The Egg Said Nothing

New Bizarro Author Series

by Caris O'Malley

Meet Manny. He's your average shut-in with a penchant for late night television and looting local fountains for coins. With eight locks on his door and newspapers covering his windows, he's more than a bit paranoid too.

His wasn't a great life, but it was comfortable—at least it was until the morning he awoke with an egg between his legs. But what might have been a curse becomes a charm as this unlikely event leads him to all night diner, where he finds inedible pie, undrinkable coffee, and the girl of his dreams.

But can this unexpected chance at love survive after the egg cracks and time itself turns against him, dead-set on rerouting history and putting a shovel to the face of the one person who could bring real and lasting change to Manny's world?

Genres: Bizarro Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Horror, Fantasy, Humor

84 pages, Paperback

First published October 13, 2010

About the author

The O'Malley bows to no one! But he humbly thanks:

-his lovely and patient family for encouraging his writing habit.

-the committee that created his current website.


Caris O'Malley on his process: "Well, there's plenty of time for research. But facts get in the way of my fiction. I need my precious lies."

Reviews

[karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

They flutter behind you, your possible pasts
Some bright-eyed and crazy, some frightened and lost
A warning to anyone still in command
Of their possible future to take care

when i began this book, i was not thinking, "i shall open the review with lyrics by the english rock band pink floyd, but this song was in my head as soon as the plot started doing its thing, and now it is in yours.

and i am so pissed; i was really looking forward to trashing this book, to show mr. caris o'malley that there are no more free rides on goodreads.com - that even though we have chatted and even shared a review together - integrity is king!! and when that bee takes over, we shall all fall in line. buzzzz

but this was just a really great book. and i am about to give a compliment here that will be staggering, to those of you who know me. ready to stagger? reading this was like getting a surprise new short story by jonathan carroll. (gasp) i know, but it has everything i like about jonathan carroll - the love story is not treacly, but is quirky and makes sense, and all the latter occurrences (i hedge vaguely) are very carrolly - and our caris has zero j.c. books listed, so i am excited to be recommending an author to him with similar preoccupations and maybe he will fall in love the way i did.

the bizarro list is touch and go with me. some of them, i think they just make a list of "shocking" or "offensive" words and toss them in a hat and choose their topics like that: "vagina day care center," "nazi roller coaster," "fetus bowling alley." and it's just a little yawn, like a preteen with a paint sprayer full of naughtiness gleefully let loose on a church. it is overkill, and i mean, who is really shocked by this anymore?

but there are a few from that list that are more adult, more crafted. and this is one of them. it is hard to go into detail, because it is about 80 pages, and i don't want to ruin the enjoyment, but golly o'malley, this is really good


before:

i can hardly wait.




come to my blog!

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Until he laid the egg, Manny's life consisted of hanging around his apartment and fishing coins out of fountains. Now, he's got a girlfriend of sorts and keeps getting harassed about the egg. So what's inside?

Sometimes, you read a book and wonder how the hell it ever got published. Other times, you read a book and it's so good you want to track the author down and call him a son of a bitch. The Egg Said Nothing is of the second type.

The Egg Said Nothing is quite a ride. Born out of an unholy union beteen National Novel Writing Month and the New Bizarro Author Series, Caris O'Malley introduces the reader to Manny, a shut-in who has an important destiny. If the story had only been about the relationship between Manny and Ashley, I'd probably have given it a 5. Caris wrote a quirky yet beautiful relationship, even more impressive because it's his first book. A girl that smells like old books? Sign me up! The egg seemed like an afterthought once Manny met Ashley. Then the egg broke and all hell broke loose.

I hate to admit it but while I enjoyed the time travel portion of the story quite a bit, I would have preferred more of the relationshippy stuff. Once the multiple Manny's showed up, I had a feeling how things were going to go down. The ending twist was well done, straight out of a Twilight Zone episode, brutal but somehow hopeful. There isn't a lot more I can say without giving too much away.

The verdict? 4.5 out of 5. This is not one to miss. I shall look forward to Caris' future endeavors with great interest.

Side Note: Obnoxious Goodreads authors take note. Caris O'Malley happens to be a fairly prominent reviewer on Goodreads and doesn't even have an author profile. Pretty sneaky. You can find an interview I did with him here

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a TERRIFIC debut!! Caris O'Malley knows his prose and has created a keeper that is at times very funny, at times deceptively moving, at times bizarromatic and always entertaining. Trying to briefly sum up the plot can cause severe cramping, but my best attempt would be to say it is the story of a paranoid, disconnected shut in who finds a reason to reconnect with life following the arrival of a seriously untalkative egg. As our main character, Manny, puts it:

“Prior to the egg’s appearance, I did almost nothing. I would sneak out at night to loot fountains to pay for bills and sustenance. Other than that, I mostly slept a lot and stayed home. Late night television was a good friend of mine. I didn’t talk to anyone. My phone was almost exclusively ornamental, and my computer was only ever turned on to play a few halfhearted games of Minesweeper.”

The humor of the story is one that connected with me and I enjoyed the use of similes as a delivery system (e.g. “The remainder of the pie glared up at me like a bad decision. Like a carpet stain. Like an impossibility.”). Sometimes the humor was simply the result of a very clever word choice, as when Manny first encounters the egg, “There the egg sat. If it had eyes, I’d say it looked at me hopefully, but, since it didn’t, I’ll say instead it looked at me speckled.”

My favorite part of the story was the relationship between Manny and Ashley and I marvelled at how quickly Caris got me to care about these two being together. Their interactive dynamic was familiar yet odd, breezy yet nervous, natural yet awkward. In other words, I believed the courtship and that is often the toughest thing for an author to sell, so super-sized KUDOPROPS for that.

When the narrative pace kicks into high gear after the unveiling of the central plot device, the story gets quickly bizarre. However, credit the author because the story never becomes too confusing to follow despite how strange and complicated it gets. I thought the ending was well done and as satisfying as a snickers bar.

To give you a sense of the prose stylings and feel of the story, I thought I would add a few additional quotes from the story that jumped out at me either because they were romantical, clever or loaded down with deepness:

MORE CARISISMS FROM THE EGG SAID NOTHING

"She moved like summer wind."

“I closed my eyes then, trapped her in my head...”

"We get to watch the entertainment equivalent of a transitional object, and can fall asleep with our teddy bears clasped tightly in our arms and Molly Ringwald’s words dying on our lips....Instead of air, we’ll be breathing dreams.”

”It’s lonely knowing you’re the only one living your life. When there’s no one to commiserate with, there’s no one who can possibly understand you.”

“I was thinking of the moral responsibility of being an anomaly.”

“The makeshift roadways were devoid of life, beautifully empty like a junkie on detox.”

Overall, I really enjoyed this and thought it was an incredibly polished debut. Looking forward to the next tale by Mr. O’Malley. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

4.0 stars.

[Meredith Holley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I totally fucking love this book. I’m not even lying to you because I’m trying to schmooze you into buying it or anything. People never want to read the books I like, anyway. They always want to read the ones I hate and then tell me to read them again. It’s the cross I bear. So, I pretty much consider this, my choice to give The Egg a rave, the kind of ironic curse that I can only liken to a shadowed figure crouched in the hallway of this book’s apartment building, waiting to take its head off with a shovel. It’s circular and self-destructive like that. It’s a meta, testosterone-powered, masochistic bloodbath with a lot of thought-provoking insight into manhood and womanhood. Mostly manhood. Oh, I mean the book. This review? It’s nothing the book couldn’t take if it heard it sneaking up from behind.

