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Hell of a Book
In Hell of a Book, an African-American author sets out on a cross-country book tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Jason Mott's novel and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: since his novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.
Throughout, these characters' stories build and build and as they converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art, and money, there always is the tragic story of a police shooting playing over and over on the news.
Who has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind? Unforgettably powerful, an electrifying high-wire act, ideal for book clubs, and the book Mott says he has been writing in his head for ten years, Hell of a Book in its final twists truly becomes its title.
Throughout, these characters' stories build and build and as they converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art, and money, there always is the tragic story of a police shooting playing over and over on the news.
Who has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind? Unforgettably powerful, an electrifying high-wire act, ideal for book clubs, and the book Mott says he has been writing in his head for ten years, Hell of a Book in its final twists truly becomes its title.
323 pages, Hardcover
First published June 29, 2021
About the author
Jason Mott
22 books1,138 followersJason Mott lives in southeastern North Carolina. He has a BFA in Fiction and an MFA in Poetry, both from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His poetry and fiction has appeared in various journals such as Prick of the Spindle, The Thomas Wolfe Review, The Kakalak Anthology of Carolina Poets, Measure and Chautauqua. He was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize award and Entertainment Weekly listed him as one of their 10 “New Hollywood: Next Wave” people to watch.
He is the author of two poetry collections: We Call This Thing Between Us Love and “…hide behind me…” The Returned is his first novel.
The Returned has been optioned by Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B, in association with Brillstein Entertainment and ABC. It will air in March, 2014 on the ABC network under the title “Resurrection.”
He is the author of two poetry collections: We Call This Thing Between Us Love and “…hide behind me…” The Returned is his first novel.
The Returned has been optioned by Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B, in association with Brillstein Entertainment and ABC. It will air in March, 2014 on the ABC network under the title “Resurrection.”
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,489 reviews
July 17, 2021
This is one of the most creative novels I’ve read about being black in America circa 2021. What I found is that there is no pontification, no white shaming. What I found is a deeply personal novel about a fictional man who is a fictional author who is in a bit of emotional crisis. And through the navigation of his crisis, we get to see his inner struggles in being a successful author and a man.
From the start, the protagonist, a nameless successful author, is on a book tour(the book’s title: “Hell of a Book”, and he alerts the reader that he has “a condition”. This condition makes it difficult for him to understand what is real and what is a figment of his imagination. Something happened to him in his past that brought on this condition that brings out his creativity and allows an “alternative” universe to occur. Yes, it’s silly, but just go with it. This condition gets him into lots of trouble as you can imagine.
Author Jason Mott, in a You tube interview he said that he wanted to answer the difficult questions of what it means to be black in America. He felt that those discussions are wrought with tension. He wanted to “show” not tell what it means. One of the main ideas that he offers, which I found moving, is that a major side character, a young boy named Soot, has parents who want him to learn how to be invisible. If Soot can be invisible, he’ll be safe. His parents felt it was too traumatic to have “the discussion” about what it means to be black. They didn’t want to frighten him that the police are to be feared, that he can be shot just for the color of his skin. So instead, Soot’s dad used to play a game of “hands up!” and Soot would try to beat his record of how fast he can get those hands in the air. His dad wanted Soot to have a knee-jerk reaction to the command, “hands up”. Dang, that broke my heart.
But I digress. Our unnamed narrator gets himself into many hilarious fixes. He gets out of them, of course. None involve the police. It’s almost mad-cap what happens to him on his book tour. He also has to contend with his publisher who keeps at him to write his second book. We still don’t know what his first book is about. But we do know that when he’s on tour, the main question he gets is “why aren’t you writing about the black experience?” Meanwhile, his agent tells him NOT to write about being black. It’s publishing suicide.
Chapters about Soot are dispersed through the narrative. Our unnamed narrator has a constant companion, an invisible boy named “The Kid”. The Kid tells the author that only he, the author, can see him. The kid can pick and choose who can see him and who cannot. The author chats with The Kid all the time. He realizes he has to fake talk into his phone while chatting with The Kid, otherwise people around him would think he’s unhinged. Well, the reader wonders that as well. The unnamed narrator is one of the most unreliable narrators out there. What is real? What is part of “his condition”. What happened to him that caused this condition?
The unnamed author has very interesting handlers on tour. Mott uses them to add to the mad-cap part of the story. Without them, this would be a heavy story with no release. For me, I find the most profound writing can be hidden in silly scenes. It’s those messages that strike when one is open that end up being the most affecting.
Soot’s backstory is profound. His skin color made all the children, black especially, not like him. He was bullied. His parents did their best to raise him to be a good boy and to be safe, to be invisible.
This story is referred to as a moving meditation on being Black in America. I enjoyed the creativity that Mott chose in writing his story. This is a strange story that is silly, tragic, and emotionally moving. I believe Mott succeeded in his mission to be part of those difficult discussions on being black in America.
From the start, the protagonist, a nameless successful author, is on a book tour(the book’s title: “Hell of a Book”, and he alerts the reader that he has “a condition”. This condition makes it difficult for him to understand what is real and what is a figment of his imagination. Something happened to him in his past that brought on this condition that brings out his creativity and allows an “alternative” universe to occur. Yes, it’s silly, but just go with it. This condition gets him into lots of trouble as you can imagine.
