Weekly Reader: Rotary Pug by Michael Honig; A Hell of a Journey Into Life After Death

 Weekly Reader: Rotary Pug by Michael Honig; A Hell of a Journey Into Life After Death 

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: It's ironic that Rotary Pug by Michael Honig is being reviewed the same year as Thomas Milhorat's Melia in Foreverland. If the two books are put together, they make a 21st century version of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Melia covers the journey into Heaven or Paradise and Rotary Pug takes care of the rest of the journey through Hell and Purgatory. Oddly enough, the two books are similar in their unique look at the Final Destinations and involve protagonists who are confused and questioning about the nature of good, evil, life, and death. That's where the similarities end. While Melia is a beautiful lyrical journey that is aware of the existence of evil remains hopeful and appeals to one's better nature, Rotary Pug is a nightmarish horrifying nihilistic trip that squashes hope in favor of dread.

 The book centers on John Castlemaine. In life, he tried to rescue a child from a burning apartment. Unfortunately, the girl died. A grief and guilt stricken Castlemaine commits suicide via gunshot during a final trip to the Catskills. This is the type of book that takes a moment to describe the beautiful nature scene and the lovely sunset to give the Reader a false sense of peace before it slaps them in the face with the death of the protagonist.

When Castlemaine wakes up, he finds himself surrounded by a dense fog and a carousel with several colorful pug dogs moving in a circle. A particularly creepy moment occurs when Castlemaine observes that the pugs change expression with each rotation. One has an angry expression then an expression of sadness, and an originally sad pug carries an expression of indifference and so on. This passage reveals the kind of book that is before us, one that has a black comic but sinister vibe. Honig's description is effctive because of this double sided mix of humor and darkness making this Afterlife journey incredibly unique.

 

There are many chilling passages that makes the Reader feel as though they stumbled into the scariest haunted house ever and any minute, something creepy will emerge from the shadows. Castlemaine finds himself in a long hallway with several portraits of figures that literally follow him. One features a jester who changes position as Castlemaine looks at him. To Castlemaine's bemusement and horror, he finds the jester's portrait empty and the goblinesque multi-colored subject standing right in front of him.

The Jester is a terrifying tour guide for Castlemaine. He mocks the newcomer's confusion and denial of his situation that he is dead (which admittedly takes a ridiculously long time for Castlemaine to absorb this fact.). At first he appears harmless, maybe a brusque trickster with an off color sense of humor. But then as the book continues, his real sadistic nature is revealed as he delights in torturing and destroying the souls that are unfortunate enough to be caught near him. The Jester makes Pennywise look like Ronald McDonald.

One of the best moments occurs when Castlemaine appears in what he at first thinks is a masquerade ball. He sees people dressed in various period costumes: Spartan warriors, Roman senators, Elizabethan prostitutes, Hindu priestesses, 1960's hippies, etc. They talk and fight each other, but they also carry expressions of morbid despair and resignation. Many of them carry grudges, hatred, and guilt from their lives. For example a Puritan, Jeddediah, is trapped by his narrow view of Christianity and abuses others around him such as a French prostitutes, Maisell. They have nothing to do but carry on those feelings for eternity, trapped in their cycles of hatred. Their evil is exposed and they have to live with it for eternity.

 These souls are watched over by a large viking Jormundgand, who serves as a bartender for the deceased. He and a disfigured Welshman, Tarpwych answer many of Castlemaine's questions about the nature of evil, free will, whether God and Satan exist and where they are. These questions run deep throughout the book as characters accept the nothingness around them. They feel that they are following a script written by God and Satan in which they are placed in their positions and forced to act according to their design. It is an incredibly bleak theme that carries out, particularly when characters disappear at random as if to fulfill someone else's purpose. They no longer have any will of their own. Castlemaine must come to terms with this morbid destiny in one final confrontation that opens up his own guilt and self-loathing.

Rotary Pug is not a book for the faint of heart. It is terrifying, savage, bleak, and completely memorable. It is certainly one Hell of a book.