Gaston Glew is a pickle and Fanny W. Fod is a pancake. From the very beginning, the reader can tell this book will be bizarre. This story was everything I have and have not imagined about pickles and pancakes. The writing style was curt and to the point and the author spared no details when it came to sticky subjects such as suicide, death, murder, and sex but he did provide a strange perspective: that of a pickle. This pickle was not just any pickle. It was a sad pickle. Did the author choose a phallic vegetable on purpose? Pickles do come with their own associations and prejudices.

As I read the story, I felt like I could smell and taste the sickly sweetness of the maple syrup and the briny sourness of the pickled pancakes and it totally grossed me out! Cameron Pierce effectively captured all my senses in relation to pickles and pancakes, unusual subjects. Pierce has imagined every nook and cranny of these two subjects and then mashed them together in an uncommon storyline that is so bizarre I don’t know what to think. Pierce was able to capture a different perspective with his edible characters, translating death, sadness, and happiness into tangible shaped concepts.

The plot was straightforward, to find Happiness (as a pickle) but the plot seemed wandering and mildly purposeless. I thought the story got a little chatty with the author’s own musings on the subjects of happiness and sadness with too much emphasis placed on the characters’ thoughts and feelings. However, Pierce wrote a wonderfully imaginative story about what could and would happen if pickles and pancakes were alive in a world where unequivocal certainties are not complete realities on Pancake Island.

Pierce’s writing style reminded me of the curiosity of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry mixed with the emotional wanderings of The Missing Piece Meets the Big O by Shel Silverstein.

Would I recommend this book?

This book is different. If you are not willing to read something bizarre, then I would not recommend this book. Also, the detailed sex scene might be overwhelming for certain readers (even when it’s between two made-up characters: a pickle and a pancake). I enjoyed the book, it gave me some ideas for my own unusual fiction. Also, the author is highly imaginative and I appreciated reading the book just for the odd tidbits of imagination.