Tin God

January 16, 2006
Fabulous fabulist Svoboda (Trailer Girl
) checks in to indulge a talent for wild, sketchy comedy. Laid in Willa Cather country, this quick take has some of Thomas Pynchon's quirky Americana crossed with the Indian tales of Jaime de Angulo. A conquistador rides through the Midwest of 500 years ago; his blue eyes make the Indians think he's God—and God in fact narrates the book. Flash to contemporary slackers Pork and Jim as they lose a bag of drugs in the same field, while God watches wryly, speaking with the crusty accents of a cracker-barrel philosopher. God feels at home in the Midwest, where everyone is waiting for His (or Her) signs. Bessie, the clairvoyant cleaner (she sees God in a tin hat) and the mother of Pork, is the daughter of a migrant worker; with Rolf, her bar-owner ally, she tries excavating the treasure she's glimpsed in her dreams, until alien light storms and the whispers in the grass scare them off—and, it is implied, destroy their budding romance. Back and forth the narrative moves, with Steinian The Making of Americans
logic gluing together this eccentric vision of a God-driven Middle America. Svoboda loves her red-state mopes, and that warmth both illuminates and animates her eccentric prose.

February 15, 2006
Inthis book, god is not a solemn, dignified deity but a wisecracking woman with attention deficit disorder -the intentionally lower-case, working-class version of a supreme being. She sends an incarnate in a metal hat and suit -a throwback to Don Quixote -down to Earth to get people's attention. Tall Pigeon Eye, Pork, Jim, and several others are out there with him, hunting, hiding, hiking, searching for something misplaced, and getting into one misadventure after another (as when Pork tosses a big bag of dope out of his car window, then tries to find the grass in the grass before the authorities do -deliciously ironic and comical). As the characters meander around, so does the narrative, which spans a few hundred years and shifts from past to present and back again. Readers will find Svoboda's ("Treason") perspective on God, faith, and the impulses that drive human behavior original and quirky. Her characters are self-absorbed buffoons at times but totally believable. This funny romp is very highly recommended for public libraries." -Lisa Nussbaum, formerly with Dauphin Cty. Lib. Syst., Harrisburg, PA"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2006
When G-O-D broadcasts in Svoboda's fictional realm, it's not a message of revelation sent from on high. That would be way too predictable. Instead, this edgy, irreverent supreme being would rather spread grass than gospel over the rolling fields of the midwestern heartland. But there's grass, and then there's grass, and it's the eponymous latter that has captured the attention of Jim and Pork, two hapless jokers who have somehow managed to lose a bag of the "good stuff" in tough guy Rolf's field. It's the same field, where, eons ago, a Don Quixote-like conquistador flummoxed a tribe of whispering natives when, on his horse, he catapulted to earth from out of the blue. As Pork starts digging for his lost stash, he uncovers evidence of the earlier man's presence. Is there a message here, a cosmic connection that spans centuries? Only G-O-D knows for sure, and she's not saying. Svoboda's fiercely symbolic and brashly audacious allegory is a fanciful yet cautionary tale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)