Author Jason Mott, in a You tube interview he said that he wanted to answer the difficult questions of what it means to be black in America. He felt that those discussions are wrought with tension. He wanted to “show” not tell what it means. One of the main ideas that he offers, which I found moving, is that a major side character, a young boy named Soot, has parents who want him to learn how to be invisible. If Soot can be invisible, he’ll be safe. His parents felt it was too traumatic to have “the discussion” about what it means to be black. They didn’t want to frighten him that the police are to be feared, that he can be shot just for the color of his skin. So instead, Soot’s dad used to play a game of “hands up!” and Soot would try to beat his record of how fast he can get those hands in the air. His dad wanted Soot to have a knee-jerk reaction to the command, “hands up”. Dang, that broke my heart.
But I digress. Our unnamed narrator gets himself into many hilarious fixes. He gets out of them, of course. None involve the police. It’s almost mad-cap what happens to him on his book tour. He also has to contend with his publisher who keeps at him to write his second book. We still don’t know what his first book is about. But we do know that when he’s on tour, the main question he gets is “why aren’t you writing about the black experience?” Meanwhile, his agent tells him NOT to write about being black. It’s publishing suicide.
Chapters about Soot are dispersed through the narrative. Our unnamed narrator has a constant companion, an invisible boy named “The Kid”. The Kid tells the author that only he, the author, can see him. The kid can pick and choose who can see him and who cannot. The author chats with The Kid all the time. He realizes he has to fake talk into his phone while chatting with The Kid, otherwise people around him would think he’s unhinged. Well, the reader wonders that as well. The unnamed narrator is one of the most unreliable narrators out there. What is real? What is part of “his condition”. What happened to him that caused this condition?
The unnamed author has very interesting handlers on tour. Mott uses them to add to the mad-cap part of the story. Without them, this would be a heavy story with no release. For me, I find the most profound writing can be hidden in silly scenes. It’s those messages that strike when one is open that end up being the most affecting.
Soot’s backstory is profound. His skin color made all the children, black especially, not like him. He was bullied. His parents did their best to raise him to be a good boy and to be safe, to be invisible.
This story is referred to as a moving meditation on being Black in America. I enjoyed the creativity that Mott chose in writing his story. This is a strange story that is silly, tragic, and emotionally moving. I believe Mott succeeded in his mission to be part of those difficult discussions on being black in America.
September 6, 2021
I typically have little patience for authors who appear to be chewing up the scenery unconstrained by any desire to explore a plot; however, that's not what's happening in Hell of a Book, although the first half may suggest exactly that. Mott tells his story of an alcoholic author on a book tour, his back story, his suppressed grief, his hallucinations suggesting mental illness, his abrasive manner of speaking to anyone who might get close to him, and - in an entirely disciplined manner - creates a propulsive, deeply thoughtful, disorienting tale that roars toward one of the most masterfully-written endings of any contemporary novel I've read. The initial 50% of the book is a set-up driving toward that ending. Stick with it. You'll be rewarded as it morphs from satire and emptiness into a narrative that is intense, compelling, and utterly true.
July 16, 2022
Update: rounding up to 5⭐️... I can't stop thinking about this book!
4.5⭐
Our unnamed narrator is a Black writer riding high on the success of his recently published book – a book titled “Hell of a Book” ("It’s been Kindled and Kobo’d, iPadded and Audible’d. It’s been optioned so that it can be movie’d—"). He is currently on a promotional tour, traveling across the country, answering the question “What’s Your Book About?”, signing copies and connecting with his reader base. Of course, he has been extensively trained in media interaction and has a “handler” wherever he goes, though that doesn’t quite prevent him from getting into trouble. As our narrator travels across the country, the recent tragic shooting of a ten-year-old Black boy by the police has garnered national attention – it’s on the news, protesters have taken to the streets - and being an African –American writer, almost everywhere he goes someone is bringing it up expecting him to voice his thoughts about it .
Parallel to our narrator’s experiences is the story of a little boy who is unkindly nicknamed “Soot” on account of his extremely dark skin. Soot’s loving parents believe that they can keep him safe if he stays “invisible”.
Our narrator is often visited by “The Kid”, a “gangly, meek, and nerdy-looking” boy only he can see and interact with, who insists he is “real” and with whom he shares some deep and meaningful conversations on what it means to Black in America.
As the different threads converge and the lines between fiction and reality become blurred -for our narrator and for the reader-the story attains a dream-like quality that pulls you in, breaks your heart and leaves you more than a little unsettled.
“But the thing to know and remember is that you can never be something other than what you are, no matter how much you might want to. You can’t be them. You can only be you. And they’re going to always treat you differently than they treat themselves. They won’t ever know about it—at least, most of them won’t. Most of them will think that everything is okay and that you’re being treated well enough and that everything is beautiful. Because, I guess for them, all they can imagine is a world in which things are fair and beautiful because, after all, they’ve always been treated fairly and beautifully. History has always been kind to them.”
