Hello everyone! My name is Macabri, and you’re reading this because I have been given the great honor of being added as a contributing writer to this site! I thought I would kick things off with a review of “Werewolf Haiku” by Ryan Mecum.
There is no really good way to sum up what this book is like. It’s funny, it’s wild, it’s gross, it’s disturbing and much more. I read this little beauty on a plane trip to Florida, and it was one of those books where you try to make sure no one is peeking over your shoulder. It’s pretty hard to explain why you’re reading a book whose contents are splattered with images of blood, matted hair and pig heads.
“Werewolf Haiku” follows the life of a mailman who has been bitten by a werewolf and has now become a werewolf himself. It is essentially a personal journal of his life after his lupine encounter, but told entirely in haikus. (That’s the five-seven-five syllable format you likely learned in school.) As you may have surmised, this is no sissy werewolf type of story. We’re talking puking, moonlight hunts and gallons of blood.
I’m still not sure how this book really makes me feel. At times I was positively nauseated (and I have a REALLY strong stomach). At other times I found myself giggling. How can you not laugh at a haiku that says:
If you think tacos
are hard for you to digest,
try passing chipmunks.
Pretty funny, right? At the same time, there is something so disturbingly honest about the descriptions in the book. Things are said that make sense, but that also make you wonder about the author and where some of the ideas came from. For example, there was this haiku:
When people eat corn
and spot them in their feces-
teeth are that way, too.
I get that, it makes sense, but it also goes over a line that rarely gets crossed even in horror literature. There are quite a number of squirm-worthy comments throughout the book.
If you have a weak stomach, this is not the book for you. I have a strong stomach, and I’m still not sure it was the book for me, either. Maybe I’ll give it another read sometime…but definitely not after I’ve just eaten.
I’ll give this book 3 out of 5 dead squirrels.