The Bizarro Starter Kit (Blue) review

Bizarro isn’t a genre for everyone, I think the intro to this book (and the publisher’s website) explains it best in point #7: “Bizarro is: Franz Kafka meets Joe Bob Briggs; Dr. Seuss of the post-apocalypse; Alice in wonderland for adults; Japanese animation directed by David Lynch”.

I’d seen several interesting Bizarro titles before, and the occasional review of them, and some of them from the title alone sounded downright strange. The Bizarro Starter Kits (Blue, Orange and Purple) exist to answer the question of whether you’ll actually enjoy this strange new genre. I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur of the odd, a huge fan of cult films and a lover of weird art so I thought I’d give it a go.

All of the pages of the collection are split into two columns of text, this is hard to follow at first but I found I adjusted after a short while. The selection you are given, at least in the Blue version, is incredibly varied. Some authors within the book are fun, some are obscene, and almost everything requires a significant amount more thought than would be required to follow along with most Best Sellers (whether or not that is a good thing is up to your individual taste).

I didn’t personally enjoy everything in this book, but I loved/liked enough of the stories to want to try out, at the very least, the Orange version, which is good enough for me to say it’s a good collection for a starter. I was going to give this only 3 stars, because I give out too many 4 star ratings, and because I didn't enjoy most of the storied. BUT for this to be obviously displaying a wide variety of styles and authors to attempt to show at least something for everyone; for managing to cause me to release the occasional laugh and “Ohh!” of belated understanding; for convincing me to buy another book: and for collectively breaking almost every rule of story writing I was taught in high school English; I think it deserves these 4 stars.

/ [Karithina]

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