I tend to be wary of award winning books with a lot of hype surrounding them which is why I took my time to get to this one. But I am so glad that I eventually did pick this book up. Aptly named, "Hell of a Book" is truly a creative and brilliant work of fiction. With its powerful writing, lyrical prose and elements of magical realism, sardonic humor and a narrative that is hard-hitting, insightful and relevant, Jason Mott’s "Hell of a Book" is a unique and immersive experience. I combined my reading with the audio narration by JD Jackson and Ronald Peet which made for an exceptional immersion reading experience.
4.5⭐
Our unnamed narrator is a Black writer riding high on the success of his recently published book – a book titled “Hell of a Book” ("It’s been Kindled and Kobo’d, iPadded and Audible’d. It’s been optioned so that it can be movie’d—"). He is currently on a promotional tour, traveling across the country, answering the question “What’s Your Book About?”, signing copies and connecting with his reader base. Of course, he has been extensively trained in media interaction and has a “handler” wherever he goes, though that doesn’t quite prevent him from getting into trouble. As our narrator travels across the country, the recent tragic shooting of a ten-year-old Black boy by the police has garnered national attention – it’s on the news, protesters have taken to the streets - and being an African –American writer, almost everywhere he goes someone is bringing it up expecting him to voice his thoughts about it .
Parallel to our narrator’s experiences is the story of a little boy who is unkindly nicknamed “Soot” on account of his extremely dark skin. Soot’s loving parents believe that they can keep him safe if he stays “invisible”.
Our narrator is often visited by “The Kid”, a “gangly, meek, and nerdy-looking” boy only he can see and interact with, who insists he is “real” and with whom he shares some deep and meaningful conversations on what it means to Black in America.
As the different threads converge and the lines between fiction and reality become blurred -for our narrator and for the reader-the story attains a dream-like quality that pulls you in, breaks your heart and leaves you more than a little unsettled.
“But the thing to know and remember is that you can never be something other than what you are, no matter how much you might want to. You can’t be them. You can only be you. And they’re going to always treat you differently than they treat themselves. They won’t ever know about it—at least, most of them won’t. Most of them will think that everything is okay and that you’re being treated well enough and that everything is beautiful. Because, I guess for them, all they can imagine is a world in which things are fair and beautiful because, after all, they’ve always been treated fairly and beautifully. History has always been kind to them.”
I tend to be wary of award winning books with a lot of hype surrounding them which is why I took my time to get to this one. But I am so glad that I eventually did pick this book up. Aptly named, "Hell of a Book" is truly a creative and brilliant work of fiction. With its powerful writing, lyrical prose and elements of magical realism, sardonic humor and a narrative that is hard-hitting, insightful and relevant, Jason Mott’s "Hell of a Book" is a unique and immersive experience. I combined my reading with the audio narration by JD Jackson and Ronald Peet which made for an exceptional immersion reading experience.
August 12, 2021
The unnamed protagonist has written a hell of a book. What’s it about? Hell if I know. Hell if he knows. But promote it he must, and thus we join him on a cross country book tour where he repeats the rote spiel and talking points his media team has provided, all the while drinking, debaching, and finding an unshakeable new friend. Interspersed are chapters following Soot, a young boy given that nickname by bullies due to his dark ebony skin. Soot’s chapters are short, but profound and heartbreaking.
Know this up front: You’re going to need to be okay with magical realism/moments of absurdity and an extremely unreliable narrator. There’s also a very strong stylistic element present in the writer’s chapters, which may be polarizing. Another reviewer Gina likened the writing to Vonnegut, specifically Slaughterhouse-Five, and I’m inclined to agree. “Did you hear about what happened to the boy?” So it goes…
I don’t want to say too much about this one (she says while writing a lengthy review) because this is the kind of book where readers are going to be able to take away many different things based on their personal experiences and how they look at the text. But as an example of depth hidden in the absurdity:
There’s a scene about a quarter of the way through the book in which the writer’s limo driver mentions to him that he’s black and the writer has a revelation. “A startling discovery to make this far along!” He wonders how could he have gone through life without knowing he was black? Would he have made different choices along the way? I’m not sure if this was the author’s intention or not*, but I’m choosing to take this as a musing on how long into a book (not necessarily this book) this can be revealed before a reader’s implicit bias is challenged. Does it change your reading to know a character doesn’t look like what you thought they did? Why did you make the assumptions you did in the first place?
*Oh the irony of me writing out that thought in my notes only to find a few chapters later that the writer gets an entire lecture on books not being about the author’s intentions, but rather what the readers and publicists think they are about. Get out of my head Jason Mott!
I would give the first half of this book all the stars. I was enamoured and couldn’t wait to turn my jumbled mess of notes into a glowing 5 star review. Unfortunately this ran out of steam for me. It went from so damn clever, so wonderfully absurd, so demanding of the reader, to spoon-feeding concepts and hitting the reader over the head to an all but preachy degree. The magic was lost. I feel awful saying that because this book was still talking about really important things that many people do in fact need to be preached to about, and I don’t want to dismiss that or come across as if I didn’t want to read about them. But I’d been enjoying being pushed to think about them in a new and less obvious way. There are so many fantastic works out there, fiction and nonfiction, readers can look to for a straightforward discussion. This author could probably write a great one based on the back half. But he had something so special going for a while there and I wish he’d been able to stay on course.
