The Devil Is a Southpaw

Hobson (The Removed) spins an inspired but confusing story of art and friendship. In a foreword, Hobson claims the bulk of the novel is a manuscript written by a man named Milton Muleborn, with whom Hobson spent time in the Tophet County Juvenile Correctional Facility. The novel proper opens with a captivating scene at the facility, as Milton and a group of fellow detainees are conscripted by the guards to search for their escaped friend, Matthew Echota, “a cripplingly shy, talented, smart, and handsome boy.” Matthew has escaped before, but in Milton’s view, he has little hope of getting out of their impoverished town of Old Dublan. The allusion to Dublin is meant to reference James Joyce’s Dubliners, one of many distorted nods to literature peppered in by Milton, an ambitious neophyte writer. (He also mistakes a passage from Shakespeare’s Macbeth as being from Hamlet.) Hobson vividly portrays Oklahoma’s furious storms and scores of screeching grackles, and shows how both protagonists find solace in art. The manuscript is full of contrasting versions of events, some of which veer into fantasy and horror, as when Milton and Matthew encounter terrifying wood spirits who resemble lepers. It’s a bit tough to follow, but Hobson holds the reader’s attention with appealing surrealistic asides, such as the boys’ encounter with a doppelgänger of painter Salvador Dalí, who rhapsodizes over the band Duran Duran. There’s plenty of fun to be had with this cerebral novel. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency. (Oct.)