Official Review: Meat My Uncle by Erez Bailen

[CataclysmicKnight]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Meat My Uncle" by Erez Bailen.]

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1 out of 4 stars

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Typically, as a reviewer, it's hard to compress a huge story into a review that's both entertaining and helpful for potential readers of the book. Books often take hours or even days to read, and the mind needs even more time to digest and feel out the story, to consider hidden meanings, to draw out subtext the author has slipped beneath the surface. This is absolutely not the case with Meat my Uncle by Erez Bailen, in fact, it took almost as long for the book to download onto my phone, for my phone to load up the Kindle app, and to open the book as it did for me to finish the book the first time through.

Meat my Uncle is just barely over 3 pages, broken into two halves with chapters the length of a paragraph. The first half describes the characters - there's Jake, his "man of a mom" who "is not a 'she' at all", Jane who looks just like mom but isn't part of the family for just that reason, and who James Jones - the main character - is developing feelings for, and these are the most relatable characters of the bunch. Then there's Din, the "nose of human past" that contains treasures in his holes, the "Snail of John" - a tongue, I'm assuming - and, last but not least, Uncle Jones. Uncle Jones loves meat, which is made clear because Uncle Jones told James that he is made of meat, and that he loves him, and this is where the title of the book comes from!

The second half of the book is where the actual story comes in. What that story is, I'm not quite certain even after a few readings, but it's there. The happenings in the book are just as long as the character bios, and honestly take up about the same amount of space as this entire review. Din exclaims he has treasure, Uncle Jones wakes everyone at midnight to exclaim that everyone is going on a road trip (something he does often, apparently), a house coughs, chapter 8 of the first half of the book happens almost identically again and James eats a scale, then wakes up as an adult married to Jane with a myriad of pets and a little girl.

The entire book almost feels like a test of my intelligence, making me wonder whether this is the most genius set of euphemisms for human existence, simply a prank in book form or perhaps the thoughts of a child around the age of 9, like James. Unfortunately, like a sci-fi television show canceled far too early, none of those answers are made present: upon checking the book's Amazon page, the only additional information given explains that the book includes Meat my Uncle as well as two other short stories that weren't present in what I read. There is, however, a gem of a trailer on YouTube (http://youtu.be/xJtsP5EfN7c) for this book that contains as much randomness and as little genuine content as the book itself, but still has a humor of its own, much like the book as well.

When it comes down to it, though, a review is supposed to tell you whether whatever it's reviewing should be purchased or not. Should you read Meat My Uncle? No. No you shouldn't, unless you receive a free copy, in which case there still isn't much here at all. The book has a few funny lines and sometimes offers an interesting look at things, but it's fairly clear the book is written in jest, which leads me to give the book 1 out of 4 stars.

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Meat My Uncle
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[kimmyschemy06]

That was a very honest review. It seems like the book turns out to be not what you expected. Good luck on the next one.