Overall this is still very much worth a read and parts of it touched greatness for me. And for readers who haven’t read much about the black experience in the US, the less subtle second half will most certainly be helpful and eye-opening.
Know this up front: You’re going to need to be okay with magical realism/moments of absurdity and an extremely unreliable narrator. There’s also a very strong stylistic element present in the writer’s chapters, which may be polarizing. Another reviewer Gina likened the writing to Vonnegut, specifically Slaughterhouse-Five, and I’m inclined to agree. “Did you hear about what happened to the boy?” So it goes…
I don’t want to say too much about this one (she says while writing a lengthy review) because this is the kind of book where readers are going to be able to take away many different things based on their personal experiences and how they look at the text. But as an example of depth hidden in the absurdity:
There’s a scene about a quarter of the way through the book in which the writer’s limo driver mentions to him that he’s black and the writer has a revelation. “A startling discovery to make this far along!” He wonders how could he have gone through life without knowing he was black? Would he have made different choices along the way? I’m not sure if this was the author’s intention or not*, but I’m choosing to take this as a musing on how long into a book (not necessarily this book) this can be revealed before a reader’s implicit bias is challenged. Does it change your reading to know a character doesn’t look like what you thought they did? Why did you make the assumptions you did in the first place?
*Oh the irony of me writing out that thought in my notes only to find a few chapters later that the writer gets an entire lecture on books not being about the author’s intentions, but rather what the readers and publicists think they are about. Get out of my head Jason Mott!
I would give the first half of this book all the stars. I was enamoured and couldn’t wait to turn my jumbled mess of notes into a glowing 5 star review. Unfortunately this ran out of steam for me. It went from so damn clever, so wonderfully absurd, so demanding of the reader, to spoon-feeding concepts and hitting the reader over the head to an all but preachy degree. The magic was lost. I feel awful saying that because this book was still talking about really important things that many people do in fact need to be preached to about, and I don’t want to dismiss that or come across as if I didn’t want to read about them. But I’d been enjoying being pushed to think about them in a new and less obvious way. There are so many fantastic works out there, fiction and nonfiction, readers can look to for a straightforward discussion. This author could probably write a great one based on the back half. But he had something so special going for a while there and I wish he’d been able to stay on course.
Overall this is still very much worth a read and parts of it touched greatness for me. And for readers who haven’t read much about the black experience in the US, the less subtle second half will most certainly be helpful and eye-opening.
July 27, 2021
Audiobook….narrated by JD Jackson, Ronald Peet
….nine hours and forty minutes
Being the unseen ….being a sea of blackness …..with no white people: ….”it feels like what life is suppose to feel like”.
What matters — the unseen? Too much of a pristine experience to keep to oneself.
What does it feel like to escape one’s black self?
Why is there no white on white crime? Only black on black crime?
How is a child to understand that 1 out of every 3 black men end up in prison?
What if “the boy” never knew what pity was? Only what happiness and compassion was? What swimming felt like? And he knew that everything was going to be okay?
But….what if his father was killed - right in front of him…on his front lawn?
“If you grow up around a meat grinder, you become one of the gears, until eventually you don’t even see them anymore”.
Hilarious - awesome creativity…..yet profoundly serious (addressing racism in America)….with fabulous interweaving narrative between an author and a boy who has been bullied for ‘how black’ his skin was.
It was no accident that I finished this on the same day that Police officers testified in the January 6 select committee’s first hearing on Capitol insurrection.
Somebody’s gotta say it > “Hell of a Book” by Jason Mott (brilliant, and inspired by Jason’s personal history), is a “Hell of a Book”!
It was soooo powerful ….and totally enjoyable.
In an interview Jason shared about - both wanting to write a light book (he says he doesn’t take himself seriously)….and addressing the serious issues of being Black in America.
Who this book is for > in Jason’s words….”anyone who wants to be engaged with the conversations about racism”.
WONDERFUL BOOK ….by one heck of a great human being!
….nine hours and forty minutes
Being the unseen ….being a sea of blackness …..with no white people: ….”it feels like what life is suppose to feel like”.
What matters — the unseen? Too much of a pristine experience to keep to oneself.
What does it feel like to escape one’s black self?
Why is there no white on white crime? Only black on black crime?
How is a child to understand that 1 out of every 3 black men end up in prison?
What if “the boy” never knew what pity was? Only what happiness and compassion was? What swimming felt like? And he knew that everything was going to be okay?
But….what if his father was killed - right in front of him…on his front lawn?
“If you grow up around a meat grinder, you become one of the gears, until eventually you don’t even see them anymore”.
Hilarious - awesome creativity…..yet profoundly serious (addressing racism in America)….with fabulous interweaving narrative between an author and a boy who has been bullied for ‘how black’ his skin was.
It was no accident that I finished this on the same day that Police officers testified in the January 6 select committee’s first hearing on Capitol insurrection.