This book is written by The O’Malley. It must be read.

Obligatory digression: I met this girl who is in my law school class. I really want to tell you her name, but I feel like I could get needlessly racist against redheaded people and strippers by doing that, so I’ll leave it off. She was the girl who first heard about the Zanzibar program that I’m going on over winter break, so I automatically liked her because of that. I have come to think that perhaps she is suffering from something like a girl version of the affliction suffered by the character in The Egg, so I’m going to call her Womanny (Caris, if you hate that I’m doing that because you are way subtle and I’m being way not subtle or totally misunderstanding you, tell me, and I’ll come up with something else). I invited her out to a movie with a bunch of girls and me in the summer, and she couldn’t keep her mouth shut during the entire show, so that should have been a sign, but I was giving her a benefit of the doubt.

I ended up at a restaurant with her later because we were supposed to be saying goodbye to a friend who was moving away the next day, only apparently Womanny hadn’t told him we were coming by, or something. I’m not totally clear on what happened, all I know is that it was very important to her for me to come say goodbye to this guy, and I ended up at a restaurant with this girl and a stranger 1L. So, Womanny starts going on about how she is an anti-feminist, and how she is in love with the sexist Mormon guy and is best friends with the pantsless Santa guy in my class. All horrors I had not previously imagined. The stranger 1L and I explained to Womanny that these things were impossible and do not exist.

A few nights later, Womanny sent me a text. “u awake?” she asked. “Yep, what’s up?” I responded. So, she called me.

In a reluctant and mumbley manner she said, “I just wanted you to know I didn’t mean to call you a hen.”

Because that is such a spectacularly awesome thing to say to a person, I started giggling a little bit. I figured that she was calling to tell me she didn’t call me a hen in order to let me know that she did call me a hen. So, I was already digging this conversation. “What? When did you call me a hen?” I asked.

“Well, earlier, when I said that thing on facebook, I just wanted you to know it wasn’t about you.”

I thought back and realized that I had clicked “like” on a post from [Betty White] to Womanny, saying that she had been accepted into the Zanzibar program. I had been out all day after that, and, though I got about twenty updates from that post, I don’t think I got the one Womanny was referring to, or at least I hadn’t seen it. So, I asked, “What are you talking about?”

She explained about the post and how a lot of girls had responded and said they wanted to come on the trip, and Womanny didn’t want to go with one girl because she complains too much and didn’t want to go with another because her porridge was too cold, or something. Finally, she responded to the entire thread, “I was going to Zanzibar to get away from all of you hens!” (I’m imagining that post was in all caps and that that she actually followed the sentence with a good ol’ “!!1/1!!?!g!!”)

I asked, “Why don’t you want [Betty White] to go on the Zanzibar trip?”

“Well,” explained Womanny, “[Betty White] and I were friends until she tried to destroy all of my happiness.”

So, I started laughing again at that. I was at the knee-slapping stage at this point. “How did she try to destroy all of your happiness?” I asked.

“I liked a 3L boy,” Womanny told me, “And [Betty White] told me that he was hitting on all of the red-headed girls.”

I paused, waiting for the rest of the story. When it was clear that she wasn’t planning to continue, I asked if anything else had happened and if [Betty White] possibly could have had motivations for saying that other than simply destroying Womanny’s happiness.

“No,” she said, “She knew I was happy, so she wanted to destroy my happiness.”

Since then, Womanny decided Zanzibar wasn’t for her (for logistical reasons, of course). [Betty White] and I are still going, and I remain pumped.

I partly tell this story because I wanted to, and partly I think it does relate to The O’Malley’s novella. There’s this whole wonderful criticism that Caris does here, I think, about how masculine self-loathing turns a dude in on himself. Maybe I’m reading too much into the story, but that’s what I took from it. I think the same can be true of women. With stereotypes of men, the shape self-loathing takes is physical violence, and with stereotypes of women, the shape it takes is cattiness and interpersonal paranoia. Are any of us really that? Do our parents make us that? Does society and ignorance? Does this review contain conceptual spoilers? This book will tell you the answers. No, just kidding. But you should still read it.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caris, Caris, Caris. It's like the only thing you hear on goodreads.com lately. Caris and his fucking book. Unless you never happen to check out the update feed or aren't friends with any of his cheerleaders you probably have already seen a bunch of reviews for this and seen all the praising going on. Sickening isn't it? I mean, so what? Caris wrote a book, and everyone (well not everyone, but most everyone) that has read it is gushing about how great it is. And it might make you feel like saying, enough is enough already, we get it, you all like Caris and want his book to do well. But then the book turns out to actually be really good. And instead of just having that feeling of enough already people, you kind of want to curse him for writing what might possibly be the second best bizarro book (or the second best one I've read, maybe there are some better ones out there..... FYI the best one (in my humble opinion) is Help! A Bear is Eating Me)).

But anyway, unlike some other bizarro books this one has a coherent plot that goes somewhere. The book is also stylistically interesting, again something that isn't always the case in these books. Personally, my particular angst has moved beyond getting kicks out of something being shocking just for the sake of it being shocking. I'd rather read seven hundred pages of unattributed dialog than 80 pages of methed out Nazi's fisting each other while fucking the baby jesus, but that's just me and my getting old. Not that this book doesn't go into weird territory, but there is something more to the book than just being weird.

I read the book the day after I finished writing the first draft of my NaNoWriMo novel, and there were a few times that I muttered Fuck You Caris, under my breath, because he had done something that I had also done in my novel and even though I knew I hadn't stolen it from him I still felt like someone might think I was influenced by him. For the record I had my characters stealing money from fountains before I read his book, which doesn't seem like a big point but I can't think of another book where characters gleefully steal from fountains. I attribute this either to Caris having a similarly bored teenage life that I did, and maybe also having friends who bought their cigarettes by hitting local fountains or Caris used a time machine to steal the idea from me. I'm fairly certain it's the latter and I'm not going to pursue any actions over it but I wanted to let him know that I know what he has been up to.

All joking aside this is a fine good book and you should buy a copy and support our fellow goodreader and help convince Eraserhead that Caris deserves to have more books published because I'm anxiously waiting the chance to review his clown book in the near future.

[Nilesh Kashyap · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I have this strange natural habit of stalking opening profile of any friend randomly and read everything from top to bottom, especially profile comments (since I don’t have many, so I take pleasure in reading someone else’), So one day I open profile of this new friend named Caris.
First thing his profile say is: ”You fucking don’t know me” and I say so what? And then I read comments on his profile like: “I bought a copy of your book” or “I received the book” or ”the book was great”. First question: Is he author? If so, why he doesn’t have author’s profile and moreover which book has he written? By this time I was seriously interested in his fucking book, of which there was no hint anywhere on his profile.

Book Review:
This is the first time I was reading a Bizarro fiction. I had no idea what bizarro is, I read Wikipedia entry, I didn’t understand and then I read the novel and I still have no idea.
But my experience with this novel was nothing such as bizarre but very good and one of the funniest.

