2022 Larry Prater Award for Best Read
The 2022 Larry Prater Award for Best Read is awarded to Max Booth III's Maggots Screaming! The defining factor in my decision process here was scope. Man, this novel does everything. It's funny as hell like every other Max Booth III's novels, it's disgusting and nightmarish, it's moving, surreal, low-key deep. It is what I like to call an emotional journey. For a novel with a premise that doesn't make any sense at first sight, it's one hell of an accomplishment.
Booth turned himself into somewhat of a household name over the last couple years with the movie adaptation of We Need to Do Something and ambitious projects like Touch the Night, but Maggots Screaming! is a step up even from these extremely high standards. Halfway between a William Faulkner family saga and something that would’ve come up from Todd Solondz’s diseased brain, Maggots Screaming! is a unique, fearless and thoroughly, thoroughly fun novel
