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Camel's Bastard Son
In a post-Trump world, Billy Kos, occasional poet, uneasy lover, and pot salesman, meets Kalma Voyles, a student and teacher. Billy believes she is the woman of his dreams, and his dreams are made of the usual surrealism and lust. It's your typical boy-meets-girl, boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl, something-goes-horribly-wrong-with-the-time-machine story. Billy's courtship, marriage, and ensuing distress, bring him to the edge of himself. In Memphis, in this near-future, in this country marginally changed, where prejudice and misogyny have returned to daily life, Billy Kos loses more than his heart. He loses his home. He loses his world. Camel's Bastard Son is a Vonnegutian journey into love and the unknown. It's about change and adjustment to change, the kind of change that happens like a seep, and the kind that happens like idiot lightning.
230 pages, Paperback
Published February 14, 2020
About the author
Corey Mesler
85 books283 followersCOREY MESLER has published in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Esquire/Narrative4 Project and Good Poems, American Places (Viking Press, 2011). He has published 9 novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002), We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006), The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores (2010), Following Richard Brautigan (2010), Gardner Remembers (2011), Frank Comma and the Time-Slip (2012), Diddy-Wah-Diddy: A Beale Street Suite (2013), Memphis Movie (2015), Robert Walker (2016); 5 full length poetry collections, Some Identity Problems (2008), Before the Great Troubling (2011), Our Locust Years (2013), The Catastrophe of my Personality (2014), The Sky Needs More Work (2014); and 4 books of short stories, Listen: 29 Short Conversations (2009), Notes toward the Story and Other Stories (2011), I’ll Give You Something to Cry About (2011), and As a Child (2015). He has also published over a dozen chapbooks of both poetry and prose. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times, and two of his poems have been chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. His fiction has received praise from John Grisham, Robert Olen Butler, Lee Smith, Frederick Barthelme, Ann Beattie, Peter Coyote, Steve Yarbrough, Greil Marcus, among others. With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store in Memphis TN, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.wordpress.com.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 5, 2020
"Corey Mesler has written a dystopian novel for the post-Trump era, giving us an imagined world—actually, an imagined universe—populated with a cast of characters who seem too far-fetched for today but eerily plausible for the not-too-distant future. If this a nightmare (or, “daymare,” as Mesler calls it) about where we’re headed, the novel makes a poignant, often-funny plea for changing direction."
--Dana Sachs, author of If You Lived Here and The Secret of the Nightingale Palace.
"Camel’s Bastard Son, by Corey Mesler, is smart, sharp, weird, sexy and funny, which is to say it’s terrific, and I read it at a gallop, and I’m betting you will too. This is like Kurt Vonnegut for our fraught moment. It’s also — hats off to Mesler — like nothing I’ve ever read."
--Laird Hunt, author of The Impossibly and In the House in the Dark of the Woods
"It’s no secret that Corey Mesler is one hell of a writer. The irresistible Camel’s Bastard Son is his tenth novel. One marvel of this gritty and propulsive tale is its bravado. There aren't many writers who would dare to do what Corey does here. He explores a wild new territory of desperate love, alienation, heartache, and . . . well, let’s just say, you’re about to travel to places you’ve never been before. Billy Kos, as memorable a character as you’re likely to meet, has embarked on a long strange trip, and there’s room for one more. So hop aboard, but strap on your seatbelt and hold on to your hat. The road’s a little bumpy up ahead."
--John Dufresne, author of Louisiana Power and Light, and I Don't Like Where This Is Going
“Corey Mesler’s brilliant new novel would even make Beth Ann Fennelly blush.”
--Susan Cushman, author of Friends of the Library
"Camel's Bastard Son is a pure delight. So disarming and inventive and funny and sparkling with Mesler's unique gift for metaphor. The dialogue is to die for--wish I could write dialogue of such comic poignancy, or poignant comedy."
--Steve Stern, author of The Frozen Rabbi and the Jewish Book Award-winning The Wedding Jester
--Dana Sachs, author of If You Lived Here and The Secret of the Nightingale Palace.
"Camel’s Bastard Son, by Corey Mesler, is smart, sharp, weird, sexy and funny, which is to say it’s terrific, and I read it at a gallop, and I’m betting you will too. This is like Kurt Vonnegut for our fraught moment. It’s also — hats off to Mesler — like nothing I’ve ever read."
--Laird Hunt, author of The Impossibly and In the House in the Dark of the Woods
"It’s no secret that Corey Mesler is one hell of a writer. The irresistible Camel’s Bastard Son is his tenth novel. One marvel of this gritty and propulsive tale is its bravado. There aren't many writers who would dare to do what Corey does here. He explores a wild new territory of desperate love, alienation, heartache, and . . . well, let’s just say, you’re about to travel to places you’ve never been before. Billy Kos, as memorable a character as you’re likely to meet, has embarked on a long strange trip, and there’s room for one more. So hop aboard, but strap on your seatbelt and hold on to your hat. The road’s a little bumpy up ahead."