The story revolves around Manny, who has just laid egg, big one. Though he is not sure whether he has laid it or not because there are no signs of blood loss or something like that but his trousers were down dangling from his toe when he woke up.
And suddenly Manny’s life changes. Earlier he just stayed home and mostly slept, watched late night television, played halfhearted minesweeper and would only go out of his house to fish out coins from fountain so that he can pay his bill and for other necessities.
Sure or not sure if he has laid it or not, but now he has responsibility to take care of his egg and he must keep it warm so that it can hatch. He even has an urge to sit on it.
Then next thing, he meets Ashley. Things happen quickly and he gets lucky but then he wakes up next day to find his egg broken.
FUCK!

After this what happens is one hell of a roller coaster ride.
I loved this novel from the very first chapter, no from the very first line which is; “In which the narrator lays an egg, keeps it warm and royally fucks some guy up with a shovel.” Ah, yes! I love shovel and this novel has a lot of shovel, one more reason why I like this book.
The relationship part between Manny and Ashley is well written and after egg breaks the story burst open, with many laugh-out-loud moments.
Traveling stuff has been carried out excellently. And the best thing is ending, the place where it brings and leaves you with expression “What the...”

Thank you Caris for this book.

[Joshua Nomen-Mutatio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caris and I go way back. Not so much in time, but more so in space. If we think of every relevant and conceivable detail on every conceivable scale (from the geographic to the bodily to the subatomic) directly related to the act of exchanging discrete units of information—from brain to computer to computer to brain—traveling between our respective hubs in Illinois and Arizona, well, we've covered an immense and ongoing totality of 'cross country miles.

What has this exercise in "whoa, dude"-style facts of the matter resulted in at the emergent level of "ideas" and "relationships"? Well, for one thing I can't help but think of Jack Kerouac when I think of Caris. It's an unwilled mental association among billions, the types of things that more or less constitute the entirety of my mind, or so it seems during a moment of less deterministic feeling self-reflection. As David Foster Wallace is listed as my numero uno "Favorite Author[s]" on my Goodreads driver’s license, Monsieur Kerouac is listed the same way upon Caris's ID. (It bears mentioning that Caris is far, far, far, far less intrusive with his love for his favorite author than I am.)

Also, Kerouac was the only subject we ever discussed (and discussed very briefly) before our E-Friendship 2.0 was enacted somewhat recently. I feel bad for the shitty way that I ripped upon my friend's favorite author and even worse about the snotty hyper-generalizations I made about said author's non-teenage fans. Suffice to say that I am no longer moved by Kerouac the way I once was. But I also know that I can react to things that no longer move me like they once did with a dauntingly complex mess of emotions and misdirected projections (and other waxing Freudian-esque terms) that occasionally whorl into something spiteful and unthinkingly hasty, which can only be remedied post hoc.* I link to that shabby and deeply-in-need-of-caveats-and-revision "review" not out of vote whore impulses but rather as a way to footnote this basic point and move on to what I really want to talk about which is how I loved this book and view it as a highly welcomed influx of new raw material to help further solidify the aforementioned bridge of information microscopically whirring and pulsing between the approximations of selves called Caris and Josh. If it were a train route it might be called the Budding Bromance Express.
_____________________________________________________

*Again with the reflexes. I can't keep this rising vomit of analysis down. How to breezily summarize? I think I feel my mortality and the entropic decaying nature of things viscerally and quite often. There are reminders of it everywhere. One place I've found it is in the hall of mirrors reflections of memory. One such suite of memories is how I used to be as a teenager and how I worshipped Kerouac. The discrepancy between Teen-Me and Nowish-Me is stark in many ways (and not in others, of course) and this starkness brings to mind the transient blabbitybla of everything for obvious, nothing-really-lasts-even-when-you-feel-so-strongly-that-it-will reasons. Fear (e.g., death-anxiety) and anger are related in ways that are easily extrapolated. Rage, rage against the dying of the light, and so on. Hence, I've found myself harshly reacting to my dead self and dead self’s heroes and modes of thought and so forth.
_____________________________________________________

This book covered all the bases of what makes art worthwhile and enjoyable for me:

-The Janus-faced creature of Cynicism-Irony-Humor/Sincere Thought and Confession gradually (though not slowly) arose from the ink and flashed me its hideously-beautiful mug in a clearer and clearer light as the pages faded behind the fixed position of my gaze.

-This book nails My Kind of Surrealism (I swear on all that is worth swearing on that this whorish linking was not premeditated, but it’s an undeniably useful tool—according to lazy and neurotic me—for keeping this review less digressive than it already is) rather well, despite being tagged as Bizarro Fiction, a term which calls to mind something juuuuust overreaching the target of my preferred style of surrealism. The unrealistic calm that our egg-bearing protagonist exudes at, say, shovel-bloodying and/or literal self-facing and/or time-traveling moments would make David Lynch cream his khakis and drool black coffee out of his slackened maw.

-It got me thinking about parenthood and all the things that we sapient warm-bloodeds place the deepest meaning upon in our lives. Parenthood—like acknowledgments of death's ubiquity—is also something that tugs at my brain more or less as a constant background hum at the very least, and the mystical and strained relationship between Man & Egg which Caris conjured up was able to bring these things to a heightened pitch, spiking up in bursts through the cognitive din-turned-white-noise. And though there is an implied sober seriousness of pondering The Nature of Parenthood and The Meaning of Reproduction/Life stuff that encroached, this was happily linked hand-in-hand to a perfusion of glorious dark-humor-induced giggles, silent and subjective, as well as breaking the mouth-world barrier and entering objectively verifiable LOL territory.

-Time Travel. Is anyone not a sucker for time travel? Tickled the fun/"serious" bone like a motherfucker. (Some weird TWSSiness there.)

-Thinking about my experience of The Egg Said Nothing also strongly calls to mind a series of feelings about romantic love that I’ve also described in another review. Goddammit. See, this is why I don’t write reviews that often. I only have so many thoughts and feelings. They get recycled. And I recycle through hyperlinks when I can. (What I wrote about Power's book in the second heading can be applied perfectly well to this aspect of my reading of Caris's bizarro tale.)

-I absolutely adored the use of giving away the salient plot points at the beginning of each chapter. Perfecto!

And here's where I run out of attempted-short-'n'-snappy-reviewing steam and just want to bluntly say that this book is FUN to read. FUN is the outermost concentric circle here, enclosing the above mentioned and whorishly/usefully linked/described points above.

Final Thought-Made-Pixels: There’s a scene which brought this personally time-honored image to mind like a slide show reflex, somehow both tightly encased and time-lapsed a'bloomin' within my skull:



And a book that does that while making me laugh aloud and feel anal-constricting terror and existential dread and ecstasy all simultaneously is worthy of praise, both of the fawning devotional sort and the digressive, roundabout sort that I’ve just displayed.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many well known works of literature use the following plot twist to generate interest:

"A guy wakes up one morning to find that..."

Different authors have completed it in their own ways:

"...he's been tied up by a bunch of excitable people who are six inches high."
"...he's the last man on earth."
"...everyone else is turning into rhinoceroses [or is that rhinoceri?]."
"...burning books isn't as much fun as he'd always thought."
"...he has metamorphosed into a giant cockroach."
"...buying that house in Stepford wasn't such a good move after all."
"...he is now an unperson."
"...most of the world is blind, and giant carnivorous plants are picking them off like flies."
"...the pod people get you when you sleep."
"...he has mysteriously laid a large egg."

Wait. What?

