We are sitting down in the breakroom, wondering how best to write this review. Our thoughts are chattering away ideas as we open the document titled reviews. We just finished the book, and we have many thoughts.
—You shouldn’t do a fictionalised review for this one, I don’t think people even like that.
—Who said that?
—I think you should fictionalize it, but only just. Maybe do a little construction on the fourth wall, yeah? Maybe do a review in the form the book had, like a teaser, or more of a nod – like respectful, you know?
—How would we nod, we have no head? We’re thoughts.
—But how would we show our thoughts then, on the book? Remember we had that one thought about comparing it to Gravity’s Rainbow? How the story seems to float about, embodying whoever or whatever it needs to in order to tell itself. Not to mention the bizarreness and humor – we totally got Pynchon vibes there. And like how could we bring up things like V for Vendetta, or Equilibrium, how would we bring those ideas up if the review is fiction? We should just write up some thoughts.
—Who??
—We never finished Gravity’s Rainbow, did we? Doesn’t matter. Point is, we can make comparisons to those movies within the fictional review, like how we’ve been doing the others. Remember Karakorum, we wrote that one as though it were a scene in the book but then brought by the book into the fictional world. Pretty clever, I thought.
—I mean we could, sure, but that seems like extra effort. And I still say people aren’t into the fictionalized reviews. People probably just want like thoughts or whatever. You know like (the thought uses air quotes) “this book was chaotic in the best way”. Explain that we felt the book was punchy and heavy at times, but it balanced it with dark humor really well – like that bit about the black cats toward the end of the book? That was funny. But then the section with the sniper bodyguard and the dream of being a bullet and all that, that was pretty punchy and heavy.
—I don’t actually know what’s happening.
—People like them, the fictionalized reviews. And the way we’ve been writing them is a form of sampling the book itself. This could be our thing. We could make it a thing. It’s a win win win.
—Win.
—I don’t know, we can do whatever, either way we should work on writing the review. We don’t want to forget any of the thoughts we had.
—Who?? Please!
—Yeah, we should, I suppose.
A woman with a television head enters our room and beats us with her fists. You click away from the review, confused but intrigued.
