Having first come to Bradley Sands work by a chance collision with a slim book titled Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy, (a disjointed collection of prose and other things which almost resemble poems) I had essentially no expectations when it came to Please Do Not Shoot Me in the Face. Sands defies even the term “non sequitor” because for one that is too fancy of a word and two implies that there is some reasonable way of categorizing what he does. With this is in mind, I had a hard time figuring out how Sands would construct a novel.
The answer is yes.
The novel moves in the jerky movements of Sands’s shorter prose yet bewilderingly maintains a linear structure throughout. Characters’ homes explode or fly into a McDonald’s franchise competing in a city-wide demolition derby and most of them make it out alive. A man falls out of a 300 story building and survives by having his fall broken by a pile of pigeon leavings. A boy detective is sawed in half by his divorcing parents only to become an even better detective. An overweight ninja has few combat skills other than his “silent but extremely deadly” flatulence. In between all of these outlandish plot progressions the boy detective repeatedly breaks the fourth wall in conversations with Bradley Sands hoping to detect the theme of his novel while insisting this is actually a collection of novellas; the latter vehemently disagrees. Miraculously I was able to read the book in one very comfortable sitting and was actually convinced I had read something that makes sense.
In the midst of all this are not so subtle critiques made about life in general. Think Stephen Colbert style satire meets Jim Carey pre-Eternal Sunshine. In the novel’s middle and longest novella a demolition derby takes place among the fast food franchises, a rogue office tower and an apartment building for control of the fast food world. In its “reign of terror over the digestive systems of the American people” one franchise creates an aptly named “Donner Burger” out of its competitor’s customers and eventually its own. I am sure this says something about one of the things that happens thesedays. A homophobic, evil ninja is tasked with bringing about the end of the world by inducing the second coming of Jesus. If you are thinking something that you should be paddled by a nun for you are on the right track. In searching for clues to his parents’ pending divorce our boy detective comes home to find his mother “sitting” on her new “chair” named Bill and is told by both parents, contrarty to popular platitudes, that yes it is his fault they no longer love each other.
It may just be my wishful thinking that these things are absurdist forays into social commentary rather than just 200 pages of R-rated Wily Coyote-esque exploits but both are fine by me. In searching for a way to summarize Sands’s approach to this book I think the author of Rico Slade Will Fucking Kill You says it best in his blurb for Please Do Not Shoot Me in the Face:
“This is a book for anyone who has ever hated someone. This is a book for anyone who has ever wanted to break into someone’s house while they are sleeping, wrap a book around your fist and punch that asshole in the throat until they’re dead. This is that kind of book.”
Yes, Sands quoted himself for the jacket lining of his book. He makes a good point though, no one writes like Bradley Sands. He deftly writes in the mental disposition of his three protagonists: a disillusioned adolescent; a disillusioned, virgin office employee and a disillusioned incompetent; overweight, sex-crazed, homophobic ninja. Of the first he almost fools you into believing for a moment that his trauma is real and deeply felt:
“Frankie does not remember being a boy detective. He does not remember working on The Case of the Missing Heart. He does not remember his house blowing up. All he remembers is finding out his mommy has been in an accident and getting out of school early because of it. Yay! Getting out of school early makes Frankie happy.”
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Nice. I’ve heard other good things about this book. Thanks for the thoughtful review.