Are you serious, Caris O'Malley? What is this cracked eggscuse for a yolk? Are you suffering from shell shock? Or is it just eggsistential angst? This sort of thing doesn't normally happen to people outside of Greco-Roman mythology.

Believe it or not, this is a very serious (well, sort of serious) book about how a guy's humdrum life is changed by an over-sized ovum. And, as the narrator Manny* somewhere says, the egg is the most normal thing about the story, because things get really scrambled after that. Like some cosmic pair of jeans, the space-time continuum has that fashionable rip in it. However, let the reader beware, because, not unlike some of the literature alluded to earlier, there's definitely something bleak and dystopian about this story. But in a funny sort of way, if that's the sort of thing you find funny. It's hard to eggsplain. You just have to read it for yourself.


*No, it's not Manny Rayner, although it would be fun to see him play the role in the film adaptation, don't you think? With Jessica Q. Rabbit co-starring as Ashley, naturally. I just hope they don't squabble about who gets top billing.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caris done good.

There's that moment in the shitty middle Matrix movie where out of nowhere, hundreds of copies of Mr. Smith come pouring in. It's visually my favorite moment in the trilogy. It's wonderfully over-the-top and surreal. This book is like that.

It's also like when, in Timecrimes, you realize that the hero has royally fucked himself irreparably by dicking around with time, and you have a dawning sense of horror that things cannot, will not go back to how they were at first. (If you haven't seen this movie, GO GO GO GO GO! Wait, stop. Read The Egg Said Nothing. Then, GO GO GO GO GO!)

But, it's also a little like the sweet romance from Amelie, love spewing up believably from the dirty streets of Paris or wherever, and with both parts of the pair interesting and independent, neither just a foil for the other. It's like that, too.

This book proves that the inside of Caris's head is just as bizarre and unusual as the outside. We've always suspected this, but only now has it been proven.

First, Mr. O'Malley avoids all of the stumbling blocks I would've expected a bizarro book to trip over and crack its skull, and then lie there, bleeding and twitching on the pavement of mediocrity while everyone just walks past, with briefcases full of more pressing literary engagements, until some kids who watch too much pro wrestling come up and jack it for its Nikes....I don't know how that plays into the metaphor. Whatever. This book is chock full of murders via shovel, and YES, it's gratuitous. But, the gratuitous violence is secondary to a wicked-awesome plot that moves at five hundred miles an hour, steered with the precision of a skilled wordsmith until it runs at full speed into the brick wall of the inevitable conclusion.

And it's fucking hilarous. I completely disagree with Christy's review: I think the dialogue isn't entirely believable, but the awkwardness of the dialogue reflects the characters, and adds another kind of humour to an already hilarious book. The way our protagonist speaks to the guy who just tried to murder him?! The stilted conversations between the lovers?! the casualness with which the character brings up silent film stars?! It doesn't make the character believable, per se, but it makes the character vividly unreal, like the characters in the Gormenghast trilogy. (If you haven't read this, GO GO GO GO GO!) I mean, this motherfucker's day job is fountain diving for change. That alone had me laughing pretty much every time it happened.

Why only four stars? Well, this novella does a good job of exposing the confused, soggy underbelly of time travel, by giving us a story where there's literally so much time travel going on that, for a portion of the novella, I couldn't figure out the semantics of how any of it was working. I get lost in action sequences anyway, but when you have an action sequence with five versions of the same person involved, GAAAAAH! Confusion will strike me upside the head. Like a shovel.

And, although the book caught me off guard at numerous times, the ending seemed inevitable from early on. Also, as a reader, the egg didn't really do anything for the plot, other than serving as a symbol. (Granted, I might have guessed this from the title...)

SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPIOLERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILER

And Meredith is down in the comments, screaming at me that the egg is the most important part. This is something I'm not sure I buy. Let me see if I can freewrite myself to understanding WTF she's talking about...after all, the egg is the beginning, the germination of Manny's idea about gender equality, and is also clearly a symbol of his femininity, a symbol of motherhood, which is his ability to take care of and nourish someone else--hence his newfound ability to love homegirl. But, then, it gets broken inadvertently, and there's a DVD inside of it that has himself from the future on it. I guess, from the point the egg breaks, I lose track of how it functions symbolically. But, Meredith is a smart cookie, and I read most of the novella while a little bit intoxicated, so I might just not get it.

Anyway, I'm also trying to take into account my fanatacism for The O'Malley himself...I may not be the president of his fan club, but I have fed him pasta and played with his baby. So, I'm trying to view my own love for this book with a grain of salt.

I have an uncle who is a songwriter down in New Orleans, who does really clever and well-written countryblues songs, but I would've probably given his CD three stars initially. Quite a while after I first listened to it, my parents had it on at their house, and it was playing in a different room, so I couldn't really hear the vocals, but it sounded SO FUCKING GOOD. And I said to dad, "What are you listening to? It's really fucking good!" (Except I didn't drop the 'F' bomb, because if I dropped it around my dad, he would've hit me in the face with a shovel. That's how my parents dealt with swearing.) And he said, "That's your uncle Jim's band," and THAT'S when I realized it really was a five star CD, and I wasn't just inflating my opinion of it because my uncle is awesome.

So, I might be doing a little of that here. Then again, Caris got five stars from just about everyone, so he can fucking deal.

[Esteban del Mal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like an Old Testament prophet that has let his union dues lapse, Caris O'Malley's The Egg Said Nothing beckons to you from the dark alleyways of the unconscious. He smells funny, his hair is matted and he says the stories about handjobs aren't true. And then, before you know it, he's living with you: you're buying the redemption of violence and the prelapsarian wet dream. And the groceries, of course, because that shiftless s.o.b. sure as hell isn't buying anything.

My advice? Cereal. He hates it.

And be content in the knowledge that you can't be on the right side of History because History is a Möbius Strip.

Is it possible to be so self-aware of one's isolation that one replicates?

Consider this gem (lifted completely out of context, but it's a gem because it can be):

"It’s lonely knowing you're the only one living your life."

Yes, it is lonely knowing you're the only one living your life, but I feel a little less lonely for having read this book.

[Eh?Eh! · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a favorable bias towards this author (unofficially the president of his gr fan club, due to contributions to his author page), so I enjoyed this novella very much because of that instead of having the straight-up "...wtf, the guy is nuts" reaction. I find anything he writes to be not only readable but enjoyable, even all the well-deployed cussiness.

I have an earlier, longer copy of this work along with the streamlined version that will eventually come into print. I took it along for vacation reading and in the scramble I kept grabbing one or the other. I finally finished the shorter novella, pretty tired but kept awake by the twisty turns. I'm saddened that so much material was cut because this is a crazy sprint of bloody confusion and I look forward to reading the rougher earlier draft next.

It's an odd composition and I think listing the things it reminds me of would be a disservice. So I'll just say I like it.

[Jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

HI CARIS!!

I am only giving your book 4 stars I hope this doesn't kick me out of the running for best employee at barnes and noble.

Let's be honest, I knew this book was doomed to less than five stars when Karen said it was the best thing ever. I was actually mildly worried that I wouldn't even like it. Karen and I, well we don't like the same books. This isn't to say that we never agree, we agree about 3 and 4 star ratings a lot. However, the thing about 5 stars is giving a book five stars is like jumping up and down and saying this book was written for me. A book written for karen is by definition not written for me and vice versa. We have agreed on five star ratings 3 times for real novels: the book of laughter and forgetting, the portrait or dorian grey, and alice in wonderland. And the fact is no matter how awesome Caris is, he isn't Oscar wilde. So right I agree with Karen this is a great book, but I'm just not jumping on board with quite as much enthusiasm as she is.

