until the end, like maybe we’ll be on the same boat, the only two. May we never sink.
Yours ––Z
And that’s what it was like reading Mammother: you are in a boat with the God who created Pie Time and all its inhabitants and all its drama. And you never sink because the beauty carries you downstream on The Cure, birds flying overhead.
Mammother is a novel mostly about Mano Medium (a boy who started like a girl) as he (maybe) shifts from naive young personhood to a very conflicted, confusing, and challenging adulthood. He navigates the town of Pie Time and all its inhabitants (so many that the book comes with a character list––which is almost unnecessary as Schomburg balances their appearances so well that they are each unforgettable). But the town’s conflict comes in the form of a disease knowns as God’s Finger: folks are struck dead, a cavity in their chest like the index finger jab of God, and in that cavity is an item––cast off or refuse. Mano takes it upon himself to start collecting these remainder items, fusing them into his body. Those that die are sent downstream on a river called The Cure, a pilgrimage to the afterlife (which is a cure for the pains of life), even though that turns out to be totally wrong.
The novel uses a Dickensian narrative style, floating away from Mano, the focal point, to give us glimpses of the towns other inhabitants. Such as The Barber, The Florist, The Landlord, The Butcher, characters who have no identity other than what they do. There’s also Pepe Letz, who is the love of Mano’s life and the center of Mano’s internal struggle throughout the novel. But toward the end, this narrative focus drifts away from Mano and instead follows two characters who hold Mano close to their hearts, unaware that Mano holds his closest and very dead friend, Pepe, in the place where God’s Finger may or may not touch.
The world of Mammother is established on page one. It has one of the most astounding opening paragraphs––maybe ever. It goes:
If you felt ready to die, wanted it bad enough, and had little enough to live for, The Reckoner would grant your wish and fall on you. It would crush your skeleton deep into the ground. No one in Pie Time would hear it fall, and no one would know when it stood itself back up. But it would always stand itself back up. The blood on its bark would wash away in the rain.
If that’s not for you, keep reading. Because Mammother is a chameleon, changing with every act break. I say acts because there are three parts, and each one is a separate element that, combined, make up the entire story of Mano Medium and the people of Pie Time. Each part feels episodic, each part a complete story. And yet each is tethered to the previous moment in a way that doesn’t feel convenient. It’s a bigger story. It goes from being a Twin-Peaks-esque town story to a ghost story to a consumerist/gentrification invasion, and finally to a myth-like sexual awakening that verges on body horror.
There’s been comparisons to Richard Brautigan, and while the complementary parts are true, I think this is an epic with episodic restraint that is beyond the scale of most of Brautigan’s work. Like Brautigan, the core of the book is about death and life. But to Schomburg’s credit alone, it’s also about transitions, gentrification, consumerism, nature vs. man, and fact vs. myth. It’s a labyrinth of truth and confusion. But mostly it’s about Love: familial, romantic, and the desperate love of needing to feel wanted or seen or loved back. It’s about loving someone and not being able to tell them before they are gone forever.
When Mano asks about his absent father who’s gone off to hunt mammoths, his mother says, “Only the greatest hunter can find something that doesn’t exist. Why bother spending your time for something that can be found?” And at the heart, this is the compass to navigate Mammother. Because it seems each of its characters search for something that can’t be found. Mano searches for love in those that are dead. Others search for answers to God questions. They search for love in loveless places, for individuality, religious purpose. They search, knowing that what they want likely isn’t there.
Schomburg publication history consists mostly of poetry collections and chapbooks. His poems are surreal and absurd, but direct in their observations. With Mammother, he uses that poetic language to craft a novel that feels biblical, passages that float lyrically from one moment to the next––like the reader is a ghost passing through these events. And though the novel can be at times incredibly sad, everything is laced with his signature absurdity. Moments of death and depression are written in a way that, (again) like David Lynch, made me laugh out loud while being simultaneously disturbed or saddened.
I bought my copy of Mammother at a name-your-price book festival in Portland. The guy I buy the book from takes it from me and writes on the inside. He asks my name and I tell him. It’s Portland, so I don’t think anything of it. I thank him, and then we are gone to each other. As I walk to the car, I open the book to the author photo and realize the guy who wrote in my book was Zachary Schomburg. I flip to the front and read:
To Tom, Who I feel like is my friend, from now until the end, like maybe we’ll be on the same boat, the only two. May we never sink.
Yours ––Z
And that’s what it was like reading Mammother: you are in a boat with the God who created Pie Time and all its inhabitants and all its drama. And you never sink because the beauty carries you downstream on The Cure, birds flying overhead.
