The Squad (review)

Fergal Bamfield is under pressure from his mother, who likes to think he must be clever because he looks so odd, that leads him to adopt a weird hobby to maintain his mystique—he collects unlabeled cans from the bargain bin at the supermarket. When he finds that one of his cans contains a severed finger, he longs for a kindred spirit with which to share his discovery, and he finds her—a fellow collector who has herself found an ear. Convinced that no one will believe them, they set out to discover the mystery behind the canned body parts on their own and end up narrowly escaping getting canned themselves. There's a distinct flavor of Dahlesque nastiness here, but the book lacks Dahl's antic hyperbole and instead dissolves into the just plain gross absent the more literary context of the grotesque. Fergal certainly twangs a sympathetic chord as a misunderstood social misfit with a lot to live up to, but the laggy pace often undermines the humor as it overplays his melodramatic attachment to his cans and his imaginings regarding the mystery. The pace quickens as the danger intensifies, however, and the climactic scene has strong cinematic appeal. With its detailed, multisensory descriptions of the canned body parts of the villains, this might do well to come with a warning label "Not for the squeamish," but readers with strong stomachs and a taste for gory urban myths may nonetheless eat this right up.