I didn't expect this book to be smart. I mean I suppose that's silly considering the fact that Caris hates books so there would have to be something different about his (As a note someone did say something about how if the book you want to read doesn't exist you have to write it, I think that might be what Caris did here). I guess I just haven't really gotten a handle on bizarro, because I never really expect eraserhead's stuff to be smart yet it always is (although I haven't read the ones with the titles that Karen is insulting). I did read the one that had dicks drawn on a third of the pages (I'm looking at you mykle hansen) it was still smart.

Back on topic and the topic is CARIS. Caris wrote a smart book, that is like a thinking book. I like this sort of thing, I specifically enjoy when thinking books include stupid characters. This is not a spoiler you can tell he is stupid from the start. This may be a spoiler: he is not like an intelligent fool as far as I can tell he is just an idiot and the smartness is more about the reader and the plot. Or maybe he just left enough room so I could assume the book was smart.

The book is also well written. I didn't notice any spelling mistakes. That doesn't mean there weren't any it means someone edited it at least mildly well and the characters names were consistent, you don't even understand how much I appreciate this.

I like the fact there was actually an egg in this book. I figured that wouldn't actually be in the book.

ummmm... I am also trying think of the other nice things I wanted to say, but I forgot.

Okay so why caris only gets four stars. There is a heavy does of 5 year old boy humor in this book. I mean really how many people can you hit over the head with a shovel. The real problem I am not a five year old boy. I mean I share some things with five year old boys. I like dead baby jokes and bugs. But I don't really go for weird completely unexplained illogical science and the three stooges.

but I read this book super fast. And yay congrats caris you wrote a book.

[as a sidenote is my american shelf okay or are you actually irish]

[Steve Lowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this book at BizarroCon last weekend. I randomly selected it out of the six books that I had purchased and began reading it in the Portland airport. I continued to chew through it during my Denver layover, but intended to stop so I could get some sleep on my flight to Chicago. I had a 90 minute drive still awaiting me after I got to Chicago, and I really needed the rest.

It didn't happen that way. I wasn't able to sleep because of this damn EGG. Every time I lay my head against the side of the airplane and closed my eyes, they would pop open again moments later, and this damn book would be in my hands once more. Only when I got to the end, which really isn't the end for the main character Manny, nor will ever be the end for him, was I able to sleep. Caris O'Malley cost me almost two hours of rest and put me in danger of nodding off on I-94 before I finally got home at 1 AM. He should consider himself lucky I survived.

And you should consider yourself warned: if you begin this book, you too will find it difficult, dare I say impossible, to put it down. THE EGG SAID NOTHING is addicitve, romantic, violent, and both paternal and maternal in equal measure. It is a time-traveling, head-spinning, gender role-challenging, and thought-provoking story that I simply had to finish once I started. In a way, it reminded me of the Michael Keaton movie MULTIPLICITY, except O'Malley's EGG has an intelligent plot, believeable and interesting characters, and actual entertainment value. Unlike his EGG, Mr. O'Malley does have something to say. It would be worth your time to discover exactly what that is. Just cancel your afternoon plans first.

[Garima · Rating 4 out of 5]

From Wikipedia: Bizarro fiction is a contemporary literary genre, which often uses elements of absurdism, satire, and the grotesque, along with pop-surrealism and genre fiction staples, in order to create subversive works that are as weird and entertaining as possible. The term was adopted in 2005 by the independent publishing companies Eraserhead Press, Raw Dog Screaming Press, and Afterbirth Books. The description of the literature as "Bizarro" is a more recent development. Previous terms used to refer to the burgeoning scene include "irreal" and "new absurdism", but neither of these was used broadly. On 19 June 2005, Kevin Dole II released "What The Fuck is This All About", a sort of manifesto for the then unnamed genre.

This book lives up to everything mentioned above and anything associated with the name Eraserhead got to be nothing but Bizarre. The Egg Said Nothing

[RandomAnthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would like to be as transparent as possible in this review.

A) Full-disclosure part I: Caris O'Malley is my friend.

B) Full-disclosure Part II: Even if I didn't like this book I'd probably give said book a good review because Caris is my friend.

C) Full-disclosure Part III: Outside of academia I've never read a book by someone I know. I hesitate to pick them up. I'm not sure why. Maybe I want to maintain a cool distance between the author and me. Maybe I don't want to pretend I like a sucky book. Maybe I'm jealous.

D) Full-disclosure Part IV: Caris O'Malley is a real writer. As I read this book I pretended I didn't know Caris. I am confident in the assertion that, even if Caris and I hadn't met through GR, I would have inhaled this book in eight hours or less. I feel obligated to say good things because the book is fucking good, not because Caris is one of the coolest people in the GR universe.

E) Full-disclosure Part V: Caris once freaked me out by telling me he chases coyotes in the desert. On foot! I'm not making that up.

F) Full-disclosure Part VI: I'm bothered by this whole “bizarro fiction” label. Ok. So an egg appears out of nowhere. But don't worry about the egg. The real action takes place in Manny's head and I daresay (I'm just looking for an excuse to use the word “daresay”) the egg angle isn't all that important outside of knocking Manny off his orbit. The book's heart resides in Manny's dance along the border between reality and hallucination. For a couple minutes he'll sound like a normal, lonely guy, then suddenly he's off his rocker. Manny is neither completely sane nor completely bonkers. Writing a character this complex and making him sound as natural as Manny takes a real writer. Caris O'Malley is a real writer. And The Egg Said Nothing deserves to transcend the “bizarro fiction” ghetto.

G) Full-disclosure part VII: If I had to compare this book to other authors, for the sake of convenience, I would say, “PK Dick meets Bukowski meets that crazy guy on your block with whom you try to be polite but maybe you don't want to get too friendly lest he sit on your porch and wait for you to come home.”

You should read The Egg Said Nothing. Not because I know Caris. Not because he's cool. But because he's a real writer and this is a good book. I forgot I knew Caris while reading The Egg Said Nothing. I can pay an author friend no higher compliment. Caris is the real deal.

[Joyzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who the shit is Caris O'Malley?

Note: The first four paragraphs were just anecdotes on how I befriended Caris O’ Malley here in GR. (review down there somewhere, you can skim through if you’re not interested in this sort of intros)

If you happen to be suffering from a terrible sickness called Goodreaditis in which one of the symptoms would be you're minding and looking for the rank of best reviews and best reviewers here in Goodreads every week and if that’s the case you probably know or have seen this guy Caris (who was actually the author of the book). Yeah as I’m saying if you happen to be not so oblivious person you might have read or seen Caris’ reviews making it to the top 50 most of the time every week. Ergo, he’s one of the best reviewers here in GR and I suggest you try to read his reviews sometimes because his was always helpful and funny. I remembered actually reading his review of The Forest of Hands and Teeth which I read and really like and that’s why I decided to actually add this guy as my friend here so that I can follow his reviews.