July 2, 2019
This work is special and beautiful, like a small yet defiant flower standing alone in the sun, or a perfectly smoothed rock come upon unexpectedly. And yet, if you asked me what it's about (as a co-worker did the other day) I would be hard-pressed to come up with a satisfactory answer. Love? Loss and mourning? The only haircut worth giving? The simple beauty of this book is enjoyably baffling. I never quite knew what to expect but it was all about the ride. The writing and language made me feel in ways only really comparable to Richard Brautigan or parts of Vonnegut or Tom Robbins. Words that when strung together create alchemical fizzy magic in your brain and chest. In the end maybe God's finger is nothing more than the exquisite joy/pain of existence itself.
Side note: I enjoyed the shout out to Mother Foucault's Books in Portland (acknowledgements).
One of my favorite independent bookstores and a must stop when I am up that way.
And good job featherproof books for creating a high quality physical object.
It was pure pleasure to hold and read.
It's high time for a Pie Time.
Side note: I enjoyed the shout out to Mother Foucault's Books in Portland (acknowledgements).
One of my favorite independent bookstores and a must stop when I am up that way.
And good job featherproof books for creating a high quality physical object.
It was pure pleasure to hold and read.
It's high time for a Pie Time.
December 2, 2017
This is it! This is the one! When I'm looking for a surreal novel, this is what I'm looking for. This is a brilliant and highly imaginative work of art.
It is definitely one of the most original novels I've read. Although surreal, it's not just randomness for the sake of randomness. Everything in this book fits together nicely.
I love all the bizarre, beautiful images. It's very poetic. Which is not surprising considering Schomburg is also a brilliant poet.
Mammother was also hilarious. I laughed aloud while reading the part about the bear with no arms.
This book is just perfection. I have a feeling it's going to become very big. Mammoth even.
It is definitely one of the most original novels I've read. Although surreal, it's not just randomness for the sake of randomness. Everything in this book fits together nicely.
I love all the bizarre, beautiful images. It's very poetic. Which is not surprising considering Schomburg is also a brilliant poet.
Mammother was also hilarious. I laughed aloud while reading the part about the bear with no arms.
This book is just perfection. I have a feeling it's going to become very big. Mammoth even.
May 10, 2021
What an insanely bonkers book. What a raw, poetic, magical, and beautiful book that covers a lot of themes, including: sexuality, gender, love, capitalism, and (of course) death. A singular book.
December 17, 2018
More like a 4.5. This book combines tenderness and violence. It crawls under your skin only to pet you. A full world, one that makes no sense but never question. There is no need to question only to the see the world as reactions to ideas and the word Mammother. This word is made up, thats good as I imagine everything in this is made up.
July 11, 2017
This is going to be big.
January 11, 2024
Thanks to John Oakley for letting my husband borrow this book. Thanks to my husband for never reading it, eventually prompting me to snag it for myself. Thanks to the author of this book for writing something truly unique and beautiful and funny but also… really confusing!!!! I enjoyed the ride tho!
September 12, 2018
Mammother!! Crazy and sad and needs to be made into a movie - with puppets maybe?
May 16, 2019
I had hoped this would be an enjoyable experience, but this one became a chore to read. I feel like I'm babysitting a patient with Alzheimer's every time I pick it up.
March 18, 2025
Stunning; simultaneously about everything and nothing. Life and death and grief and sex and greed
January 15, 2024
I went into this book completely blind. I've read some of Schomburg's poetry so I already knew he was a freaky weirdo (affectionate) and was all about getting that in novel-form. In the beginning of this book I was really into everything about it. The world-building, the distinct character voices, the easy-to-picture setting, the main conflict. I feel like a lot was going on but I wasn't getting bogged down or lost in it at all!
Midway through Part 2 however, it really hits a fucking wall. It's like, frustrating, because the more the story went on the more I was like "Why is this happening..." because a lot of moments I just really could have lived without reading. Lots of random sexual parts (feat. a surprise trope I absolutely hate with every fiber of my being fdhjks) and scenes that were so bizarro graphic that I was just like, um okay? Basically it just never recovers from this downward spiral.
I don't know by the end of it I was just ready for it to come to an end but I think the ending of Part 2 just really fucking lost me like I checked out the second that happened. I do hope Schomburg writes another book in the future because this was a pretty solid debut novel, like, I'm pulling punches here!
I did like the end scene despite not liking a certain thing, but idk if I'll ever read this book again.
