Country: USA
Genre: Noir/Dark Humor
Pages: 191 kb (eOriginal)
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"I don't like virgins in my shop." Jesus' eyes seemed to generate their own heat. The guy could order a taco and sound angry about it.
To be honest, I didn't know what to expect when I started reading DIG TWO GRAVES. The title hinted to a revenge story and the cover is stylish but rather abstract when it comes to crime. I dipped a toe into it, fearing I had just signed up for something generic and...holy shit. I discovered with great joy the twisted mind of Eric Beetner. You only need one idea to turn something generic into a demented piece of fiction. Not only Beetner had many ideas to give his story a unique shape, but he made them fit in the restricting form of the novella. Not only it feels fresh, but I hadn't laughed out loud while reading a book like that, since I have read Matthew McBride's now infamous FRANK SINATRA IN A BLENDER, last year. Not only Beetner's DIG TWO GRAVES succeeded at making me laugh, but it succeeded at many other things. Turning a bloodbath into a coming-of-age story, for example.
Confusing statement, I know. Here's how the story plays out. Simply put, Val just got out of jail and his partner in bank heists Ernesto has ratted him out to the police. Devoured by anger and bitterness, he prowls the streets to find Ernesto and take his vengeance. Simple enough, borderline cliché, right? Here's the twist that makes DIG TWO GRAVES oh-so-flavorful. Val and Ernesto had a relationship in prison. Yeah, that kind of relationship. While it might've started out of biological necessity, it evolved into something all entangled in feelings. Val was in love with his young partner. He still is, as he is consumed with ideas of a blood-soaked vengeance. There is also crime boss Frank, who he had a love-triangle issue with, in the days where he was still hetero. Frank wants to see Val in regards to his bloody escape from the jaws of justice and his goons keep trying to pick him up as he makes his way to Ernesto. It's a new dawn for Val, he is homosexual and starts getting used to the idea. As he gets deeper and deeper in the underbelly of the city, the new and the old Val collide for everybody he knew.
"Poor mister lover man. Nobody to suck his dick anymore. Was it only a jail cell love affair? Destined to end outside the prison walls?" There went that tongue again. At the risk of sounding all Deliverance, boy did he have a pretty mouth."
The beauty of the issue here is that Val is animated by feelings of truthfulness and revelation, and yet his newfound sexual orientation is born out of prison sex, which is as ugly as it comes. He's soaking in a brutal, underworld where he used to have a place and this newfound outlook on life keeps interfering with his mission. That scene I just quoted, where he has to extract information out of a young man in a gay club bathroom, is a prime example of the untimely nature of his new lifestyle. He has an inner struggle in between the person he really is and the person he built in the underworld. In DIG TWO GRAVES, Val is having the most violent and desperate coming-of-age one can have.
I know it sounds strange, but the glue that make this story hold up together and stand out, is Eric Beetner's use of the first person narration. He made Val into this disgruntled small time robber with a vivid inner life. Everything is changing around him, even the foundations of his personality, so he keeps questioning everything and looking at his surroundings in a new way. In the Baby Jesus Morales chapter (I'm not spoiling anything, but it's great), Val has the eyes of a rugged veteran and a frightened outsider at the same time. I can't find any reasons not to read DIG TWO GRAVES. Yeah there are clichés in it, but it has enough original ideas to carry its point thought. It's short and funny enough to carry its point across with any kind of reading crowds and most important, it's told in a booming, fearless voice. Eric Beetner has just gained a new fan. I bought a Kindle for books like that.
FOUR STARS