Somebody’s gotta say it > “Hell of a Book” by Jason Mott (brilliant, and inspired by Jason’s personal history), is a “Hell of a Book”!
It was soooo powerful ….and totally enjoyable.
In an interview Jason shared about - both wanting to write a light book (he says he doesn’t take himself seriously)….and addressing the serious issues of being Black in America.
Who this book is for > in Jason’s words….”anyone who wants to be engaged with the conversations about racism”.
WONDERFUL BOOK ….by one heck of a great human being!
October 22, 2021
Hell of a Book is exactly that - a hell of a book. It touches every point on the emotional spectrum. It has more than its share of laugh out loud moments. And an equal number that are heartbreaking. But more importantly, it makes you think. It covers all aspects of what it means to be a black male in the US.
An unnamed black author is on a book tour across the country. He’s not surprised, given a condition he has, when a young black child can be seen by him but no one else. His novel tells the story of Soot, an extremely dark young boy growing up in the south.
There’s not a plot as I normally expect. It’s more of a stream of consciousness told by the nameless author to the reader. But the book grabbed me and kept my attention throughout.
This is a book that will linger with you, have you pondering everything you took in and give you a book hangover. It would make a great book club selection.
The audio version was absolutely fabulous. Both narrators fully captured the tone and enhanced the experience.
An unnamed black author is on a book tour across the country. He’s not surprised, given a condition he has, when a young black child can be seen by him but no one else. His novel tells the story of Soot, an extremely dark young boy growing up in the south.
There’s not a plot as I normally expect. It’s more of a stream of consciousness told by the nameless author to the reader. But the book grabbed me and kept my attention throughout.
This is a book that will linger with you, have you pondering everything you took in and give you a book hangover. It would make a great book club selection.
The audio version was absolutely fabulous. Both narrators fully captured the tone and enhanced the experience.
December 18, 2021
Hell of a Book is, at times, an astute depiction of the threat of state violence faced by Black men in the United States. The novel is told in chapters that alternate between the perspectives of an unnamed author and an adolescent Black boy called Soot. The chapters featuring Soot are excellent, although they are overshadowed by the main story, following the author, which dominate the book. The main story is a bit tedious, with too much silliness and a hefty dose of straight man energy. The high points were very good, but getting there wasn’t.
November 18, 2021
11/18/21 Update: It won the National Book Award! Never has a great American novel been so necessary and so justly recognized.
Original Review
How on earth do you review or even talk about such a devastatingly funny and shattering work of art? How can you begin to convey the nature of a story that tells the untellable?
I haven’t a clue. So instead I’ll tell a story I can tell:
About forty-five years ago I was grocery shopping in Food City, the long-gone supermarket at the corner of my block, West 70 Street, and Columbus Avenue. I was standing in the checkout line when an old pasty-faced White man came storming in, yelling, “Nigger! Niggers!” and slathering hate like a sudden tsunami of mucous. Like most of the people in the store, I was (and am) White. I think I stopped breathing, hoping he’d come nowhere near me and would leave soon. No management showed up to see that that happened. This is New York, they probably thought if they even noticed. Another whack job.
About a minute after the pasty-faced whack job entered, three little boys with bikes came trundling in, laughing and talking. They were maybe 10 and 8. Instantly the manager told them they couldn’t bring those bicycles into the store, so the two older boys sent the 8-year-old to stand with the bikes outside the entrance while the 10-year-olds picked up snacks.
I paid for my groceries, exited the store, and I think resumed breathing. But not for long. Thirty seconds behind me, the pasty-faced nut job exploded out of the store, and seeing the little boy with the bikes, yelled, “Nigger!” either spitting or doing it with such force that the child almost fell over. And then he, the man, took off.
This is not my story—it is the boy’s; but to completely tell it I have to say what I did: I about-faced, and took care of the little boy until his friends came out of the store. I told him all sorts of things about how the man was crazy and we were all just waiting for him to leave, and there was nothing wrong with the little boy and he should not for one second imagine that this craziness had anything to do with him. Then I asked permission to stand next to the boy until his friends came out. He nodded, speechless; in fact I don’t recall him ever saying a word. But I will never forget his shocked saucer eyes. And I will never forget his numb nod once his friends came out and I asked if he would be okay now. And I will never forget a moment of devastation I witnessed and the ripples of damage that came before it and would go on and on and on that I could do not one damned thing about.
This is not a story about me. It is a story about that boy.
And Jason Mott figured out how to tell it. My heart is both broken and grateful.
Original Review
How on earth do you review or even talk about such a devastatingly funny and shattering work of art? How can you begin to convey the nature of a story that tells the untellable?
I haven’t a clue. So instead I’ll tell a story I can tell:
About forty-five years ago I was grocery shopping in Food City, the long-gone supermarket at the corner of my block, West 70 Street, and Columbus Avenue. I was standing in the checkout line when an old pasty-faced White man came storming in, yelling, “Nigger! Niggers!” and slathering hate like a sudden tsunami of mucous. Like most of the people in the store, I was (and am) White. I think I stopped breathing, hoping he’d come nowhere near me and would leave soon. No management showed up to see that that happened. This is New York, they probably thought if they even noticed. Another whack job.
