Perhaps a good subtitle for EPSILON ZETA would be THE RULES OF ATTRACTION FOR COMPLETE RETARDS, because that’s exactly what this regurgitated novel of the woes of frat life is: one big pity party for a group of spoiled, racist, homophobic white frat boys whose primary interests include date rape, calling each other “faggot” and constantly lamenting their frat’s ne’er-do-well status on campus and with their national board.

Chronicling a semester or two (and a semester or two too many) in the life of fictional Northwestern Florida University’s chapter of Epsilon Zeta, the book moves at a snail’s pace, with one vignette after another, from trying to score with a Lil’ Sis to pledge initiations. In between, we are given one frat meeting after another, told in a boring, near-microscopic eye for detail style that makes ROBERT’S RULES OF ORDER read like an issue of Penthouse Forum.

These chapters with the meetings go on forever, and to make it worse, the characters are so interchangeable – all are basic assholes, given typical asshole names like Sharples, Zack, Brad and CMore (not a typo) – you’re never too sure who is talking or doing what, but by the halfway point, you really couldn’t care less.

Normally with a book like this, I would give up halfway through, but I soldiered through the whole thing, in hopes that maybe something would happen. Maybe I was being strung along for some sort of big finish. The back of the book even promised an explosive “moral crisis that will live in their memories long after donning their caps and gowns.” Surely something life-changing had to be waiting at the end. Maybe they would all have one big cock-rocket gay orgy. Maybe the Pakistani Student Union, tired of being pushed around by these guys, would send a suicide bomber to blow these fuckers up.

But no, nothing. They lose their charter. Big whoop.

Author Jock Young (what, was Chest Rockhard or Jet Brickfist taken?) has written a completely unneeded and unwanted love letter to fraternity living that might appeal to those types who wistfully remember their days of pissing in the mouth of a freshman pledge, but for the rest of us, we’ll just piss on EPSILON ZETA.

Dismissed. –Louis Fowler

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