Julia Elliott

 October 2015 (Tin House Books)

“Romie Futch is imbued equally with the loopy lyricism of Barry Hannah and the whacked out paranoia of Philip K. Dick, the joyous farce of John Kennedy Toole, and the digital dystopia of William Gibson . . . . Elliott’s rambunctious tale snarls and growls on every page, aiming to plunge its lovely gnarled tusks right into the reader’s heart.”
—New York Times Book Review

Meet the South’s newest antihero: Romie Futch. Down on his luck and pining for his ex-wife, the fortysomething taxidermist spends his evenings drunkenly surfing the Internet, then passing out on his couch. In a last-ditch attempt to pay his mortgage, he becomes a research subject at the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience, where “scientists” download humanities disciplines into his brain. Suddenly, Romie and his fellow guinea pigs are speaking in hifalutin SAT words and hashing out the intricacies of postmodern subjectivity. With his new and improved brain, Romie hopes to reclaim his marriage, revolutionize his life, and revive his artistic aspirations. While tracking down specimens for elaborate animatronic taxidermy dioramas, he learns of “Hogzilla,” a thousand-pound feral hog with supernatural traits that has been terrorizing the locals. As his Ahab-caliber obsession with bagging the beast brings him closer and closer to this lab-spawned monster, Romie gets pulled into an absurd and murky underworld of biotech operatives, FDA agents, and environmental activists.