About a minute after the pasty-faced whack job entered, three little boys with bikes came trundling in, laughing and talking. They were maybe 10 and 8. Instantly the manager told them they couldn’t bring those bicycles into the store, so the two older boys sent the 8-year-old to stand with the bikes outside the entrance while the 10-year-olds picked up snacks.
I paid for my groceries, exited the store, and I think resumed breathing. But not for long. Thirty seconds behind me, the pasty-faced nut job exploded out of the store, and seeing the little boy with the bikes, yelled, “Nigger!” either spitting or doing it with such force that the child almost fell over. And then he, the man, took off.
This is not my story—it is the boy’s; but to completely tell it I have to say what I did: I about-faced, and took care of the little boy until his friends came out of the store. I told him all sorts of things about how the man was crazy and we were all just waiting for him to leave, and there was nothing wrong with the little boy and he should not for one second imagine that this craziness had anything to do with him. Then I asked permission to stand next to the boy until his friends came out. He nodded, speechless; in fact I don’t recall him ever saying a word. But I will never forget his shocked saucer eyes. And I will never forget his numb nod once his friends came out and I asked if he would be okay now. And I will never forget a moment of devastation I witnessed and the ripples of damage that came before it and would go on and on and on that I could do not one damned thing about.
This is not a story about me. It is a story about that boy.
And Jason Mott figured out how to tell it. My heart is both broken and grateful.
June 29, 2021
Jason Mott's Hell of a Book won't just make my best-of-the-year books list. We're not too far into the decade, but I'd be willing to bet that it will show up on my best-of-the-decade list for the 2020s. I read Hell of a Book in two days, and I resented every moment when I couldn't be reading it. Once in, I wanted to stay there. Hell of a Book involves a dark version of magical realism and a fair bit of sarcasm, but none of this undercuts the real-world truths that Mott confronts readers with.
I don't, however, want to say a lot about the book's contents in this review because I don't want to influence others' reading of it. The novel is grounded in the frequent police use of lethal force that inspired the Black Lives Matter movement and the long history of that violence that predates our particular historical moment. The chapters of Hell of a Book move among the experiences of three (or more? or fewer?) Black men—actually two boys and one man. The boys' lives have been irrevocably altered by police violence. The man, an author who has difficulty separating the real and the imaginary and who travels the country on a seemingly endless book tour, wants to do all he can to ignore the situation of these boys and others like them, even as story after story after story of their lives and others' dominates the news.
Read this book. Read it. Read it when you have few enough interruptions that you can immerse yourself in its world and live there for a while.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher; the opinions are my own.
I don't, however, want to say a lot about the book's contents in this review because I don't want to influence others' reading of it. The novel is grounded in the frequent police use of lethal force that inspired the Black Lives Matter movement and the long history of that violence that predates our particular historical moment. The chapters of Hell of a Book move among the experiences of three (or more? or fewer?) Black men—actually two boys and one man. The boys' lives have been irrevocably altered by police violence. The man, an author who has difficulty separating the real and the imaginary and who travels the country on a seemingly endless book tour, wants to do all he can to ignore the situation of these boys and others like them, even as story after story after story of their lives and others' dominates the news.
Read this book. Read it. Read it when you have few enough interruptions that you can immerse yourself in its world and live there for a while.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher; the opinions are my own.
October 26, 2022
This was, quite possibly, the most bizarre book I've read in 2021, and yes, this is a compliment. I can't pretend like I knew what was happening all the time, but that final chapter ties everything together quite beautifully. Wildly inventive in form and structure, I completely understand why it won the National Book Award.
Our protagonist is an author. He's written a pretty successful book called Hell of a Book. He soon goes on a book tour all over the US in support of said book. Our protagonist is nameless. He also apparently has a condition for seeing things that aren't there. He soon starts seeing a little Black boy who first appeared to him one day at breakfast. Our protagonist calls him "the Kid." Is he real? Is he imaginary? Is he a ghost? I'm not sure.
Then there's another boy. His schoolmates call him "Soot" because of how black he is. Soot's world is turned upside down when he witnesses his father being killed at the hands of the police. Soot's parents, as a survival mechanism, teach him how to be invisible simply because of the colour of his skin. The author here makes a profound statement on Blackness in American society. After a while, he apparently starts seeing things too. To be honest, there's a lot that happens in this book that I'm not completely sure actually happens. Most of the book is like several hallucinations strung together- told mostly in the first person, our central narrator is, by all counts, unreliable. He's also got a bit of a drinking problem which only makes matters worse.
Telling the story of these three central characters, Jason Mott weaves a surreal dream of a story. It's not always neat, but in Mott's hands, it's always fresh, always exciting. It's a story of police brutality, of colorism, of #BlackLivesMatter, of racial identity. It's fearless and also funny as hell. Even Nicolas Cage makes a cameo (don't ask) adding to the cinematic feel and general absurdity of everything. Interesting too, that for a book that's so much about identity and knowing yourself, the main character remains unnamed throughout the whole thing.
