A review by crystal_staley
The New and Improved Romie Futch by Julia Elliott

5.0

What a wild ride! Romie Futch is a middle aged divorcée, who is still obsessed with his ex-wife while trying to get through the day doing his taxidermy work—with a little help from booze and drugs.  He’s a bit down and out. He sees an ad for an experimental trial to make you smarter so he signs up. We follow him through these trials in a lab with a few other very memorable characters and then what happens after the trials. He is indeed smarter and he tries to turn his life around, getting back into making art like he did in high school.  Maybe he can get his ex-wife back? Also, there’s a hunt on for a possibly genetically modified pig that’s plaguing the swamps. Elliott’s writing is phenomenal often swirling into word tornadoes to express Romie’s new found smartness for using ‘SAT words’.  Verbal tapestries.  It’s a zany story but also has a lot of heart and is quite tender at times.  Romie is sad but relatable.  You really root foe him to come out OK in the end of it all. I enjoyed reading his story. It’s a strange amalgamation: a tall tale mixed with a gritty southern yarn, filled with fantastic characters. It’s a weird trip and I loved every word!