Blood Sugar

August 1, 2019
A troubled man plans to unleash his rage on trick-or-treaters with tainted candy, enlisting the help of three neighborhood children to carry out his plan. Robbie, who has "all this pussy ass black hair down his neck plus pimples all across his flab cheeks and the saddest little mustache you ever saw," is a 30-something man who lives in a crumbling and cluttered house on the decidedly rough Yellow Street and counts young narrator Jody, Jody's little foster sister, Midget, and Dagmar, a girl from the right side of the tracks, as his only friends. In middle school, Robbie was a football star and local hero, but multiple concussions and abuse at the hands of a coach have left him a wreck of a human being, one who plans to poison/maim/kill children with Halloween candy. He gives Jody and Dag the job of stocking up on supplies. Lord of the Rings-obsessed Jody narrates with an exhaustingly scattershot and affected tough-kid lingo that calls to mind A Clockwork Orange, and he spares the reader nothing when it comes to bodily fluids or functions as well as an enduring preoccupation with his wiener. Over the course of about a day, the conflicted Jody details past and present exploits with Robbie, who hits Jody and supplies the kids with street-drug-loaded drinks they call supermilk; Midget, who talks only to bugs; and Dag, who is her parents' only shining hope after her sister was sent to a clinic after a suicide attempt. While the grim circumstances of these kids' lives are truly heartbreaking, there are darkly comic moments and even a glimmer of hope in the finale; but these elements are weighed down by the book's sheer amount of squalor, made all the more disturbing because the main characters are children. Will Jody stop Robbie? Will readers overcome their roiling stomachs enough to care? Whether you love or hate this nihilistic little oddity, you probably won't forget it.

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August 5, 2019
When kids come trick-or-treating down Yellow Street, the disgruntled, slovenly Robbie Glinton intends to lace the Halloween candy with poison and razor blades in this meandering excursion into hoarder noir from Kraus (The Shape of Water with Guillermo del Toro). Robbie enlists kids who hang out in his decaying home in the project. The principal narrator, Jody, speaks in a language distinctly his own: “Todays getting real. Realer than any day previous. Robbies made plans in the past but nothing this heavy. All a us are feeling it.” Other eccentric kid voices include those of Dag, a rebellious resident of a nicer suburb who dotes on a tick-infested street dog, and brain-damaged Midget, who talks to bugs and wraps herself in flypaper. Kraus makes an impassioned case for the value of family with his marginalized cast of characters, but the plot is one that could have worked just as effectively in short story form. The novel lives or dies by how a reader reacts to Jody’s point of view. As an entry in the literature of Halloween, this is much more icky than eerie. (Oct.)Correction: An earlier version of this review referred to the character Jody as female.

September 6, 2019

With his mother suffering from paralyzing depression, young teen Jody spends most of his time in the decrepit home of thirtysomething Robbie. A onetime high school football star, Robbie had a promising start that was squashed by sexual abuse and a beating that left a man severely disfigured. Abandoned by his parents after the beating incident, Robbie takes out his anger on those who wronged him on the children trick-or-treating on Halloween. He sends Jody and Jody's friend Dag to the store for candy, and has Jody, Dag, and Jody's foster sister Midge help him lace it with razor blades and household cleaners. In the course of a day or so, we follow this motley band, whose poverty and desire for a caring family holds them together. Filled with heartbreaking details of these children's lives, this story from The Shape of Water coauthor Kraus (with Guillermo del Toro) makes us care for this dysfunctional family and hope that they manage to do the right thing. VERDICT Neither horror nor noir but an eye-opening look at what some have to do to survive. Recommended for larger collections.--Lynnanne Pearson, Skokie P.L., IL

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 15, 2019
When you hear that the author of Rotters and Scowler has written a novel about a pathetic sicko who attempts to get back at his tormentors by embedding glass shards and other lethal stuff (rat poison, anyone?) into Halloween candy, your first instinct will be to take deep breaths and hold your stomach. Both those maneuvers will be required in reading this novel, but here's the surprise: amid the excruciating tension and the frequent appearances of some familiar Krausian creepy-crawlies (maggots, ticks, rats, and lots of flies), there is a downright tender alternative-family story lurking amid the bodily fluids (think Weetzie Bat gone seriously noir). Robbie is the twisted paterfamilias to a troupe of kids looking to escape all manner of trauma and abuse: Jody, the narrator, obsessed with both his allegedly undersized "weiner" and the heroics he hopes to emulate from The Lord of the Rings; Midget, his foster sister, who wraps herself in flypaper; and Dag, a tormented refugee from the middle class. As this misbegotten trio assemble the required ingredients for the doctored candy, we shudder at the approaching endgame while marveling at the wizardry of the crazed but often achingly beautiful language?as naive and, yes, sweet as it is obscene?that Kraus puts in his narrator's mouth. Here's Jody dreaming of a life with Dag: "Have us a whole swarm of kids, invent us up some love with nothing but her puss and my weiner . . . . Why the hell not?" Cutting-edge horror, dark thriller, tragic coming-of-age story?they're all here but blended in a way that's entirely new.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)