A cynical, misanthropic, foulmouthed novel that no curious reader will be able to put down.
A fiction debut in which an anonymous internet troll has a kind of quarter-life crisis.
In this sprawling, rambunctious novel, Fitzgerald places his unnamed main character—an aimless, dissolute, perpetually horny online troll—on the cusp of a deep-seated personal dilemma. When he graduated from college (it was years ago, but he still has infinite student loans to pay off), his remaining friends warned him, “You have to get out of this town the second you graduate, or else you’ll never leave.” And the warning has come true: “No matter what route you take home,” the narrator tells himself, “you’re guaranteed to see a University bus whizz by or glimpse one of the crumbling dormitories you used to call home—teeming, iniquitous high-rises after J. G. Ballard's own heart.” The entire novel is set in the second person—a bit of a workout, especially over 500 pages, but the author pulls it off with impressive skill. The narrative follows its hapless main character through his largely aimless days, varying from online porn to large amounts of alcohol and marijuana. These misadventures are punctuated with long excerpts from the protagonist’s writings on pop culture and the nature of the perpetually online modern world. “Thanks to vertically integrated marketing strategies and the commodification of ‘cool,’ true originality has almost ceased to exist,” he muses in typically caustic terms. “Individually, we may all be snowflakes, but together, we’re a fucking whiteout.” As this tour through the protagonist’s tortured psyche reaches a crisis point, it is obvious something has to give, and soon.
In addition to successfully employing a seldom-used narrative point of view, Fitzgerald also accomplishes several other daring feats. The novel's narrative manages to be crude without being stupid and eloquent without having anything remotely pleasant to say. The author's sheer exuberance in describing everything from a mood shift to a bar fight is unflagging: “Wild-pitched shot- and pint-glasses shell the liquor display behind the bar like a knock-em-over carnival game, sending a waterfall of spirits crashing from the top shelf down,” goes one such moment. “The staff retreat to the back offices soaked in their own wares—their cuts and scrapes pre-sterilized by the downpour—and opportunistic alkies start absconding with whatever merchandise is still intact while the rest of the crowd makes for the door.” Our troll-ish main character grouses about the artificiality of online culture. There are many scenes driven by grotesque Pynchon-esque humor: After a particularly nasty incident, a bathroom is described as “a GG Allin-themed sanguinarium.” And the main character's lengthy dissertations on classic TV shows like Family Guy, The Simpsons, and especially Friends are genuinely fascinating. By the time “some migratory, sea turtle-type level” prompts the main character to one final epic feat of trolling, readers will be rooting for him despite his despicable ways.
A cynical, misanthropic, foulmouthed novel that no curious reader will be able to put down.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781952600326
Page Count: 590
Publisher: Whiskey Tit
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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