Reviewer: Sharon Brunner
Kelly Peach’s The Whore: or of Bureaucracy an Adult Fable weaves a tale of satire, horror, and social critique while examining the human condition in an indifferent world. The story took place in northern Magritte and other fictional locations. Peach was born in Detroit, but he currently lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He wanted to live where he could hike and write. Some of the main characters are Brenda, Sylvia, Alice, and Flo, employees of a Health and Human Services agency, and clients such as Hermann Brod and others who may require services from said agency. One client actually had a garage with top-of-the-line equipment in his yard, who had a friend who wanted to hide his assets from a wife he was divorcing. The same client rode his Harley a thousand miles on a trip, but could not work because of a sore back. The main character was a cockroach who later called herself Marin. She steadily became more human as she ate more and more. The word whore in the title may have derived from some of the cockroach’s behaviors as well as some of the agency’s clients.
I found it quite interesting that Peach used a cockroach as one of his main characters, so I decided to give a brief description of the insect. It surprised me that the American cockroaches could be 1 ½ to 2 inches in length. That’s a big bug. They have six legs, long antennae and oval shape bodies. When cockroaches search for food, water and shelter they find numerous entry points into homes and other buildings. If cockroaches appear in homes, it’s important to act fast to get rid of them. Professional treatment may be required. Cockroaches are resilient insects and known for their rapid reproductive rates. Marin, the cockroach in this story, ended up pregnant and she mentioned that she was carrying a bundle. Female cockroaches do not give birth to live bugs. They lay batches of eggs, and the American Cockroaches produces about 14 to 16 eggs per casing. The story took interesting twists and turns because of the cockroach character.
Two of the themes in the book were bureaucracy and the study of human behavior. Bureaucratic rules guided the structure and business of the health and human service agency in the book. The staff at the agency were overworked. They averaged 800 clients per staff member. The boss wanted no down time for her employees, they had to always keep busy. Marina, the boss, had a large cozy office and the staff were in small offices and cubicles. The agency had approximately 400 forms for clients to complete. They had to provide copious information about themselves. Marin wanted to copy all the agency’s manuals and she took many of the client forms up to her nest in the attic of the agency to study. She didn’t like the humans, but the more she became like them the more she had to learn about them. I believe in life-long learning. As far as bureaucracy and me personally, I worked for agencies that provided services for families and had to follow multiple manuals to complete work tasks. Decisions had to made regarding who qualified for services like in this book.
The movie that came to mind when reading this book was the 1997 original “Men in Black.” A cockroach man made an appearance in the film know as “Edgar the Bug.” He was an intergalactic terrorist and the main antagonist who lands on Earth, kills a farmer named Edgar, and wears his skin as a disguise. Did Marin become more human after she ate the janitor she killed? The book that came to mind was “Weird Insects” by Michael A. Worek. The book revealed information about some of the strangest of the tiny creatures, more than 17,000,000 named species. Most of these particularly weird insects are hidden from humans. The staff at the health and human services agency did not know Marin existed. They were becoming upset when a lot of their food went missing. I am not a fan of any bugs but understand they serve as nourishment for other creatures.
Peach’s The Whore: or of Bureaucracy an Adult Fable is a thought-provoking book. He mentioned characters like Flo who worked hard and believed in cleanliness. She appeared to be the only one who cared if the staff lounge was clean. I can picture myself being like Flo because I like my environment to be clean. I learned a lot about cockroaches because of this book and now I know what an omnivore is, a creature that eats plant and animal matter. Cockroaches happen to be omnivores. Peach went back and forth between the lives of the staff at the agency and the cockroach as she progressed with becoming more human. Peach explained what it meant to be a human in an atmosphere of indifference while being examined by an unusual critic.
