Synopsis:
Latrine Technician vs. Dark Carnival?
Yep.
After his mother is diagnosed with dementia, Sunday McWhorter needs a job with flexible hours and a company vehicle. It just so happens that the local porta-potty company is hiring.
The job stinks, but it’s a solid paycheck that allows Sunday to take care of his mom. Everything goes smoothly until Autumn and the beginning of county fair season, when people start going missing and body parts start being found…inside the very tanks of the porta-potties Sunday is charged with cleaning.
Is there a serial killer? A human trafficking ring? An epidemic of haunted toilets?
Sunday finds out the hard way when the simple job of vacuuming sewage becomes a tussle between worlds.
Review:
If you took that weird half animated circus bit from “Mary Poppins Returns,” the 1980s and raw sewage, stuck them in a porta-potty and shook vigorously, you might come out with something as action-packed, whimsical and olfactorily insulting as Chris Panatier’s “Shitshow.” Whilst the thought of entering a portaloo does actually bring a tear to my eye, Pantier’s latest, out already from Sobelo Books is not one I expected to tug on the heartstrings- and yet… Full of emotion, genuine heart and even more genuine belly laughs, “Shitshow,” takes the best bits of Dr. Who and “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” the worst part of festivals, and smooshes it together into a stinky little horror comedy that thoroughly entertained (and at points really quite upset) me. It’s original to say the least, and a mighty fun time too.
Sunday McWhorter lives with his mother Regina who is suffering from the early stages of dementia, but with his mum close and his shitty job as a latrine technician paying the bills, it’s pretty manageable, until he sees a face in the murky waters of a porta-potty at a county fair. Not a reflection. Not a head. A face. Poor Roy West Carpenter, it turns out, is the first in a string of pissoir-related vanishings, ones that Sunday is already wound up in. Things get worse for our unlikely hero however when his mother disappears. With a desperate open-mind, a little local history, a dodgy leg and a suspicious carnival prize bunny, it quickly becomes apparent something far bigger than the little town of Dublin, Texas is at play, and that Sunday may not be working with mere latrines, but portal-potties.
“Portal-potties. Sorta like Doctor Who, except the Tardis is a shitter.”
Panatier packs all of this, along with give or take 50 toilet jokes, into a lean 216 pages (and what pages they are too). On this epic adventure through time, space, and sewage pipes we come across many an eccentric, from the long dead, dead evil carnivalier to a donut-hungry, utterly useless cop, to a Fireball-swigging bad-ass old-lady. Told you it was fun. “Shitshow,” may be quite cartoonish, but shallow, dear reader, it is not. Ms. Poppy for example (the bad-ass old neighbour) offers some poignant commentary upon parenthood. Panatier dons his waterproof overalls and wades into themes of generational trauma, the state of law enforcement, identity and the loss of it, through other characters too – all without losing his knack for a well timed toilet gag. What I guess I’m really trying to tell you is that thin page count and bonkers concept aside, “Shitshow,” is a story that lacks neither depth nor duty doody jokes. It is the golden ratio of smart and touching and stupid.
“He’d taken the shitter to hell and found his mother.”
Panatier’s prose is stellar and full of filthy grace. His storytelling seems to have this rather delightful knack of making you chortle and then immediately choke up. Unflinchingly odd and deeply human, step right up for Chris Pantier’s dark carnival is one worth queueing for. Ride the skinner, lose yourself in the un-house, and do remember to thoroughly, reverently, wash your hands, between your fingers and under your nails, on your way out.
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