Critical Essay | Critical Review by Richard Eder

Critical Review by Richard Eder

SOURCE: Eder, Richard. “Chop Shop.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (26 October 1997): 2.

In the following review, Eder commends the absurdist humor and social satire he finds in An Advent Calendar.

John is buying chopped meat in his rundown North London neighborhood when Mick, the butcher's assistant, lands his cleaver on his own finger. In an uproar of blood, towels and hysteria, the finger somehow falls into the meat grinder.

An hour or so later, John's semi-invalid Uncle Cecil comes to the table with an anticipatory grunt of “lovely grub” and guzzles up the meat sauce despite the odd bits of bone and gristle. Soon the butcher is at the door demanding the return of the finger. The dog ate it, John lies, stricken. Rather than remark on the manifest absence of a dog, the butcher inveighs furiously at the idea of anyone feeding good meat to a pet.