Book review : Strange Medicine

Strange Medicine – Weird and wonderful stories for all that ails you
written by Mike Russell, published by Strange Books
genre novel-fiction, 141 pages

I picked this book up because…
When Stange Books contacted me whether I’d be interested in reviewing one of their books, I felt quite honoured and absolutely curious. Not having heard of Strange Books before, my first thought was that a publisher with such a remarkable name could only publish books that are well … kind of strange. It turns out that my first impression was absolutely right; Strange Medicine is a book filled with crazy, funny and very peculiar stories.

The story in short
Strange Medicine is a collection of 8 surreal and funny short stories. Although most of the stories start off quite normal, soon craziness kicks in and reality gets turned upside down. Because of the dreamlike storylines filled with odd characters and extraordinary circumstances, I more than once felt like Alice in Wonderland while reading the stories.

If I have to choose one favourite, it would definitely be ‘Telephone’. In Telephone we follow six telephone conversations between Dan, Mandy and Mandy’s phone. With every conversation the storyline gets crazier and quite quickly the whole situation gets out of hand. The phone taking over the conversations and starting to sabotage their relationship, made me laugh out loud.

I finished this book because…
Even though I’d normally probably not have picked up a book like this, I did have a good time reading it. I’ve always been a big fan of Dali’s surreal paintings and reading this book felt like walking around through Dali’s world. All stories are quite absurd and at the same time very funny. If you like surrealism, crazy storylines and different versions of reality, Strange Medicine is definitely the book you should read!