Kirkus Reviews QR Code
OOD RARE by Mickey Phillips

OOD RARE

By

Pub Date: April 16th, 1963
Publisher: Coward-McCann

The author must have thought that ""symbols"" were spelled ""cymbals"" for his come crashing through this novel with tooth- jarring obviousness. Ambitious Andrew Green loves music. He finances his course of study by working in a slaughter house. Another part time job is at the other end of the scale -- organist in the chapel of a self-frocked minister who preys on the spirit world. One of the mediums is the lovely Deirdre -- flesh taut over nubile ectoplasm. Andrew, chiefly interested in notes and the pounds sterling that will support his composing, invades the upper registers of society for a fiancee. His seduction of Deirdre exorcises her spirit contact (a new method?) and the dreadful extremes of his existence reduce Andrew to a nightmare trip down the River Styx from which he emerges to a new tempo of life with music in the background, Deirdre in the front bedroom and the possibility of the slaughterhouse as a career. Passages of real humor are counterpointed by some tastelessly unfunny side pieces. The novel is populated with those harmlessly dotty relatives and friends that crowd British film comedy --which may well be the book's eventual finale.