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The International Writers Magazine
: Review of 'Eduardo Aquifer and the great tanning incident'

Eduardo Aquifer
Jeff Hunt
Livingston Press
University of West Alabama
ISBN: 1-931982-23-6 $14.95



Image if Jeffrey Goines, aka Brad Pitt in Twelve Monkeys wrote a novel. It would be crazy, sprinkled with incredible lucid passages that make perfect sense and then he’d go and riff off in a completely other direction and we’d be left behind, lost on the shore of his madness.

Reading Edward Aquifer, a new first novel by Jeff Hunt is a lot like that. At once exhilarating, captivating, irritating and pretty much readable all the time.


These aren’t a series of short stories, it is a novel; a series of events one schizophrenic character has with his imaginary friends -and sometimes the writer himself, getting through mundane jobs snapping in and out of reality. The strange friends pop up when the going gets tough but sometimes, such as when he is working in the fields of Texas, putting in fence posts, we rest awhile in an utterly believable moment, right alongside him, wiping the sweat from our brow. And then we are away again, lusting after uber-girl, the incredible girl of his dreams who seems to be an amalgam of every incredible girl that ever lived and is a shape–shifter as well.

Jeff Hunt has always wanted to be a writer and he is well on his way with this effort. This is compelling and at the same time almost seems to be an anti-thesis to American Splendour. Whilst Harvey Pekar celebrates the utter banality of existence, Jeff Hunt faced with the same difficulties of making a living and finding places to eat or sleep, adds psychotic drama to it all to make it seem romantic and sometimes a little squalid. Such as the time is his trying sleep in his soaking wet sleeping bag by a Swiss motorway and some guy comes along and tries to piss on him. The romance of travel it is not.

‘What is the cause of Eduardo Aquifer’s madness? And what will the effect be? What’s gotten into this one?’ Dr Reilly wondered.

We meet some strange characters. Way native Indian, restless, looking to avenge his ancient tribes, the somewhat never actually makes a full appearance Uber-girl, the psychiatrist Dr Reilly and the mysterious Black-Riders.
Always well written and the pace is frenetic. This is a novel about being lost in space in Texas and Europe and the cracks between it all. You won’t read anything more fresh or more alive or more surprising this year.
© Sam North Feb 2004
editor@hackwriters.com

More Reviews

Read the First Chapter of Eduardo Aquifer here

If you like the extract, buy the book. It's availble on line at Barnes & Noble (Click on the link at the top of page) or go to www.eduardo-novel.com or contact the author - jeffrey_grant_hunt@yahoo.com

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