Something About a Snake Devouring its Own Tail

    There’s something to be said about the value of things that are inherently bizarre, and Supermarket by Bobby Hall was a great example of that. From the first page to the last, each plot point was exponentially getting stranger. Even if the quality of the writing often varied, the book had no shortage of absurdity to keep the reader engaged.

    So, what was the point of all of this? What is our reward for living in the mind of Flynn, our unfortunate, neurotic protagonist? Pinpointing a genre or a theme for this book is rather difficult as the plot ambles along to the beat of its own drum, taking bits and pieces of other genres like ingredients at a supermarket salad bar… ah, wait. Too on-the-nose?

    Stories with themes of mental illness creating an unreliable narrator often live in a box of ‘psychological thriller’, such as a similar novel called A Danger to Herself and Others by Alyssa Sheinmel. However, while the ‘psychological’ label fits, ‘thriller’ often implies a sense of unease, something almost horror-adjacent, while this book doesn’t really have that atmosphere. It unsettles the reader, sure, but that’s mainly because the writing itself is so mind-boggling that you never really feel like you’re in control of what you’re reading.

    Now, if I had to put a label on Supermarket, I’d label it as a ‘dark comedy movie’ with psychological elements. Yes, I’d label it as a movie. Reading this book and putting myself in the author’s head makes me think that it was written not with a novel in mind, but a movie, and it was simply translated into written word from there. This does seem to be the intent, as Bobby Hall is said to be the writer and director of the book, as well as there being an accompanying soundtrack to listen to online.

    And yet, it’s clearly not a script or a screenplay; it’s a novel. Or, more accurately, it’s a novel wearing a movie’s skin. I can only wonder what writing this story must’ve been like, having the clearest image of what’s actually happening in your head that no one else would be able to see. Supermarket is written in a way that is bizarre and difficult to fully comprehend – which might have been intentional, might not – and leaves us with a story that is difficult to make linear sense of and actually get any resolution on. 

    In a way, the strange and rambling nature of the book and the psychological elements of the genre lend itself to the storytelling, as it’s important to remember that this is the first person narrative of a deeply unreliable narrator who is trapped in loops of psychosis and schizophrenia he can’t escape from. He lives in a constant state of uncertainty where he doesn’t know what’s real and what isn’t. The genre of this book doesn’t just give an outline of what to expect from it, it is an active tool by the author to tell the story. 

    As for the writing style itself, the sort of casual, stream-of-consciousness feel to it makes it hard to discern what’s foreshadowing and what is simply a tangent the main character is going on in his head. Early on in the book, the main character states plainly in his narration that ‘Frank’, the person he hallucinates the existence of, isn’t real. In a sense he means this as in he’s a liar, but in hindsight it is far more literal than that. Still, it’s hard to pick up on these pieces of foreshadowing, as there are also plenty of offhanded comments about ‘Frank’ that mean nothing.

    In conclusion, despite this book having variable quality in some parts, it is still well-written and uses the tools of the genre well to illustrate its plot. Whether one likes the book or not, it is at least an undeniably interesting read – even if for no other reason than how absurd an experience it is.