by Fran Friel

Rebecca is a brand new therapist at Penn Asylum who has manipulated herself into the position of holding one-on-one sessions with disfigured patient "Frank Doe," seemingly the institution's most mysterious 20-year patient. She quickly gets past his long refusal to speak and he starts talking a blue streak. Each session delves deeper into the man's grotesque life, especially his unnatural attachment to his Mama, whose love/hate abuse has apparently created a monster. Frank narrates his story, slowly beginning to brag about his murderous exploits. Rebecca's time is slipping by, however, because Frank is about to be transferred. Her motives and manipulations come to mean as much as Frank's, as the two engage in a thrust and parry dance with a surprising crescendo.

Within the frame (Rebecca's efforts to provide therapy), Frank's story comes from his own voice. This engaging device also provides the story's one weakness. An intrusive authorial tone fades in and out of Frank's voice, rendering some of his account unconvincing by virtue of echoing an author more than a character—for instance, starting sentences with a gerund, something we don't tend to do when we speak. Despite this flaw, the device of letting Frank narrate his own story works (perhaps accidentally) by creating an unexpectedly chilling schizophrenia. At first distracting, it soon grows on the reader and becomes itself an element of the twirling dance between Rebecca and her pupil, the increasingly unstable Frank. Because numerous memorable characters have told their own stories, we're ready to forgive the authorial intrusions and pick out Frank's own real voice. As the tension mounts, it's soon obvious that the dynamic between patient and doctor has frequently alternated.

Friel's novella is noteworthy partly for its gleeful mayhem and an unflinching dip into madness and evil, still after all this time the best elements of horror. Serial murder, rape, incest, and other vile acts ratchet up the grue factor in fine fashion. Blend with the age-old debate regarding what is monstrous and how monsters are created, and the result is a bracing cocktail of the grotesque. As a first effort, it's a superb predictor of more good work to come from Fran Friel, who can no longer fly below our collective radar. Though a short-run small press offering, and now sold out, Mama's Boy is worth seeking out and enjoying for its colorful excesses and excellent illustrations by Tom Moran and Zach McCain. Introduction by James Newman.