--John Dufresne, author of Louisiana Power and Light, and I Don't Like Where This Is Going
“Corey Mesler’s brilliant new novel would even make Beth Ann Fennelly blush.”
--Susan Cushman, author of Friends of the Library
"Camel's Bastard Son is a pure delight. So disarming and inventive and funny and sparkling with Mesler's unique gift for metaphor. The dialogue is to die for--wish I could write dialogue of such comic poignancy, or poignant comedy."
--Steve Stern, author of The Frozen Rabbi and the Jewish Book Award-winning The Wedding Jester
April 22, 2020
"Camel's Bastard Son" is a smart and witty romp into some kind of bizarre future that hopefully will never exist! However, Mesler's descriptive writing is so engaging that one almost doesn't mind that future - almost. Definitely a must-read for all!
March 7, 2020
Corey Mesler came here from a distant planet to deliver this book to us.
May 14, 2020
Weird, wonderful, and beautifully written. Mesler’s quirky characters lift this love story above what I expected.
February 13, 2020
"Corey Mesler has written a dystopian novel for the post-Trump era, giving us an imagined world—actually, an imagined universe—populated with a cast of characters who seem too far-fetched for today but eerily plausible for the not-too-distant future. If this a nightmare (or, “daymare,” as Mesler calls it) about where we’re headed, the novel makes a poignant, often-funny plea for changing direction."
--Dana Sachs, author of If You Lived Here and The Secret of the Nightingale Palace.
"Camel’s Bastard Son, by Corey Mesler, is smart, sharp, weird, sexy and funny, which is to say it’s terrific, and I read it at a gallop, and I’m betting you will too. This is like Kurt Vonnegut for our fraught moment. It’s also — hats off to Mesler — like nothing I’ve ever read."
--Laird Hunt, author of The Impossibly and In the House in the Dark of the Woods
"It’s no secret that Corey Mesler is one hell of a writer. The irresistible Camel’s Bastard Son is his tenth novel. One marvel of this gritty and propulsive tale is its bravado. There aren't many writers who would dare to do what Corey does here. He explores a wild new territory of desperate love, alienation, heartache, and . . . well, let’s just say, you’re about to travel to places you’ve never been before. Billy Kos, as memorable a character as you’re likely to meet, has embarked on a long strange trip, and there’s room for one more. So hop aboard, but strap on your seatbelt and hold on to your hat. The road’s a little bumpy up ahead."
--John Dufresne, author of Louisiana Power and Light, and I Don't Like Where This Is Going
--Dana Sachs, author of If You Lived Here and The Secret of the Nightingale Palace.
"Camel’s Bastard Son, by Corey Mesler, is smart, sharp, weird, sexy and funny, which is to say it’s terrific, and I read it at a gallop, and I’m betting you will too. This is like Kurt Vonnegut for our fraught moment. It’s also — hats off to Mesler — like nothing I’ve ever read."
--Laird Hunt, author of The Impossibly and In the House in the Dark of the Woods
"It’s no secret that Corey Mesler is one hell of a writer. The irresistible Camel’s Bastard Son is his tenth novel. One marvel of this gritty and propulsive tale is its bravado. There aren't many writers who would dare to do what Corey does here. He explores a wild new territory of desperate love, alienation, heartache, and . . . well, let’s just say, you’re about to travel to places you’ve never been before. Billy Kos, as memorable a character as you’re likely to meet, has embarked on a long strange trip, and there’s room for one more. So hop aboard, but strap on your seatbelt and hold on to your hat. The road’s a little bumpy up ahead."
--John Dufresne, author of Louisiana Power and Light, and I Don't Like Where This Is Going
May 18, 2020
Laugh out loud! Not LOL; this book deserves the words written out fully like “Laugh Out Loud!”
But it is not just funny. The humor is thought provoking, and the plot and characters are well developed (ha!) and intriguing.
Warning! There is lots (and lots) of explicit sexual content, but it is integral to the humor. And there is lots of humor. I hope you will buy this fast-paced novel and will enjoy it as much as I did.
But it is not just funny. The humor is thought provoking, and the plot and characters are well developed (ha!) and intriguing.
Warning! There is lots (and lots) of explicit sexual content, but it is integral to the humor. And there is lots of humor. I hope you will buy this fast-paced novel and will enjoy it as much as I did.
September 24, 2020
This is a wild, sexy rollercoaster of a novel so strap yourselves in and enjoy!!! I found myself more than a few times with a huge grin on my face while reading, and made a few verbal exclamations, as well. I definitely said "What??" out loud more than once and there was an "Oh no!" that startled a woman nearby on my commute. What a fun read!!! A journey worth taking.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews