You Wanna Put What, Where? by Brian Fasterling

As the author began his tale with the image of tomato juice being the result of a “Number 1”, I could just imagine the horror and worry that this must have caused. To take the subsequent events and treat them in such a light-hearted manner showed the author’s grit in sharing what could potentially have been devastating news to create a story to perhaps help others.

A lump in the renal system that turns out to be a polyp and leads to a stent and a biopsy and further surgery (that goes wrong but eventually right) and and and forms the basis of this medical mayhem.

The editing overall was good but there were some odd punctuation errors where unnecessary commas were placed after dialogue already closed with the correct punctuation mark. The writing style flowed well and was easy to read as the author tried hard to take a subject that was serious and unnerving for him and make it less medical and more humorous. To me, this worked, but it also didn’t. I understood and appreciated the humour but found it became a bit too much. It felt as though every single incident had to be made fun of, which didn’t allow for a change in tone and kept the reading on a constant “snark alert”. Don’t get me wrong, many incidents needed the lightening up, I just wanted to take a break every now and then.

 Especially when there were literal LOL moments like the urine bag falling out of the bottom of the tracksuit pants’ leg. And I felt a little vindicated when he finally realised the indignity of stirrups and what women feel.

 The length was good so that it didn’t go into too much jargon and kept the reader wanting to find out how it ended. I would love to have found out a bit more about his wife and how she coped with it too. A fun read and a good lesson in how we are all connected by our unpredictable bodies and how grateful we should be for medical professionals. 

Thanks to Reedsy Discovery and the author for the opportunity to review the book.