Book Review - Going Bovine by Libba Bray

It's one of those mad cow disease road trip books, you know?

Ummm.
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To say that Libba Bray's newest book, Going Bovine, is hard to categorize is an understatement. A meaty book, clocking in at just under 500 pages, it's the story of sixteen year old Cameron, an ordinary, kind of losery guy whose life has been pretty unremarkable ever since his near-drowning at the It's A Small World After All ride at Disney World when he was five. Unremarkable, that is, until he finds out he has mad cow disease. Mad cow disease, a.k.a. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, gives Cameron these crazy hallucinations that really weird him out. Once doctors diagnose him, he's hospitalized and given a short time to live.

But that's when things just start to get interesting. Before he knows it, he's breaking out of the hospital to find a Doctor X who can save the world, hanging out with a hot punky angel, and setting off on a roadtrip with a dwarf named Gonzo and a yard gnome come to life who might just be a Viking, named Balder. Cameron and his assortment of pals trek from Texas to New Orleans to Florida in one of the most entertaining and bizarre road trip novels I've ever read.

I finished it last night and I'm still not sure what else to say about it, except that it's hilarious, poignant at times, and reminiscent of the episodic odyssies you take in feverish dreams. Yeah, it's something like that.

RIYL: Libba Bray's other books, John Green, Don Quixote