Moonflow by Bitter Karella
Run For It (September 2, 2025)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Broadbent
Among other things, Bitter Karella’s Moonflow promises “fungus gods, trans feels, haunted forests, weird rituals, lesbian hippies, fat sex, humongous gahungawungas, and raccoons.” It certainly delivers. Moonflow is a magnificently queer magical mystery trip into the darkly bizarre heart of Pamogo Forest. A psychedelic-fueled, rainbow trip of a novel, this book is everything you’d hope for from Bitter Karella: wickedly funny, bracingly bizarre, frequently off-color, and yet, somehow, heartfelt.
Down-on-her-luck trans girl Sarah finds herself so broke her beloved cat’s down to dry food. An accomplished shroom farmer, she scores a chance to turn it all around when a local dealer sends her deep into the Pamogo Forest to locate the King’s Breakfast, a mushroom that offers a sublimely transcendental trip. Her guide, a well-meaning if doofy dudebro Andy, navigates by dead bodies. The Pamogo is a creepfest, and predictably, quickly, they’re hopelessly lost.
Sarah’s phone croaks after transmitting a series of bizarre text messages, then she and Andy stumble into the Sisterhood of the Green Lady, a hippie, off-the-grid, lesbian free love cult run by Mother Moonflow. One of the Sisterhood’s number is set to deliver a baby, the incarnation of the Green Lady herself, and Mother Moonflow suggests that just maybe these newcomer “Phallic Alecs” could bring news of the baby’s coming to the wider world. Perhaps.
Chaos ensues, including murder, mayhem, orgies, and racoons. Everything tilts stunningly sideways in a tidal wave of bodily fluids.
It’s hilarious — the best kind of “oh no they won’t go there, oh God they really did” shuddery. Moonflow exemplifies Bitter Karella’s trademark humor: the madcap, boundary- and envelop-pushing comedy we’ve come to expect from someone who made Mary Shelley’s catchphrase “Sup, fuckers?” This novel doesn’t shy away from vibrant profanity, explicit sex, or cringe-worthy fluids.
But pointing this out feels unfair; it trivializes a novel with a real heart. Moonflow muses on real human yearning for connection — with nature, with one another. Sarah loves her cat, Herman, and yearns for the relationship she enjoyed with her girlfriend, Jade, not to mention the Goddess she encountered during a psychedelic trip. Skillet’s relentless sexcapades hide a naked desire for love. The cult itself might be about the Green Lady, but everyone there is yearning for real connection with both nature and one another — sex is only a convenient stand-in for something they can’t find. The King’s Breakfast? Everyone yearns for the shrooms not because they’re drug-addled maniacs, but because they want to expand their minds and merge with the infinite.
And just as the madcap plot hides a core of humanity, so are the zany characters truly heartfelt. Skillet might be a squirrelly nymphomaniac, but she’s yearning for something better than she has. Hell Slut might be a stoic, near-psychic butch-on-a-bike type, but she has a heartbreaking backstory, and her devotion to Mother Moonflow has been well-earned. Doofy ally-wannabe Andy means well, dammit — we all know his doppelgänger, and his relatability makes him all the more cringey. Bitter Karella captures queer disaster like no one else.
Because, at its heart, Moonflow is a wildly queer novel, a countercultural rainbow flag of a book. That’s not simply because it features a transgender main character and a lesbian free love cult camped out in the depths of a forest. “Queer” reminds us of the ways the world perceives LGBTQIA+ identities: as dangerous, abnormal, and subversive. Moonflow fits that description. As our margin of safety narrows, a novel that normalizes the queer search for love and acceptance, that reminds us those in the transgender community seek the same transcendent love as heterosexual people — that counts as dangerous. Moreso when it’s couched in humor, when it’s tinged with more than a hint of Ken Kesey from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
Reader beware. Between the raccoon anarchy and the orgies, between the sly humor and the wicked wit, there’s an emotional heft to Moonflow. The ending’s an unexpected twist, and well worth the ride. Hop on the psychedelic bus and sit back. You’ll be glad you did.
