My Landlady the Lobotomist
by Eckhard Gerdes
Review by Michael Gibbs

Would you live in a boarding house where your landlady keeps her collection of pickled forebrains placed throughout the residence?

The main character of Eckhard Gerdes’ latest novel, My Landlady the Lobotomist, lives in such a place. This short unconventional book takes the reader on a strange and surreal journey through the unconscious of a writer that proclaims to be “an artist who has to support himself by teaching” and who suffers from a broken heart caused by a past failed relationship with the love of his life. His inner struggle is portrayed through various dream-like scenarios; two examples being the battle of Godzilla verses Shesus and a dragonfly’s yearning love for an angelfish. The story is told in first person POV (switching to second person at various points) by a narrator who could be schizophrenic or may very well have had a portion of his brain removed by his landlady.

My Landlady the Lobotomist is a great piece of experimental fiction that is humorous and absurd. Gerdes’ prose often read like fine poetry and are chuck full of clever wordplay, such as “We’d meet in the woods at the First Convenient Bank, where we continued to invest in one another.” Although I cannot say that My Landlady the Lobotomist is my favorite book within the Bizarro genre, the novel was well written and held my interest to the very last page. I highly recommend this book to open minded people who like to read fiction that is outside the norm.

The book earned a Rating  of four stars ****

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  My Landlady the Lobotomist is available from Raw Dog Screaming Press http://www.rawdogscreaming.com/landlady.html
• Published: (June 9, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1933293608
• ISBN-13: 978-1933293608