I Will Rise by Michael Calvillo

 “I Will Rise” is a strange tale from the beginning. The prose is a jarring mix of common, even gutter slang (“super cool”, “Nothing super wrong”, “soooo”) and sheer weight (“ferocity of my utterance”), as if the writer is undecided on his own voice. The voice wavers between a musing reminiscence and addressing the reader in a more conversational tone.

 

If there wasn’t a sense of repulsion from this almost-anti hero from the beginning the narrator’s well described efforts to keep himself from masturbating through body-funk visualization in the first chapter should be enough. By the end of the first chapter we know that Charlie is a socially awkward, fat, oily, ugly man who is a victim of the media and society and of the parents who casually called him “a fucking nut job”. He fakes seizures and steals, but won’t let himself be sexually aroused because God is watching.

 

Calvillo’s voice, the overwhelming main building block of the book, is intense and disarming. Certainly dispirited readers will find much to connect with. But the flow of thought style is distracting, obscuring a plot that doesn’t begin until 50 pages in with a half hearted attempt at poisoning people followed by a confusing death and rebirth into being the reformer of mankind. There’s a disassembled feel to the story, an expanded, and at times out of control version, of the feel of the cult movie Fight Club. “I Will Rise” absolutely captures the tilting, half-insane, anarchist feel but with more rawness and less refinement.

 

If readers can accept the hallucinations and ranting flow of thought style in this dizzying tale of horror and social degradation they’ll likely list “I Will Rise” as one of their favorites, but definitely as one of the most memorable books they’ve ever read.