Hell of a Book
WINNER of the National Book Award for Fiction
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3.6 • 7 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
WINNER - NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2021
AN ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY 'MUST READ'
A TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK
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Discover this astonishing work of fiction from award-winning, NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Jason Mott.
'Powerful, timely and provocative' ABI DARÉ, author of GIRL WITH A LOUDING VOICE
'Jason Mott truly has written one hell of a book.' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS, author of QUEENIE
This is a true story.
An author goes on a book tour for his new bestseller which, as people keep telling him, is one hell of a book.
This is a coming-of-age story.
One morning, he meets The Kid: a young Black boy who looks just like the one he keeps seeing on the news. And The Kid wants him to tell his story.
This is a sad story.
It's the story of a boy who spent most of his life trying to hide. And it may not be that different from the story of our author.
This is a love story.
But to find out why, you'll have to read this for yourself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mott's stunning fourth novel (after The Crossing) delves into the complex and fraught African American experience. The protagonist, a nameless Black author on his first book tour, is reeling from his newfound fame and the success of his book, Hell of a Book. As he flies to promotional events, often in a drunken stupor, the author reveals that his vivid imagination makes it difficult for him to distinguish reality from fiction. So when he encounters "The Kid," a 10-year-old boy with impossibly ebony skin, the author doubts the boy is real. The Kid, who uncannily resembles a recent victim of police violence, first appears at a hotel and continues to pop up during the book tour, leading the author to recall his own repressed trauma as a bullied Black boy in North Carolina. The author's sobering recollections of his youth are punctuated with humorous and insightful encounters that include a discussion on national sociopolitical identity with Nicolas Cage and an improbable first date with a funeral director. Mott's poetic, cinematic novel tackles what it means to live in a country where Black people perpetually "live lives under the hanging sword of fear." Absurdist metafiction doesn't get much better.
Customer Reviews
Vonnegut redux
Author
African-American. BFA in Fiction; MFA in Poetry. This is his fourth novel.
In brief
Basic storyline follows an African-American author on a cross-country book tour promoting his bestselling novel. (It’s a Hell of a book. Everyone says so.) He embraces the celebrity lifestyle by overindulging in various ways. Parallel narratives injected into the main one involve the travails of a young black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and an apparently imaginary character known only as “The Kid,” who appears repeatedly to the author during his tour. The author grows, or is forced to grow, into his black identity.
Writing
The fictional author parts feature rollicking, laugh-out-loud wordplay and general cynicism. The other sections are considerably more sombre and reflective. A Goodreads reviewer commented that, “as Vonnegut was to war; Mott is to contemporary racism,” or words to that effect. I agree.
Bottom line
Clever, but highly derivative of the late Mr V, about whom my feelings are mixed at best. For the record, this ageing white Australian reader gained a better appreciation of contemporary American race relations from Kiley Reid’s (Such A Fun Age) and Angie Thomas’s books (The Hate U Give and other titles), than from satirical works such as this or Paul Beatty’s Booker winner The Sellout.