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I stumbled on this today, the reader reviews for Bil Keane's Family Circus books are GREAT!! Go to Amazon and look up Bil Keane and look for the book listings with stars next to them. Here's a sample review from "I Had A frightmare"
When I finished Bil Keane's "I Had A Frightmare," I was mentally drained. Keane's frenetic pace and staccatto, pseudo-noirish language combine to create a page-turner with real impact, despite (or perhaps because of) its stomach-turning subject matter. But as exhausted as I was, I couldn't ignore the nagging realization that I'd read much of this before.
"Frightmare" begins with a brutal gay sex scene, in which Daddy's experimentations with homoerotic asphyxiation go horribly wrong - the extensive brain damage he suffers confines him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. At first, Mommy does her best to make life comfortable for Daddy, but it isn't long before he finds himself wheeled into a corner of the living room, his chair becoming a ringside seat from which he must endure watching his family disintegrate.
Freed from the iron fist of Daddy's authoritarian rule, Mommy, Jeffy, Billy and Dolly find their newfound control of their own lives to be a double-edged sword. Early on, it becomes clear that Mommy simply cannot function without a strong male presence to guide her, so her flight to a Christian Identity camp in Idaho is predictable, almost telegraphed. The ritualistic sexual humiliations she is made to endure there are compelling in their description, but hardly new ground for Keane (in fact, he seems to be plagiarizing himself, as this subject was thoroughly explored in his seminal masterpiece, "Can I Have a Cookie?").
That's not to say, however, that "Frightmare" is without merit. Dolly's bathtub abortion in a West Fargo motel room is textbook Keane in its ferocity, but there is also a compelling humanity to the scene that may presage a deepening complexity in Keane's future output. And PJ, the youngest of the family and also a deafmute, is truly among the most horrifying of Keane's litany of characters.
Unfortunately, the rest of "Frightmare," from Billy's botched sex-change operation to Jeffy's bloody takeover of a local meth operation, just seemed all too familiar. "Frightmare" does stand on its own as a gruesome exploration of the often dangerous combination of sudden emancipation and free will, but it's certainly not in the same class as the aforementioned "Cookie," or the truly depraved "I Can't Untie My Shoes."
As for me, I eagerly await Keane's next literary assault.
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