If you do not know/seen this person based from what I’ve been telling you earlier then you probably have met him if you’re following the thread for the poll for Goodreads Mascot Competition (another sign and symptom of Goodreaditis). If you’re like me who loves bullshitting the people who voted for the Bee then you’re probably had been happy to have met Caris in the comment section, who happens to love to bullshit the Bee as well. In fact, I was fucked up (in a good way) when I met him there because the guy was just full of shit (this might not sound like it, but this was actually a compliment) when you've read his comments about the Bee you could really do this one: LMAO.

Yeah so this one was pretty funny I find this guy who bullshit the bee funny and then I decided to click on his profile pic and add his as a friend. Only to find out that I already am his friend and the reason that I thought he was not my friend was because he did change his profile pic (I only remembered him through his user pic not his username Caris btw). My point is me deciding to add this person twice as a friend really means something. And at that point did I see and have been actually interested to read his about me section and what was written there was something like, “I wrote a book btw --The Egg Said Nothing—and then it said like you could buy it here.” I actually did check on his book and I thought that awesomesauce I didn’t know this guy was an author and honestly I like the book info so I immediately put that on my TBR shelf.

Then after several months I receive a message from Caris and he was harassing asking me if I’ll ever read that egg book and I was telling him that I really want to read it, but I don’t have a credit card since I’m still a poor college student and his book was not even found in any bookstores here in the Philippines. So he was wise generous enough to give me a free copy so that I could read it and review it here in GR. So yeah that was it peeps, I got the book free from Mr. O’ Malley himself.

My review:
Pros:
1. It was a short book. Read it in one day.
2. It was a very funny book and I especially love how it’s written you're getting loads of cussing and the f-bombs were just dropped everywhere.
3. It was weird, but in a good way kind of weird.
4. You got bits of everything the book has humor, sci-fi, romance, action, murder and loads of weird shits.
5. It was actually has a sense to it even if it’s like all crappy nonsense about random events going on, if it does make sense, as you got to the end of the story you will probably get what I’m saying.
6. It got time traveling and just complicated wackiness about Metaphysics something like that.

Cons:
1.The romance of the story felt contrived and verging on cheesiness.
2. The time traveling stuff was not properly explained or should I say not explained at all.
3. It was just so random in a lot of places that it made my head hurt and I needed to read it back to understand it.
4. I don’t really understand the ending, can someone explain it. I’m dumb when it comes to the time traveling sequences.

So yeah four stars because it was actually really good and it was different from what I usually read and it does make me laugh most of the time. Actually my sister noticed that I was like laughing like crazy and I was like “Sorry I was reading something funny and I can’t help, but lol.” So yeah I recommend it, it was really good, no kidding.

[Andrew Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd never heard of Bizarro until after I'd read this book and started to read a few reviews from others. But bizarre this story most certainly is. I had this recommended to me via other Goodreads readers, as I sought new time travel titles. I don't normally blurbs (I prefer the surprise element) so I had no real idea what to expect. I certainly didn't expect this. It's surreal, violent, touching in parts, and pretty entertaining. I sort of worked out the ending early doors but this didn't significantly detract from my enjoyment. I'm still not sure if 3 is the right rating here... it's probably more a 3.5. I'll see if the story sticks with me and if so I'll up the rating.

Some other reviewers have referenced the relationship that develops and I too found this one of the strongest elements of the book. I'd have like to have seen this explored a bit more but maybe it would have unbalanced the whole. Either way, it's an interesting diversion from the daily grind and I'm glad I gave it a go.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh BizArro! where for art thou bizarro! A trip to a very big bookstore left me quite embarrassed I asked the salesman about some authors and he checked the computer with no joy, I asked about bizarro genre and he looked at me strangely! This trend of bizarro is not out there yet in the stores in the u.k, online and in ebook format are the only sources out there for me.
Day two bizarro search..
I wake up from sleep as I drag my legs out of the bed and gently place them on the ground I find my shorts are very heavy as I stand they fall off. I am looking at a small book miniature sized it's a bizarro book there in my shorts, is that where you find them? Did the fairy bizarro hear my wishes and visit me in the sleep? I don't know.
The story The Egg said Nothing writes about the same experience as me, but the protagonist gave birth to an egg and over a course of few hours went on a killing spree. The story was not like Dickens or Lovecraft but was a flowing quick read on the bizarro side. Well I feel in need of someone cerebral stimulation on the wacky side so I am going to try and want more bizarro and see what I find in my underpants tomorrow morning. I fear for society as this bizarro craze is rising, put a stop to it for you own sanity please!

[Scribble Orca · Rating 5 out of 5]

A small piece of background is probably useful before plunging into the review 'proper'.

Caris (I've moved from Mr O'Malley to the more familiar term at his invitation) and I became acquainted during the manic month known as NaNoWriMo, he as the die-hard spewer of the requisite 1667 words per day, I as the innocent reviewer of said words. It wasn't really a match made in heaven, since he specialises in a level of violence which makes Tarantino seem like Peter Pan's Wendy on a bad hair day (think Pulp Fiction where Travolta blows the brains out of someone, blood spraying everywhere and messing up the car rear window multiplied by a factor of infinity), and my reading tastes tend to coincide with those of a young middle-grader. The one scene in his Clownstory where we connected was when the hand of his hero/protagonist welded itself to a knife. As a serious and critical reviewer, I asked whether he was intending that the protagonist's other hand should also weld to the knife, thus making 'our hero' a completely hands-on dispatcher of insane clowns. As it turned out, I'm given to understand the suggestion had merit, but related little to the underlying theme of violent television programs, thus the protagonist served the purpose better by having his other hand make irreversible contact with an idiot box, before proceeding to nullify said clowns.

We briefly colluded on his review thread of Mykle Hansen's Ethical Cannibals where he promised to complete a collaborative project with Mr Hansen as a Part II entitled How to Assemble the Perfect People Taco. The conception was Caris' reading this break-through author, who, in lamenting the overlap with his own work, forms the basis for beginning this review. Caris' idea was given further credibility when acclaimed activist K.I. Hope, described it as "the best idea in the history of literature."

Which left us both at an impasse. Caris' imagination clearly attracted my own. So, in a moment of supreme sensibility he crafted the The Egg Said Nothing - Puppy Version, which I will now proceed to review.

We have a number of different interpretations which can be placed upon this novel. A well-received existentialist explanation defies description.
In the same vein, although somewhat more pragmatic, if a little phlegmatic, this reviewer noted many boxes had been ticked and approved the psychic aspect of The Egg Said Nothing.

At least once, a reader felt so removed from his own reality as to envision himself falling asleep at the wheel in order to remain 'at one' with the book. The lack of spelling mistakes also indicates the depth of meaning this book can inspire.

The existence of the Egg itself could be said to have sparked controversy. What is its true meaning? Is it, in fact, a metaphor for gender roles? Does it signify the potential for developing a nesting instinct? Is it an analogy for a future in which both sexes will reproduce?

The romance seems critical, and yet we are left asking ourselves, 'what did it all really mean?'. True love is effervescent and ephemeral, dependent on the right place and the right time?

The main character is an introverted trauma waiting to happen who realises his infinite potentiality with the aid of a puppy. He finds redemption in an endlessly self-articulating universe and realises with the advent of the Egg, he is not alone.

In ending this review, which has attempted to explain the fundamental temporal and mannyfold premise upon which this novel is built, let us return to K.I. Hope, who provides a lucid metaphysical deconstruction repeated elsewhere, mirroring the coda of The Egg Said Nothing.

