In Watermelon Sugar

The second novel in this book is In Watermelon Sugar, which is a more interesting exercise than Trout Fishing in America, in my opinion. In Watermelon Sugar at least bears the pretense of being a novel, with characters and a plot, rather than random anecdotes from the author's past.

I'd read that Brautigan wasn't comfortable being characterized as a hippie writer, but this novel is set on a commune, for crying out loud (and that just shows how disconnected I am from the sixties, if I hear "commune" and immediately think "hippies", right?) Regardless, this really interesting and a little weird -- the commune has a strange name (iDeath) there are talking tigers (real tigers with the power of speech? People called "tigers"? Something else?), the Sun is a different color each day (and on one day, sound doesn't travel), the people make things with "watermelon sugar", and there's a junkyard-type place (ruins of a past civilization) called the Forgotten Works.

Narrated by an unnamed character, and contained all these fantastic happenings, this is an entertaining, poetically written novel that's a little heartbreaking and definitely unusual. Would recommend.