SKULL NUGGETS BY ​AMY M. VAUGHN - BOOK REVIEW

True enlightenment comes at a price….
A tiny hole drilled in your forehead (sigh up here!)

Amy Vaughn’s novella Skull Nuggets opens with a guy (willingly) getting a hole drilled in the front of his skull. He does not experience pain, more a feeling of euphoria, as the titanium tunnel is fitted after the operation, which all takes less than fifteen minutes. Afterwards the patient is left with a hole in the centre of his forehead, looking something like a third eye.
 
Freaked out? You should be, welcome to the world of ‘bizarro’ fiction where nothing is quite what it seems in a sub-genre which uses absurdism, satire and the grotesque to tell totally wild stories. At least I think this is bizarro…. Either way, Vaughan’s novella ticked all these boxes in a story I enjoyed but did not entirely understand, I got lost in sections of the plot which dipped into yoga, meditation and Eastern religions or mysticism. Parts of the plot were perplexing, but that’s the fun of bizarro, don’t expect one plus one to equal two or things to make 100% sense. Strange as it was, there was a serious message hidden amongst the hallucinatory weirdness tackling depression and paranoia as a central theme. 
 
Skull Nuggets is a totally off-the-wall story of a young man obsessed with brain mites, who dreams of getting rid of these horrible creatures and live without them for once - because if he can't get rid of them, suicide might be the only option. Yeah, he's that depressed and tried to take his life not long before the start of the book. However, he finds a place, Forato House, which specialises trepanation (drilling a hole into your forehead). This procedure is supposed to be a pain free operation (yeah, right) bring about a higher state of consciousness and rid the brain mites and the depression forever. If he has a hole in his head the brain mites, which are revealed to be a fairly recent scientific discovery, will escape to freedom and free of his brain. 
 
But just before the operation, the main character Robert falls in love with Bet, an ex-sword swallowing acrobat, and promises to help her rescue her father who is a resident at Forato House. Bet herself ends up working in Forato as a cleaner whilst seeking for her waster of a father who has issues of his own.  Along the way the reader gets a short history of trepidation, a technique which was used 2000 years ago to remove evil spirits from inside the body by drilling a small hole in the skull. I’ve no idea how much of this is based on fact, but some of it came across as a bit of an information dump.
 
I cannot say I would be first in line to experience this operation, no matter what level of enlightenment was promised. But it’s a strange story, which hangs together on the developing relationship between Robert and Bet, there are lots of other cartoony type characters thrown into the mix. Although it was fun to read, disorientating in other parts, and I found the ending to be a slight anti-climax. Although ultimately It’s not a story about finding a cure to depression, but about learning to accept it and living with it. Whether the brain mites are a metaphor for something else will be up to the reader to decide. I’m still scratching my head, maybe for brain mites?
 
I have found this quite a difficult book to review, although I had fun reading it, I struggled to put many of my thoughts on paper, probably because I did not make sense of parts of it. However, Skull Nuggets is colourful, experimental writing and I am not entirely sure what to compare to as a point of reference, perhaps Scottish author Chris Kelso or Andrew Stone whom I recently reviewed on Ginger Nuts of Horror are vaguely similar. If you’re after something really different then this very strange novella, which is most certainly not to all tastes, is a perfect place to start.
 
 
Tony Jones

SKULL NUGGETS BY ​AMY M. VAUGHN 

​Forato House is looking for test subjects: Are you between the ages of 21 and 61? Are you depressed, anxious, unfulfilled? Join us at our state of the art residential testing facility where we have perfected trepanation, the ancient art of drilling a hole in the skull to achieve a permanently higher state of consciousness! But that’s not all! We are currently seeking individuals who wish to eradicate their neurophages. Through our proprietary process of injecting hallucinogens directly into the frontal lobe, you can rid yourself of brain mites and experience lasting bliss. Do it for science! Do it for peace of mind! Do it for the people you love!

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