Refreshingly direct comment on our one deepest desire..., July 1, 2008
By  Bjorn Clasen (Rolléngergronn, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, Europe)
    

Matthew Benoit's style has been compared to that of absurdist humour masters like Woody Allen or Monty Python. If you moderate that a bit but in return add a pinch of a writing genius of a totally different kind, Bret Easton Ellis, you are getting closer to see what Benoit's debut novel 'Whackers' is all about. Oh, but hold on - it's not the violence and the emotional senselessness you have to add from Ellis. It's the directness and the honesty. That's what's carrying the whole thing, in Benoit's own, at first sight just humouristic, at second actually rather satirical style.

For 'Whackers' is about basic human instincts. That's when you scratch slightly into its surface. Yes, it's about sex and that constant and exhausting hunt for love, illusoric anyway, and surrounded by hardly tangible emotions. The novel's universe is inhabited by testosterone-infected males, one more flawful than the other, except for the main male character who in his frustration with the other sex, or mainly himself and his lack of achievement and even less of perspective, creates a new and even more sad illusion to keep sex, and potential love, at distance.

The hardest hardball of the characters, however, is a woman. Going from relationship to relationship, each of them more parodic only in different ways, her actually rather simple personality is 'Whackers' carrying figure and Benoit's most daring character. Daring, because this short-tempered direct-to-the-point girl - propping up her lack of deeper sense with stupid men including sex on first dates and counter-'68-generation female dominance - ...is described by a male author. A great comment on the subculture derived by Sex And The City.

A straight-forward book in nice contrast to the pretentious ones that tend to overkill us in recent decades, this may not reach the levels of Allen's intellectual irony, Python's absurd humour or Ellis' explicit psychological playfulness. But that might be its best feature, as it does not pretend to do so either. It lives its own life, takes you on a quick little journey into a world far from the fewest of us.

'Whackers' is an easy read. It's a fun read. For some, it might be a very provocative read. But again, Matthew Benoit is just being direct and honest, playing on what we actually are, sorry little pseudo affection-addicted humans that we are. And he does so without seeking detours or deeper philosophical layers or, most refreshingly of all, higher literature. He just writes, and does it well. Buy it, read it, have a laugh. 'Whackers' will surprise you.