Men, Women and Rattlesnakes

While I don't consider it can live up to its billing of The Most Evil Book Ever Written, it was certainly a risqué publication for 1933!

I am not too sure what to make of it. The story starts in 1920, but rolls through the years as the characters develop. There is plenty of humour, but almost all exclusively at the expense of the many small-town characters lacking intelligence or wit. Almost all are portrayed as cruel, lacking in the basic understanding of reproduction & anatomy (especially the womenfolk) and genuinely appear to have little understanding of morals or decency. In all - a trainwreck of a town filled with misogynists, drinkers, drunks, cheaters and... rattlesnakes! Horror - not as far as I can tell - perhaps the rattlesnakes!

Cider barns, the town hall (also a cider barn!), a whisky bar, farmers barns and the towns bedrooms are the primary settings, but any bit of bare ground in the woods will suffice for the girls of Menham town. Even during prohibition a passing lawman drinks all that is on offer before smashing up the bar and arresting the proprietor - who ends up being fined and has to put up his prices! The worst part was the men lost all their favourite drinking glasses, and their conversations (with said vessels) were never the same with the tin tankards which replaced them!

Characters include a travelling salesman who provides a rooster weathervane to the women he sleeps with to help remember which he should ‘visit'; a man-hating spinster who raises her adopted baby girl as a boy and treats him like a dog; any number of girls who fear catching the germ that makes them pregnant (while sleeping with any number of the men of the town); an alcoholic preacher preaching sobriety and rattlesnake breeder who uses his snakes for no good!

Certainly not to be taken very seriously, and I reckon about 75 pages too long!

For its uniqueness, and given its 1930' publication, it is worth 3.5 stars, rounded down.