Sex and violence snuggle up between the covers of Todd Sweeney: The Fiend of Fleet High, a discomfitingly delicious new novel by David Pratt (Hosta Press. $12.50. www.hostapress.com) that reads like a lost John Waters movie. This grand guignol comedy serves up ample helpings of cannibalism, onanism, blood-soaked sex, and conversion therapy. It’s an over-the-top spin on “Sweeney Todd,” cast with contemporary small town high school students. Think “Riverdale” with raunch (and pan-drippings). Strapping young Todd has just been released from reform school and returned for senior year when he learns his widowed mother has been preyed upon in his absence. The culprit? Lascivious Ashford Squeers, the very same wicked guidance counselor (and “Nicholas Nickelby” reference) who framed Todd and arranged his incarceration. And now, Squeers is planning to have Toby, Todd’s little queer sidekick, shipped off to Saint Bonaventure’s Home for Effeminate Boys. Its enough to make Todd want to kill the bastard, then join forces with his best gal-pal Nellie(!) to chop up the corpse and bake it into savory empanadas. The kids’ #meattoo movement gets quickly out of hand, leading to distinctly unsavory scenes like the one in which the racist mother of one nasty classmate unwittingly nibbles “a warm golden packet of her son’s flesh.” Pratt lards his intentionally overbaked prose with campy pop cultural morsels: a film shown to shock the homosexuality out of teen queens juxtaposes images of Julie Andrews, Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel with the slaughter of pigs and wartime atrocities. Amidst all the comedic mayhem, there’s also a surprisingly effective eroticism at play; the soft porn allure of Todd’s masturbation fantasies, accounts of cellmate sex and naked baking sessions is hard to deny. There’s not much literary nutrition to be found here, but as a guilty pleasure, “The Fiend of Fleet High” is as tasty as a Twinkie.
