LA TRIBU DES GROTESQUES/ The Grotesque Tribe

The French literary world is acclaiming a new masterpiece this weekend - La Tribu Des Grotesques, a social satire which goes where Lord of the Flies feared to tread.


Set on an imaginary island , Pitchforkeius,  where the criminally insane are kept away from the rest of society, the book tells of the internecine fighting and bloodshed as the wretches fight to be acclaimed  Lord of Pitchforkeius.


We meet such characters as Tiny Bonnett, described as resembling a tall, balding tramp, and his sometime consort, the cackling Petal Black, who daily whip their adherents into fresh bouts of cannibalistic violence against 'Unbelievers'.


Bonnett and Black hold a dark secret - the earlier fruit of their liason, a malformed, demonic offspring they refer to as The Brat, and try to keep confined in a dank cave. Whenever The Brat escapes, he attacks BonnettBelievers and Unbelievers alike in his thirst for vengeance.


All the inhabitants of Pitchforkeius worship and fear an entity they call 'PJ AMORAL', or Big Rock. PJ Amoral has never set foot on Pitchforkeius, but his thoughts are passed to his worshippers by an Oracle known as Joanie Moreass.


Being lunatics, the Pitchforkeians are all in thrall to the Full Moon, when their worst excesses are committed. At Full Moon, the book warns,  they try to lure passing seafarers onto their island colony, to abuse and insult, before devouring the Outsiders.


Petal Black is described in the novel as being especially dangerous at Full Moon, as this is when she consumes the brew she has made from fermented mandrake roots, lizards' tongues, and rat entrails.


Little do the Tribe know, they can never leave the Island; they have been deemed too incurably dangerous to the rest of society to ever be permitted to re-enter the world of the sane.


They are doomed to spend their days chanting wierd cries, such as les chiens ne mentent pas and telling each other myths about Aces.


La Tribu Des Grotesques ends with a final outbreak of savagery, with every faction turning on every other faction, till only one of them is left standing to finally claim the title, Lord of Pitchforkeius.


Alas, the book does not tell us who the victorious wretch is; possibly because the author has ceased to care what the lunatics do or who they do it to, as long as it doesn't involve normal human beings.