In other words, read it.

[Eric Hendrixson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may be an easy sell for any book with a bloody shovel on the cover, but this may be the most cleverly-plotted Bizarro book I have read. This is a difficult book to review without giving anything away, but it starts off like a Twilight Zone episode, turns into an Alfred Hitchcock Presents within a Twilight Zone episode, and turns out to be a Twilight Zone episode inside an Alfred Hitchcock Presents inside a Twilight Zone episode.

As the novel progresses, the shovel-murders promised on the cover occur. Or occurred. Or will occur. Because of the nature of the novel, it is never quite clear whether two or a dozen shovel-murders occur, but there will be shovel-murders. Or were. Or will be. Or won't be. Or always were. Or never will be. Or will just keep going on forever. Issues of love, solving the world's problems, how to keep yourself from solving the world's problems, and the difficulties of living in a time/space paradox loop are fully explored and, of course, not fully explained. You really have to understand the story on its own terms. You really have to read this one.

[Madeleine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dear Caris,

Do you mind if I call you that? It's how you signed your most recent message so I'm assuming that we're on a first-name basis now. Please let me know if I'm being too forward because my social ineptitude likes to make itself known even on the internets.

I've been meaning to read "The Egg" for quite some time but prefer doing almost everything in the hazy future. What finally propelled me toward your novella were two overwhelmingly common factors in all the reviews I read: One, everyone seemed to either like it quite a bit or REALLY like it more than just a bit; and two, no one is willing to say much about why they liked it so much for fear, they say, of divulging too much of the plot and ruining the first-time reading experience for others.

Sure, I was starting to wonder if the latter phenomenon was a cop-out or simply lazy reviewing. Then I thought maybe some folks were conspiring to shroud "The Egg" in mystery so that those of us who are insatiably inquisitive would have to break down and buy the book to stave off the creeping madness that too much unresolved curiosity brings. Finally, I considered that maybe some reviewers were following the novella's titular action and, in fact, deliberately said nothing. Turns out, I was wrong on all counts: It really is hard to offer a detailed commentary on such a tightly written piece without spoiling the surprises that make "The Egg" such a joy to read. Will I follow previous reviewers' tactful lead? Meh, not entirely.

So! Let's talk about your book a little -- rather, let me talk vaguely about how fucking rad your book is. Because it is. So far as I can remember (last week was a long time ago), I had exactly one issue with it: Every time I glanced at the page number, the book was closer to being over. Maybe you can work on that for your follow-up offering? I'm sure there's a fancy, newfangled way to push a novel into the infinite-page-count realm these days. Seriously. Look into that, okay?

By the time Manny and Ashley found themselves in a laundromat, I was desperately wishing that someone would make this into a movie. Even with a giant egg and paradoxes born of time travel, yours is a thoroughly relatable piece of fiction. In fact, the juxtaposition of Manny's believable reactions, motivations and wishes against the unbelievably crazy shit that dogs him created more effective suspense than I've seen in books three times as long. To steal a line I previously used, what I liked best about your book (and I did like an awful lot about it) is that Manny remains convincingly, sympathetically human while dealing with some.... well, bizarre problems.

To further rip off a previous communique of mine, it seemed that your book had something to say about the uselessness of fighting what's fated to be for the sake of an individual's short-sighted desires -- a bigger-picture, greater-good sort of moral, if you will. It is downright refreshing to encounter a time-travel tale that didn't blindly accept the sanctity of the future, which is how I imagine a real-life confrontation with time travel would actually go down. Whether it was my own weakness for broken, down-on-their-luck characters, Manny's genuine likability or a combination of the two, it was increasingly difficult to watch the protagonist's honest efforts to fix things himself only further ensnare him in his increasingly upside-down existence.

In the end, I came for the bizarro; I stayed because I got way too emotionally invested in the characters. Please don't ever abandon the cruel mistress that is word-slinging. You've got a lot to offer her. And your readers.


Fondly,
Madeleine


P.S.: Please note how I did not once call your story "eggs-cellent." I need a cigarette after the kind of willpower I've demonstrated in avoiding such an obvious opportunity for punny business.

P.P.S.: I fucking HATE clowns but would put aside that phobia long enough to read about them if you're the one at the tale's helm. The glory-hole story, however, shouldn't even be a question. Kindly add me to the list of people who want to read that yesterday.

[Mykle]

Okay, new policy: As of today I'm not using Goodreads stars on any books by friends, acquaintances, other writers on my press, or people whose booze I've stolen. I am still writing the reviews, but I am leaving the glittering five-tined emblems of yea and nay un-clicked-upon.

Let Amazon romp among the stars. Stars are stupid anyway. They just explode in the end. But also, I realize I'm actually procrastinating a bunch of book reviews because I'm worried that Insecure Author Friend A might trend suicidal if I give him or her fewer stars than Insecure Author Friend B. Perhaps I am the real insecure author in this scenario. But to prove to you all that I am not just gilding-the-short-bus by doing this, my first no-stars review will be of a book I really liked.

I'm a sucker for time travel stories of any kind. I can't get enough of it, it's embarrassing. If they made Tardis-shaped underwear, I'd probably wear it on my head in public. I love the paradoxes and the reflections and the opportunity for impossible dialogues, and all of that is here in spades. With time travel, Caris takes on topics of self-hatred, self-imprisonment and self-sabotage in a hilariously literal way. The dialogue is crisp and convincing, the prose is efficient and clear. A compelling tale, well-told and constantly surprising, but gruesome and (spoiler alert!) sad.

I struggled with the ending. At first I thought it was just a cop-out, an abortion of a longer story. But I came around to seeing it as just a fundamentally bummerizing statement about the hero's tragic nature. It could have been a different book, but it wasn't. On the other hand, Caris could still write another book about the same guy in a different timeframe if he wanted to. Time travel is easy like that.

[Kirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I woke up the other day with something between my legs . . . it was warm and gently caressing my inner thighs. I reached down slowly.

It wasn't an egg, but it was the next best thing: Caris O'Malley's "The Egg Said Nothing."

When I cracked this book for the first time, I wasn't sure what to expect, but I had a feeling I'd enjoy it. However, I had no idea how well-crafted the prose would be. O'Malley has a real knack for simile in particular. Beautiful women that smell like the soul of an old book--a scent which Caris and I are both familiar with, he as a librarian and myself as the spouse of a librarian--blood spraying across the walls like a starburst . . . descriptive passages that dot O'Malley's prose take imagery from the realm of the concrete into the abstract, but a comfortable realm of abstract that we all deal with quite often in our own minds as we try to make sense of the strange world around us. What makes this ubiquitous abstract description unique is the insight carried in tow.

This book will always have a special place in my heart, because it pumps life into the vein of high-brow bizarro that some in the bizarro community have been discussing over the past few months. But I wanted more damn it. I wanted answers. As an academian who has been spoon fed literary criticism I longed for all bases to be covered. But this book isn't a treatise on discipline and punishment. This is fiction, and it does what it is supposed to. It gives you a story and leaves room for interpretation, which is essential to continuing a discourse relating to the text. So in honor of O'Malley's book, I took a shovel to the head of the academian within.

And I stole my F#*$& quarters back too.

[JSou · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's really cool when you can do the "letter to author" type review and use the actual note you sent to the author:

---------------------------------------------------------

Hi Caris! I loved your book. Really. It was funny, romantic, and in my opinion, you can never go wrong with time travel. Seriously, it had me giggling out loud at the most inappropriate times.