Most of what happens seem plucked right out of our protagonist's imagination, but there are plenty of real-world horrors that ground the book to make it topical and of the moment. It might seem a little frustrating initially, but as the stories of the Kid, Soot, and our unnamed protagonist collide, the book starts making more sense-
"Laugh all you want, but I think learning to love yourself in a country where you’re told that you’re a plague on the economy, that you’re nothing but a prisoner in the making, that your life can be taken away from you at any moment and there’s nothing you can do about it- learning to love yourself in the middle of all of that? Hell, that’s a goddamn miracle.” 4.25 stars
Our protagonist is an author. He's written a pretty successful book called Hell of a Book. He soon goes on a book tour all over the US in support of said book. Our protagonist is nameless. He also apparently has a condition for seeing things that aren't there. He soon starts seeing a little Black boy who first appeared to him one day at breakfast. Our protagonist calls him "the Kid." Is he real? Is he imaginary? Is he a ghost? I'm not sure.
Then there's another boy. His schoolmates call him "Soot" because of how black he is. Soot's world is turned upside down when he witnesses his father being killed at the hands of the police. Soot's parents, as a survival mechanism, teach him how to be invisible simply because of the colour of his skin. The author here makes a profound statement on Blackness in American society. After a while, he apparently starts seeing things too. To be honest, there's a lot that happens in this book that I'm not completely sure actually happens. Most of the book is like several hallucinations strung together- told mostly in the first person, our central narrator is, by all counts, unreliable. He's also got a bit of a drinking problem which only makes matters worse.
Telling the story of these three central characters, Jason Mott weaves a surreal dream of a story. It's not always neat, but in Mott's hands, it's always fresh, always exciting. It's a story of police brutality, of colorism, of #BlackLivesMatter, of racial identity. It's fearless and also funny as hell. Even Nicolas Cage makes a cameo (don't ask) adding to the cinematic feel and general absurdity of everything. Interesting too, that for a book that's so much about identity and knowing yourself, the main character remains unnamed throughout the whole thing.
Most of what happens seem plucked right out of our protagonist's imagination, but there are plenty of real-world horrors that ground the book to make it topical and of the moment. It might seem a little frustrating initially, but as the stories of the Kid, Soot, and our unnamed protagonist collide, the book starts making more sense-
"Laugh all you want, but I think learning to love yourself in a country where you’re told that you’re a plague on the economy, that you’re nothing but a prisoner in the making, that your life can be taken away from you at any moment and there’s nothing you can do about it- learning to love yourself in the middle of all of that? Hell, that’s a goddamn miracle.” 4.25 stars
December 24, 2021
"Reality as a whole—past or present—just isn’t a good place to hang out, in my opinion. There are better ways and places to spend your time.
Well this was one hell of a book!
It starts out on the witty, satirical side but evolves into something much deeper, all the while remaining a fun read.
It's imaginative and eloquent and though the subject matter (institutional racism, micro-aggressions, police brutality) is distressing and all-too-real, Hell of a Book is a joy to read.
Jason Mott is one hell of a writer and this is the second five star novel I've read of his (The Crossing being the other). I love the way he writes and thinks. I love the introspection of his characters and how real they are. Even Soot, who may or may not be real, is portrayed so vibrantly that you feel as though you know him.
Hands down, one of the best novels of 2021!
(P.S. Anyone else catch the "So it goes" early on in the book and wonder if it's a nod to Kurt Vonnegut, who used this phrase often in his books and also used satire to point out the brutality and inanity of racism?)
Well this was one hell of a book!
It starts out on the witty, satirical side but evolves into something much deeper, all the while remaining a fun read.
It's imaginative and eloquent and though the subject matter (institutional racism, micro-aggressions, police brutality) is distressing and all-too-real, Hell of a Book is a joy to read.
Jason Mott is one hell of a writer and this is the second five star novel I've read of his (The Crossing being the other). I love the way he writes and thinks. I love the introspection of his characters and how real they are. Even Soot, who may or may not be real, is portrayed so vibrantly that you feel as though you know him.
Hands down, one of the best novels of 2021!
(P.S. Anyone else catch the "So it goes" early on in the book and wonder if it's a nod to Kurt Vonnegut, who used this phrase often in his books and also used satire to point out the brutality and inanity of racism?)
March 17, 2023
When he was very young the boy would hide from his parents, cloaked beneath a blanket, just steps from where they sat in the living room. He'd mastered the ability of invisibility. His parents played the game because they loved him, and they had also taught him how. “You will become The Unseen,” the boy's father said, “safe for as long as you live.” A short five years later and he knew it was no longer true. But they had meant it as truth, only in a different manner. Now at ten, the other children called him “Soot”. “Hey Soot. How'd you get so black?” So he would still try to be the unseen. Hunker down. Don't talk. “But you ain't just black. You extra black. Why you gotta be so black?” And the tears would come to Soot.
The author began to see the boy while on tour for Hell of a Book. You wrote a hell of a book, they'd say. When he was fourteen, he'd been diagnosed with a daydreaming problem. So maybe that's why only he could see the boy now. Or maybe it's due to all the drinking. Drink to hide his own truths. From what's in the book, and what's in the past, or just from the responsibility and expectations.
