Snake City

Freddie, a Canadian "snowbird" or migratory retiree, lives in Florida with his roommate, Cottonmouth, a talking viper with an especially vulgar tongue with whom Freddie occasionally shares "conjoined" dreams. Freddie's paramour, Hilda, is a shape-shifting swamp hag whose loyalty and love extend to all manner of creatures: man, beast, and serpent. The literally lovesick Cottonmouth also lusts after Hilda, and the three of them are soon engaged in a strange love triangle replete with backstabbings and murderous machinations. Observing all this from afar, the angel Gabriel, with whom Freddie communicates via talking into his pillow at night, appears in order to relay his master's displeasure with Freddie's associations (suspecting, of course, that Cottonmouth is in fact Satan himself). Rosenblatt, who has won a Governor General's Award for his poetry, has crafted a kingdom with plenty of surreal strangeness but little of anything else. The novella is constructed in short, sometimes half-page chapters that often feel like incomplete thoughts, with characters existing as little more than thinly sketched collections of absurdities and attitude. Despite the obvious religious commentary at the novella's core, it never manages to find any sort of focus, feeling at times frustratingly random. The final product is, unfortunately, less than the sum of its parts. (Mar.)