The Cipher

Important Info: 'THE FUNHOLE' is the book's birthname but the publishers wouldn't let Koja use it so she nicknamed it The Cipher but spiritually, it's THE FUNHOLE, which is, I feel, a far more apt moniker

in a nutshell: The most checked-out burnout your imagination can conjure is living a less-than-minimalist life of squalor, funded, in true 90s fashion, by a job at a video rental store. Everything about this kid is as frustratingly stagnant and stubbornly pathetic as his job, including his deeply inexplicable sorta-love for an absolutely feral (like, should be on psych meds at the least) gal with whom he has a classic super toxic early-20s situationship. But there is something determined to make this most unremarkable dude, interesting (by force if necessary): a strange black hole has appeared in the grotty storage room of his shitty apartment complex, and it is WEIRD, man. This hole is perhaps alive, perhaps a process, but it is definitely tied to our protagonist and it is definitely causing bizarre, twisted shit to happen to things that get too close. So of course, Miss Feral AF wants to do as many sicko experiments with the Funhole as possible, but our beleaguered Dude is being slowly, grossly, stripped of his sanity as the Funhole exerts ever more power over him, and everyone around him.

the vibes: laughing with the abyss, launching yourself into the abyss, being irrevocably changed by the abyss that you definitely let stare back into you; damaging situationships you just can't extract yourself from (but not the sapphic kind) (sadly); speciousness and malaise; male art hoes are the worst

main themes: the abyss (Nietzschean); the void (Lynchian); open wounds (physical and metaphorical); the mundane dangers of capital 'A' Apathy; the truest horrors are internal; transgression, crossing lines (but who draws those lines?); creation, and what happens "when those who can't create feed off those who do"

the writing: Koja is also a poet, and it shows in the prose (ha, perhaps I am also a poet!) Prose which, like our narrator, steadily spirals into disjointed, untethered insanity, but in an extremely readable way. The cadence of her writing made this an enjoyable one to read aloud to myself. As the decent into madness reaches its zenith, the sprawling sentences become manic, shifting focus so abruptly and frequently it gives you whiplash and then they go on and on and talking to you talking to themselves talking to no one and it feels like you are falling into the Funhole yourself. There's no way around it, this book is bleak, but there's a great sense of gallows humor peppered throughout the relentless misery so reading such misanthropic rage isn't a total slog. Koja's sentence architecture was so engaging that I could completely overlook that I really just wanted all of these characters to fucking jump down the Funhole already. The main character is wasted for most of the book, and the charmingly verbose repitition is truly evocative of a proselytizing drunk pal on a couch who is endearing but also after a while you just wish he'd let someone else talk. Actually, you're quickly gonna want all these characters to just shut the fuck up, but they are not the kind to do so, oh no siree.

I will confidently say this author has been to some bad afters because she perfectly captures the kickback in a crashpad atmosphere, down to the inane dialogue between persons so disparate that they could only be brought together in one space by the promise of (truly shitty) free beer.