re:mote voices

Title: The Abortion
Author: Richard Brautigan
Publisher:Vintage

The Abortion is the second book by Richard Brautigan that I have read, and manages to convey the quirk and eccentricity that appealed to me with Sombrero Fallout. The narrator is a librarian, but in a special library - one which accepts books written by anyone, rather than lending. The way this works is that he never leaves the building because he always has to be there to welcome new work. However one day an incredibly beautiful young woman comes into the library, with a book about how much she hates her body and the reaction it generates. These two strange characters surprise themselves by starting a relationship. However as the title suggests, the girl gets pregnant, and they decide that they aren't ready yet. So they head down to Mexico to have an abortion.

Despite the fact that this is a book about an abortion could be grim reading, Brautigan is a humorous writer. The first section filled with the oddities that are dear to the individual, those things that people end up writing about even through they are of interest only to themselves. While the third section covers the librarian's re-emergence into the world after three years, along with which he gains his first appreciation of what his girlfriend has endured by being beautiful.

The Abortion like most of Brautigan's work is a short book, under 200 pages. But in these pages he has so much going on, as well as the humour aspect, he expresses the relationship between the two with an endearing charm, which is emphasised by the flow of dialogue throughout. Writing in the 60-70's Brautigan's work is only slightly dated, and he has much stylistically which fits with what I am currently enjoying, especially the characteristics of comparable writers like Murakami and Hoban.