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''Uh, huh,'' he said. ''Okay.''
Don't let that strange cover fool you. It would be easy to do so. Rudy Yuly isn't some Sunday auteur with raunchy taste in design, the man can write a little and SPARKLE has quite an interesting background story Yuly details in the foreword. It's one of those stories that traveled a lot more than you might think. So don't let that cover fool you, there is a narrative purpose behind this bizarre choice. I'm asking you not to judge the book by its cover, here. I know it's difficult because it's the only thing you know about SPARKLE, but bear with me. Keep reading. You'll discover a flawed, but lively novel filled with original ideas and odd storytelling choices.
SPARKLE is the story of Joe and Eddie Jones, brothers and owners of ''Sparkle Cleaners'' a crime scene cleaning company. Joe is managing the outfit and Eddie is doing the actual cleaning work, which makes Joe feel like he's living from his brother's skill. Only problem is that Eddie is autistic, so he needs Joe too. Following a recent string of murders in town, ''Sparkle Cleaners'' have been working overtime while trying to breathe a little hope in their respective lives. Joe is getting closer to LaVonne, the bartender at his local watering hole and Eddie is hung up on zookeeper Jolie, who has another man hung up on her: her boss Mark. That's a much more difficult relationship to handle.
I loved Eddie. Thought the segments narrated through his point of view were original, fun and oh-so-autistic. I believe it's important not to use a variable like autism lightly, for storytelling purpose. Eddie is beautifully dysfunctional. He uses about four or five sentences maximum to communicate. Trying to decipher different meanings behind the same sentence over and over again was somewhat of a sport to me, as I was reading SPARKLE. I would've taken a complete novel narrated from Eddie's point of view. That is both good and bad since it somewhat invalidates Joe, who has ''grown up problems'' of bills to pay and low self-esteem which would have been cool if they would'n't have been juxtaposed to his autistic brother's surreal relationship with a zookeeper who is struggling with her own attraction to an autistic man. That made Joe's problem a little inane and lifeless in comparison and that becomes a problem since Joe's storyline is taking a good chunk of the novel.
Threatening wisps of chaos were forming everywhere, wafting through the air. They looked like smoke, like dirty little opaque clouds. They gave off a sickly cold chill. Chaos meant too much stimulation, and too much stimulation shut Eddie down. Then he had no self-control or memory. Then he had to go wherever his thoughts dragged him.
SPARKLE is a character-driven novel and is unapologetic about being so, which handicaps the mystery a little bit. It's difficult to know who the bad guy really is. There is an anonymous killer character who comes up in the first few chapters, only to go silent until the final pages. Joe and Eddie are never unto him and the killer never really threatens them. Quite frankly, it was a nice twist, but I think the novel could've existed without that character. I thought Mark was a much more capable antagonist, Rudy Yuly seemed to disagree about that. As sick and manipulative as Mark could get, Yuly wrapped him in just enough pathos to give his action a justification. Not a good justification, mind you, Mark is still a looser, but I thought the pathos was too great for the character and that it dragged power from what could have been a remarkably twisted antagonist.
I read a lot of books, so stories like SPARKLE, that challenge the way stories are usually written, are a breath of fresh air for me. I found it to be a little melodramatic and feel-good for my own aesthetic tastes, but I'll admit it's a fascinating character-driven novel that walks to its own drum. Eddie Jones is a tremendous creation, a character that breaks down the challenges of autism on the page. SPARKLE might not be a cover-to-cover succcess, yet it's owning what it's trying to be and manages to keep its coherence and relevancy. Why break your reading routine and read SPARKLE? Why wouldn't you? It's a story that came too far to be stopped and that is bound to find a massive audience.