Description
Rocky meets Elmore Leonard meets Miranda July as Pillow Wilson, a past-his-prime boxer, trains for his last title shot. Shenanigans ensue.
Having recently undergone an ethical awakening, Pillow has converted to veganism and is in the middle of trying to rehome his menagerie of exotic pets (including Jersey Joe the sloth and Rigoberto the shark) in humane animal shelters. His roommate, Sherlock Holmes, has recently faked his own death by waterfall, and has now gone incognito and is Pillow's in-house doping expert.
The thing is, Pillow doesn't feel all that motivated to train for his next big fight, and he's further distracted from his training when his car and pet shark mysteriously disappear. Luckily, Sherlock is a master of deduction. What follows is part underdog sports story, part work of Neozoological Surrealism, and part existential mystery novel.
"Reckless, desperate, and achingly human, Battershill remains funnier than anyone else on your shelf." - Andrew F. Sullivan, author of The Marigold
"The adventures of Battershill's returning protagonist Pillow are witty and occasionally absurd, but the story never trips on ironies. Battershill twines the humanity of pulp noir with the unsettling play of surrealism to build a world in which pet sloths, Sherlock Holmes, and skilled drug pushers all seem to have found their ideal home." - Naben Ruthnum, author of A Hero of Our Time
"Pillow Wilson is one of my favourite characters in CanLit, and he is in fine form in Pet, Pet, Slap, a deeply funny, inventive, bizarre, heartbreaker of a book. Andrew Battershill not only writes with that magical alchemy of humour and pathos that most writers only wish they could pull off, but he somehow also balances surrealism and profound humanity in a way I'm sure I'll spend the rest of my life trying to figure out. I haven't had this much fun reading in a long, long time." - Amy Jones, author of Pebble & Dove
About the Author
Andrew Battershill is the husband of the writer Suzannah Showler and the father of Djuna. He is the author of two previous novels. His work has been longlisted for the Giller Prize, Shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and he was the winner of the 2019 ReLit Award in the Novel category. He works as public librarian on the unceded homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.