Winkie

Not recommended book week continues with Winkie, the story of a teddy bear who is accused and tried for terrorism. Yes, I said a teddy bear. At this point half of you are probably thinking, "That should have been your first clue" and the other half are probably thinking "Brilliant!". As a reader who tends to fall on the more literal side and an avoider of all things anthropomorphic, I was fascinatingly repelled, but was won over by good reviews. Apparently I didn't read the reviews too carefully, because one of the lines in the starred Publishers Weekly review describes Winkie's awakening "marked by a bowel movement so lovingly described that it recalls Bloom's in Ulysses". Nuts and berries are involved, people. And now I will never read Ulysses. There is also a weird birth of a baby teddy bear by the supposedly male Winkie. I did find some parts of the trial to be funny and the objects of the author's satire--domestic spying, fear mongering, etc.--worthy targets. The teddy bear narrator was beyond creepy and the writing, apart from some parts of the trial, was not very good either. Someday, someone will write the definitive book on stuffed animal terrorism, but this is not it.