Tacky Goblin

Tacky Goblin by T. Sean Steele, 134 pages

This is hands-down the weirdest book I've ever read. Forget unreliable narrator: this book has an unreliable plot, unreliable characters, unreliable settings, and an unreliable timeline. My best description is that it's about a guy who seems to be moving out of his parents' house to live with his sister in L.A. There are other people who live in their apartment building, including the guy's girlfriend (who may or may not be much older than him) and a noisy neighbor upstairs. Beyond that, there are some weird black pills, a talking mold stain on the guy's ceiling, a creature named Barb that is alternately a dog and a human baby, and some imaginary characters that don't know they're imaginary.

I'm OK with books that are a bit weird, and with elements of books that don't make sense. But when the whole book makes no sense? Nope. Just too weird. I read the whole thing in the hopes that something would cause everything to come together, but, despite the plot getting slightly less weird toward the end, it didn't. Maybe I'm missing some sort of weird symbolic thing (some of the back cover reviews mentioned coming-of-age symbolism, which *maybe* I can get), but I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, unless you're looking for something to read during an acid trip.