Ball Peen Hammer by Adam Rapp and George O’Connor – review

The world is dying. After most of the city succumbed to the plague, Welton’s staying inside–permanently. But hiding in his claustrophobic basement room–the only place he knows is safe–exacts a gruesome price. Infected with the plague himself, with no way to find the woman he loves, Welton takes refuge in apathy–until someone knocks on his door.

Ball Peen Hammer is as relentlessly bleak a story as I have ever read. Almost claustrophobic in its execution. Read this and The Road one after the other and not only will your mood be altered for the worse, but you might be contemplating something stupid.

The back of the book is blank except for a single blurb “Not for gentle readers.” These words should be heeded.

The entire feel of Ball Peen Hammer is that of a stage production. All of the interactions of the characters really only take place on a couple of main sets. Any world-building and news of the outside world comes through dialogue and characters leaving and coming back. It’s quite an interesting way to initiate world-building, as it leave a different level of the heavy lifting to the reader because there is a different kind of pressure on the writer.

The world of Ball Peen Hammer is brutal, and the people in it are starved for interaction whether they realize it or not. In some cases they may have leveled out and become used to their dangerous environments. The muscle memory of a more civilized time still makes its presence felt in their desires to make even the unhealthiest of new relationships work because they ultimately yearn for contact. This is a world where a kid humps a piece of fruit and then gets beaten up by a pregnant lady who throws a bucket of piss on him–then they become friends. This loneliness is the new human dynamic.

But this new world is a cruel one, one that doesn’t really foster new relationships, no matter how badly they are desired. So the forces of this new world put down these relationships with extreme prejudice. And they are. Repeatedly. This is a world that sets out to snuff what makes us recognizably human, and so it’s marked by us as a cruel world.

This is a hard book to read in some ways, but it is a rewarding one. It’s not for everyone, as the above quote suggests, but those who love a great piece of dark fiction should check it out.