Midway through Part 2 however, it really hits a fucking wall. It's like, frustrating, because the more the story went on the more I was like "Why is this happening..." because a lot of moments I just really could have lived without reading. Lots of random sexual parts (feat. a surprise trope I absolutely hate with every fiber of my being fdhjks) and scenes that were so bizarro graphic that I was just like, um okay? Basically it just never recovers from this downward spiral.
I don't know by the end of it I was just ready for it to come to an end but I think the ending of Part 2 just really fucking lost me like I checked out the second that happened. I do hope Schomburg writes another book in the future because this was a pretty solid debut novel, like, I'm pulling punches here!
I did like the end scene despite not liking a certain thing, but idk if I'll ever read this book again.
February 21, 2025
this was a curious book about how people handle grief with SUCH a creative premise and sometimes very beautiful writing--I mean, this guy is a real writer. (That being said, he should try again.) I almost felt by Part 2 that he was meandering and not really knowing how to finish; I think a lot of included (sexual) elements did not serve him or this book, but he is a talented worldbuilder and a poet, and I believe in him & whatever he writes after his debut
January 31, 2025
This is a book that is going to stay with me for a long time. It is both about nothing and everything. It is surreal and weird and beautiful and important and lovely. I want every person I know to read this book so we can talk about it together.
January 20, 2021
I made an account just so I can write out a review for Mammother. This book is my favorite of all time. Not only is this novel compelling and oftentimes hilarious, but its dialogue and prose made me fall in love with poetry for the first time. Zachary Schomburg has a magical ability to draw you into characters that are both unique from the people of our world yet so distinctly familiar that you really do share their emotions. I have read this book twice and have recommended it to countless people. I even went on and bought a drawing made by Schomburg (very multifaceted). I really hope he writes another novel soon!
March 16, 2025
an absolutely fascinating descent into lyrical absurdism. clearly the work of a poet, applying their craft to a unique tale of queer identity and confronting grief.
May 4, 2025
Strangest book I’ve ever read. Beautiful, dream like, nonsensical and everything I want out of a book
September 16, 2019
what a fucking strange book i think about everyday
October 17, 2021
One of my favorite books.
March 17, 2024
I will spend the rest of my days looking for a book as compelling as this one for me.
February 24, 2021
The people of Pie Time are being struck down by what they call God’s Finger. This mysterious plague kills people, leaving behind a death hole with something left inside it. Mano Medium, former cigarette-factory worker turned butcher and barber, starts collecting the things left inside Pie Town’s dead residents, and with each thing he becomes bigger.
What to say about Mammother.? Reading the synopsis you would be well within your rights to think it silly. But it’s not. It’s poetic, touching, funny, sad, bizarre and utterly human.
The novel is a reflection on grief. It examines our fear of death, and also our fascination with it. It looks at how we process the loss of a loved one and how we are always trying to make sense of the nonsensical. It explores the natural rhythms of life, love and loss, and also delves into the way we wield consumerism and technology as ways of beating the natural order of things.
I kept thinking that Mammother would go too far to keep me interested. But it didn’t. As each chapter progressed it only made me want to slip further beneath the surface of it. The writing is beautiful. The structure like a song. And I want to read it all over again to feel it all again and try and understand it a bit more because it was just so fascinating and enjoyable. Everyone should read this book.
What to say about Mammother.? Reading the synopsis you would be well within your rights to think it silly. But it’s not. It’s poetic, touching, funny, sad, bizarre and utterly human.
The novel is a reflection on grief. It examines our fear of death, and also our fascination with it. It looks at how we process the loss of a loved one and how we are always trying to make sense of the nonsensical. It explores the natural rhythms of life, love and loss, and also delves into the way we wield consumerism and technology as ways of beating the natural order of things.
I kept thinking that Mammother would go too far to keep me interested. But it didn’t. As each chapter progressed it only made me want to slip further beneath the surface of it. The writing is beautiful. The structure like a song. And I want to read it all over again to feel it all again and try and understand it a bit more because it was just so fascinating and enjoyable. Everyone should read this book.
December 22, 2017
Too many characters. The style of writing is mundane. Almost nothing interesting happens. (Gorgeous cover though.)
November 20, 2019
I honestly can't pinpoint exactly why I loved this book, but I did. It is special and insightful and the commentary it provides on grief is especially poignant.
December 4, 2019
Oregonian surrealist fiction is what im here for
October 4, 2020
Such an odd fascinating book. I love schomburgs mind
Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews