Who knows what a Homunculus really is? Blander dictionaries will tell you that it is simply a 'miniature person' or 'man.' But the word, in its root origins, means a hell of a lot more than just that. In the Age of Alchemy, the homunculus was a Frankenstein-like creature created by an Alchemist, just another artificial little helpmate for the busy mad scientist, one that usually, in the end, turned on it's maker.

Will Matt St. Amand's collection of short stories, also aptly named Homunculus, eventually turn on him? I guess only he will ever know the answer to that. What is certain is that the book will never turn on its readers who frantically turn each page, eager to feast their eyes on each spellbinding story as it unfolds. As other reviewers have remarked, Homunculus is not strictly a book of short stories, although there are more than enough stories here to qualify as a collection. Yet there are also other miscellaneous pieces of Homunculus that are a little harder to classify--unlikely job applications, a brazen self-interview, and even a saga, yes, a SAGA of one of the strangest of all creatures to ever inhabit the internet ether: Xavier Lipschitz. Does the name say it all? No, there is more to this unlikely character than a name. I have read the entire account of Mr. Lipschitz, of his supposed adventures, the questionable pedigrees, and his unscrupulous yet hilarious methods of zooming someone who first tried to zoom him. And through it all, I'm still not too sure of his motives, of his pedigree, his methods--but whatever the hell he is, he's damn sure entertaining. The same goes for the rest of the book---questionable, difficult to classify, but hilarious, high octane quasi-fiction that kept me turning every page, eager to find out what exactly Mr. Amand had infected my curiosity with.

So, what is a Homunculus?

Forget the old definitions. Forget the newer, blander ones too. Just think of Homunuclus as the latest work by Matt St. Amand. A hard to classify book that you NEED to read in order to become a 'more entertained person.'

And let's just leave it at that.

Jackson Scales

So, first off, any book that contains the dialogue "Is your father afraid of nuns?" is going to be a good one. The author has a good ear for dialogue, simple, straightforward, easy to follow, yet just skewed enough to catch your attention and draw you into underlying wierdness.

This isn't strictly a book of short stories. I contains interviews and some really difficult to classify items like a job application to be a construction companies poet in chief. Plot isn't really a priority in most of these works--or a neccessity. Amand's structures often come more naturally than simple plot, as in the exchange of e-mails with a scam artist in which the elaborate life story of Xavier Lipschitz is revealed in rising levels of hilarity.

Some of the work seems a little self-absorbed--the author's interview with himself. But, the first advice given to writers is to write what you know, and Amand writes with an authority and confidence that comes from the thorough knowledge of his craft and his subjects.

Check it out.

--James Maxey

Toward the end of HOMUNCULUS, there's an interesting passage where author Matt St. Amand talks about a Sam Cooke concert and how the performer successfully built up the suspense and anticipation and worked the crowd into a frenzy by building crescendo. The same thing could be said of St. Amand's ability to build to a punchline. The author knows how to craft a joke, but he also knows how to take that bit of "funny" into higher levels until he has the reader not just smiling, not just smiling and nodding, but smiling, nodding, and outright laughing.

He takes risks here, such as the bit where he interviews himself, but the risks inevitably pay off. The Xavier Lipshitz passages alone are worth the price of purchase, but there's plenty of other assorted skits and strangeness going on in here to keep even the most fickle of readers entertained.

Highly recommended!