THE ALLEGED WOMAN

A TRUE TALE OF BALLOT INTRIGUE

by Corey Mesler Joe Taylor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 20, 2012

The FBI discovers millions of illicit election ballots for a presidential candidate in a woman’s car in this political satire.

In Sumter County, Alabama, the FBI finds—apparently while changing the tire of a woman’s car—about 7 million ballots cast for Joe Biden as well as 11 books of first-class stamps adorned with portraits of Elvis Presley. The car is named—it’s a Nissan Altima—in reports, but the owner of the car is not, referred to repeatedly as the “Alleged Woman” in Taylor’s madcap tale. The “Bogus Biden Ballot case” quickly becomes a national media sensation, and the relevant authorities become obsessed with the microscopically insignificant counting and recounting of the massive dump of ballots to determine an exact quantity. New York lawyer Rudy Gullibilliani—this revision of Rudy Giuliani’s name is an example of the author’s vaudevillian humor—enters the fray, first to investigate electoral fraud but later to represent the Alleged Woman. Rudy is worried President Trumpet will go bankrupt, leaving the attorney high and dry. The Centers for Disease Control, led by Herman “Hiccup” Healthman, orders the quarantining of the ballots on the grounds that they may be infected with Covid-19. As a result, the Proud Bananas, a national political organization skeptical of the virus, offers to step in: “We may just ride down to Alabama and eat them, just to prove how silly this pandemic stuff is. I mean, haven’t you had a teeny cold before? Did you go crying to a senator and stuffing masks down everyone’s throats when you did?”

The story’s premise is thought-provoking and amusing. And one can credit Taylor with the literary virtue of consistency—the farcical tone of the book never abates, not even for the length of a dependent clause. But the brief novel—under 150 pages—feels considerably longer, an often bumpy read. The entire work is presented as a series of breathless press releases written in an absurdist style and sometimes feels like a catalog of Dad stories, more goofy than clever, let alone raucously funny. One can’t help but feel a sense of familiarity while reading the tale. Consider this caricature of Donald Trump: “This is goo for America, this is goo for freedom. It will keep America Great. Some things have been accomplished, some very goo things, very goo. And I’m going to take this special occasion to tell you that I’m a very goo loser. A very goo one. I understand a lot. People are amazed that I’m not a psychiatrist.” One can argue, in the author’s defense, that he chose a forbidding genre—during genuinely surreal times, it isn’t easy to top the parody that reality provides. While there are some humorous passages in these pages, Taylor ultimately offers readers a compilation of silly jokes half-heartedly crammed into something that looks like a novel at first glance but upon closer scrutiny is a litany of one-liners.

An intriguing but uneven ballot tale.

Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-60489-284-0

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Livingston Press

Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION