Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Libba Bray's novel Going Bovine is one of the most bizarre yet delightful books I have ever read. It is a dark comedic journey on which a sixteen year old boy named Cameron searches for a cure to his disease: Creutzfeldt-Jakobs, more commonly known as Mad Cow Disease. This poor kid who should be worried about high school and girls and drugs and video games is told that he is going to die, and there is nothing he can do to prevent it.

But... of course that does not stop him. For those who don't know, Mad Cow Disease is a neurological disorder where a specific malformed protein reproduces though unable to complete the tasks required, and take over the victim's brain until it can no longer function. Therefore, as the disorder takes old and spreads, he comes to meet some very... strange characters, who convince him of the existence of an antidote on the other side of the United States. So there forms the runaway posse – Cameron, a loopy punk angel with a bad sugar habit, a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf, and a yard gnome claiming to be a Viking god – who set out on a hilarious hallucinatory adventure "into the heart of what matters most".

I love all of Libba Bray's works, and Going Bovine is no exception. I absolutely adore her sense of creativity, and appreciate the underlying lunacy that she must possess in order to create such a fantastically dark yet laugh out loud funny narrative. The second that you finish this one, you will want to flip back to page one and start all over again.