I really wanted to review it, but I read it right around the time everyone was writing these fantastic reviews for it, and I couldn't even think of anything else to add. I totally suck at writing reviews anyway, so the intimidation was great.

I will definitely read your next book, even though I've heard (or it's been rumored) it's about clowns. Clowns! Why Caris, why?


NOTE: I have since found out Mr. O'Malley's next book is about a clown extermination company. Hell yeaaahhhh.

[Christy Stewart · Rating 2 out of 5]

As I was reading this book I got a call from a friend who asked what I was doing and I said "Reading a book about a guy who lays an egg" and she said "Oh, no." That's a good sign for a bizarro book.

The story itself is pretty charming and steers itself away from being convoluted and so I believe the author might be able to do something with the right story, but this wasn't it. It was just too many misses and not enough hits.

A lot of unimportant things happen that is pretty frustrating in a novella of this size but the fact that there is a tiny summery of the upcoming chapter under each chapter header makes reading the book all but useless.

The dialogue is completely normal to totally awkward, such as, "Hey, you stupid fuck, apologize for frightening me so."

[David Katzman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Egg Said Nothing is a hot mess of awesome-sauce. It's hard to avoid spoilers when discussing this book, but I've dosed this review with them liberally.

First off, the main character is a hot mess. He can barely keep his shit together. An utter basket case who would likely be a suicide risk if observed by a doctor. The guy lives off spare change collected from water fountains, and his mother's deceased husband's pension. He has zero relationships...until now...Dunt, duh-dunt duhnnn! MAJOR SPOILER:He kills her. Sort of. Not sort of kills her, she is killed. It's just sort of him. Ermm. Never mind.

Second off, the plot involves a hot mess of time travel*. The Egg Said Nothing has a web of time traveling lines that looks like this:



It's like an angry fist of pathways through time and space. Really, don't try to make sense of it. Don't. Don't think too hard. Just enjoy the brilliance of (MAJOR SPOILER) a guy who goes back in time over and over again trying to kill himself in an orgy of self-suicide bombers. It hardly matters if it could really be charted out logically. The Egg Said Nothing is not a logical story; it's an emotional one. The Egg Said Nothing is a story about self-hatred. Delusion. It's a metaphor for how we sabotage ourselves. It's about blame...with maybe a little forgiveness. It's about how a twisted childhood can result in a loop of self-destruction.

This is a short novella, so there's no reason not to give it a read. It might just give you a good whack in the head with a shovel...treat your kids right or the results won't be pretty. Although it might make for an interesting story.

*The back of the book does give away this particular plot twist, but I'm not going to give it away here. I usually don't read the backs of books because I prefer to let the author take me through the plot.

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The moment the main character said he had a healthy sense of shame about his person, I knew I was going to enjoy this book. O'Malley has managed to write an entertaining bizarro story that wades into weirdness but not so much that I was left drowning. He kept it simple and fun in a disturbing and strangely relatable way. Not to say that I make my living from stealing coins from fountains but I was able to relate to the main character's stasis.

The best part of the book was Manny's and Ashley's relationship. It was convincing and makes me think O'Malley might be a romantic at heart. Considering the length, and that the weirdness was not unbearably off the charts but still quite a bit of dark fun, I highly recommend this for anyone considering reading something in the bizarro genre.

[Anita Dalton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me offer as much of a synopsis as I can without completely spoiling the book: Manny lays an egg. He wakes up one morning and he finds himself bare in the nether regions with an egg between his legs. Manny is sort of hostile and paranoid. He’s probably got that avoidant personality disorder that’s become all the rage now. He finances his life by stealing money from wishing fountains. He spends most of his time watching television. But when he sees the egg, it triggers in him something that is a mixture of the maternal and the paternal and he tries to take care of the egg. He goes to a diner and meets a waitress whose teeth, skin and scent enchant him. They hang out at a laundromat and eat vending machine food. They fall in love fast because they have to because this is a novella and they have sex and the egg… Well it doesn’t hatch so much as it breaks and what is inside is unexpected. What is inside I will not state implicitly because I think that would be the first link in spoiling the chain of the plot but the contents of the egg begin a series of circular events that tests Manny’s mettle, his love for this new woman who offers him a new life, his morality and his sense of reality. Manny is given the chance to prevent a series of events that will trigger a world-wide catastrophe but he will have to make decisions no man should be asked to make. All in all, this is a really loopy, sad, absorbing look at a miserable hipster who lays an egg and changes his life only to have to destroy all that makes him happy in order to achieve a higher moral end. Read my entire review here.

[Dustin Reade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yesterday morning, I awoke to find this book between Caris O'Malley's legs. It was covered in a thin, yogurt-y film, and it was screaming.
It was screaming: "Read me! Read Me!"
Don't ask me why, but I felt a sudden, very powerful attachment to the book. I found myself unable to ignore its request. So I took it from the author (who cried in an eery falsetto for hours after parting with it {and was espescially strange being as I do not know him personally, and do not know how he found his way into my home, much less beside me in bed}), and after reading only the first line, I knew I would love it as if it were my own. See, it suckled at my teets. And I, in turn, suckled at its pages.
Neither of us found our diets lacking in any way.
I spent the better part of the following morning (today), going through the book and finding out exactly what it was about it that made me love it so. I imagine parents might do the same thing with their first child. As a matter of fact, I am a parent of a three-year-old girl, and I know this to be true. As parents, we examine our progeny. We stick them under microscopes to help us better understand what it is we like about them.
What I like about this book is that, at heart it is a love story. Not a cheezy one, either. More a love story of the "Benny and June" variety. Two weirdos falling for each other specifically because they are weird. THis makes me happy, and it makes me love the book a little. Have you ever seen "Niagra, Niagra?" Like that, only without the twitching.
THe other thing I discovered when I opened up the book was the same thing one would discover when opening their benefactors: blood. Tons of blood. So much blood you wake up choking on it. (Sleep on your side to prevent this from occuring.)
Yet, even though there are rivers of blood issuing forth from the book, it did not strike me as excessively violent. Sure, there was violence, but it seemed necessary to the story, and it made me laugh several times when it didn't make me feel sick. (It didn't make me feel sick.)
And even if you do not like excessive violence (perhaps you have a condition?), the book also comes equipped with shovels to help you scoop out any blood you might feel a bit too gratuitous.
So I suggest you read it, as it is a fine book, and one that skeets easily from one page to the next. Also, it has inspired me to write my longest review yet, so that should say something in its favor.
Five fuggin' stars!

[Auntie Raye-Raye · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the past couple months, I've followed the author's reviews on Goodreads. I was pleasantly surprised to find out he was one of the 2010 NBAS candidates.

I enjoyed the story. A paranoid, shut-in, man laying an egg is a great premise. Some of the lines in it were funny enough for me to file them away for later use. My favorite was "Go fuck yourself with an ice pick!)

I really liked the relationship between Ashley and Manny. Though, it seemed a bit rushed. The dates they went were ridiculous in a John Waters way.

My only minor issue with the book, is that if I didn't know better, I would have thought I was reading a Chuck Palahniuk book. It has a very strong Palahniuk vibe to it. This isn't a huge complaint, I am a fan of his. I wanted more of O'Malley's voice in it.