Book Review : Fred Venturini - To Dust You Shall Return (2021)
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Every man I know entertains the secret fantasy of being this unemotional badass who gets shit done. I’m the first one guilty of it whenever my mind starts to drift. That’s why we relate so hard with downtrodden outcasts who beat the odds and change the world in their own way. They don’t even have to feel real. They only have to satisfy that need. I do not know if the protagonists of Fred Venturini’s new novel To Dust You Shall Return did… but they did something right.
I’m not sure what they did exactly, but it kind of worked?
How can I summarize this novel without sounding like a complete maniac? To Dust You Shall Return tells the story of Curtis Quinn and Beth Jarvis, two people who shouldn’t have ever met. Bound by the death of Beth’s older sister, their fates intertwine in a little town called Harlow. The place is under the spell of a nameless maniac known as The Mayor and no one runs away from him. Not ever. Together, Curtis and Beth will fight that guy for better or worse.
This novel is fucking crazy
I didn’t dislike To Dust You Shall Return. On the contrary, I was pretty fucking entertained by the whole thing. But it is a crazy novel. Not “so crazy it’s fun” type of crazy. Not “so crazy it doesn’t know when to stop” type of crazy. It’s the crazy type of crazy. I’m going to sound hard, but remember that it all comes from a place of love. I’ve read this novel saying “woooooah” and “what the fuck am I reading?” out loud and any novel should aim at making you react like this.
I’ve never read such a well crafted novel that is such a pure, reptilian-brained male fantasy. There’s a mob enforcer, a spirited young girl who’s not quite a woman yet, a weird cult that never quite gets explained, EXTREMELY violent hicks, cannibals and a lot of wild stuff that is played completely straight. No irony. No wink-wink agreement about getting crazy together. It starts with a reasonable revenge fantasy and falls straight into hair metal video territory.
I swear to God. At least ten or twelve times I stopped and asked my self if I had just read what I just actually read. You know the meme Well, that escalated quickly? To Dust You Shall Return is the novel version of that. It really feels like the bastard offspring of Axl Rose circa Use Your Illusion and Stephen King’s cocaine-addled brain and I mean that in the most positive way. If you’re going to fantasize about saving the day, don’t you fucking dare half-assing it.
Ben, what the fuck are you saying?
Glad you asked. I’m basically saying that with less archetypal characters, it could’ve been something truly special. The mob enforcer and the Molly Ringwald type are the most tired clichés I know, but they’re evolving in such a crazy, over-the-top setting that they’re almost forgivable. I kind of liked To Dust You Shall Return because it was so unapologetically crass, vile and over-the-top, but it lacked, to me, was someone to give a shit about.
I am lacking comparison for this novel because of out there it is. Imagine Stephen King’s The Stand, Guns N’ Roses’ November Rain, Road House and Footloose put in a blender together. It has a wicked defiant, juvenile energy to it, but it doesn’t quite know where to lead it. To Dust You Shall Return doesn’t have a structure problem or even a good faith problem, it has a tone problem. If you don’t fiercely identity with either Curtis or Beth, it’s going to freak you out.
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I was wildly entertained by To Dust You Shall Return, but I wasn’t quite moved. It might just be your own personal Catcher in the Rye, but if it is I’m kind of worried about your mental health because this novel has a powerful high school goth vibe. Perhaps even a high school goth with a violent streak vibe. It’s one of these novels that I’ll quietly nod my head at and go on my merry way. It might really be more of your vibe than mine, but it may or may not be a good thing.