What I did not portray above is just how much this book made me laugh. With the turn of a page, my smile would be woe instead, because of what the boy experienced. Was he really there with the author, or only in the man's mind? He could be the author himself. Was he there to teach, or to ask questions? We're not told until later. Like most books, the getting there is almost as important as the why. I liked the whole of it really. The author, and I mean Mott here, writes this with beautiful mannerism that I enjoyed more with each chapter. The book is written for a purpose of course. If you decide to read, be not to miss the acknowledgments where Mott gives thanks and leaves an additional message for the boy.
The author began to see the boy while on tour for Hell of a Book. You wrote a hell of a book, they'd say. When he was fourteen, he'd been diagnosed with a daydreaming problem. So maybe that's why only he could see the boy now. Or maybe it's due to all the drinking. Drink to hide his own truths. From what's in the book, and what's in the past, or just from the responsibility and expectations.
What I did not portray above is just how much this book made me laugh. With the turn of a page, my smile would be woe instead, because of what the boy experienced. Was he really there with the author, or only in the man's mind? He could be the author himself. Was he there to teach, or to ask questions? We're not told until later. Like most books, the getting there is almost as important as the why. I liked the whole of it really. The author, and I mean Mott here, writes this with beautiful mannerism that I enjoyed more with each chapter. The book is written for a purpose of course. If you decide to read, be not to miss the acknowledgments where Mott gives thanks and leaves an additional message for the boy.
June 29, 2021
When I read that author Jason Mott has wanted to write the story in “Hell of a Book” for many years, I wasn’t at all surprised. It shows in his brilliant and thoughtful writing style, which is unlike anything I have read before. This powerful novel is a timely exploration into what it means to be a Black man living in America. It’s a beautiful story about family love and dedicated to finding out who we are.
The book has two parallel storylines. In one, there is an unnamed Black author on a book tour through contemporary America. In the other, a young Black boy named Soot is growing up in the American South. The unnamed author is funny. Reality blurs as he experiences bizarre moments on tour and continues to encounter another unnamed character, “the kid.” Meanwhile, in Soot’s story we read about the injustices and fears faced by a young Black boy growing up in the South.
“Hell of a Book” by Jason Mott is original, heartbreaking, poignant and in moments, hilarious. On one page, you will weep and in the same breath Mott will have you laughing out loud. I think this book will lead to some incredible conversations about race and racism in our country. It opens the door for readers to learn about someone else experiences through their eyes and approach issues they may not understand through a new lens.
The book has two parallel storylines. In one, there is an unnamed Black author on a book tour through contemporary America. In the other, a young Black boy named Soot is growing up in the American South. The unnamed author is funny. Reality blurs as he experiences bizarre moments on tour and continues to encounter another unnamed character, “the kid.” Meanwhile, in Soot’s story we read about the injustices and fears faced by a young Black boy growing up in the South.
“Hell of a Book” by Jason Mott is original, heartbreaking, poignant and in moments, hilarious. On one page, you will weep and in the same breath Mott will have you laughing out loud. I think this book will lead to some incredible conversations about race and racism in our country. It opens the door for readers to learn about someone else experiences through their eyes and approach issues they may not understand through a new lens.
February 11, 2022
Winner National Book Award Fiction 2021
Memory and death are countries that know no boundaries.
4.5
Jason Mott reminds me of Lenny Bruce. One minute he has you laughing at his irreverent social commentary, and the next, you find yourself recoiling in horror at some gut-wrenching truth. Mott constructs this emotional roller coaster ride through two alternating narratives. The first recounts a national book tour for an unnamed African- American author set against the backdrop of yet another senseless police shooting of an African- American kid.
The second chronicles the life of Soot so named because of the deep ebony of his skin. In addition to being a potential target for the white supremacists in his small South Carolina hometown, he is subjected to colorism and is bullied by the other black kids on the school bus. Mott uses Soot’s story to explore the fear and pain that African- American parents carry for their sons.
As the novel progresses, the book tour with its wry, sardonic examination of the publishing industry and the media collides with the horror of the shooting. The finale is heart-wrenching and illuminates the plight of African American men in America today. Highly recommend
Memory and death are countries that know no boundaries.
4.5
Jason Mott reminds me of Lenny Bruce. One minute he has you laughing at his irreverent social commentary, and the next, you find yourself recoiling in horror at some gut-wrenching truth. Mott constructs this emotional roller coaster ride through two alternating narratives. The first recounts a national book tour for an unnamed African- American author set against the backdrop of yet another senseless police shooting of an African- American kid.
The second chronicles the life of Soot so named because of the deep ebony of his skin. In addition to being a potential target for the white supremacists in his small South Carolina hometown, he is subjected to colorism and is bullied by the other black kids on the school bus. Mott uses Soot’s story to explore the fear and pain that African- American parents carry for their sons.
As the novel progresses, the book tour with its wry, sardonic examination of the publishing industry and the media collides with the horror of the shooting. The finale is heart-wrenching and illuminates the plight of African American men in America today. Highly recommend
February 21, 2023
Jason Mott’s 2021 National Book Award winner can be best described as a hell of a book. A Black author (Mott?) is on a book tour promoting a soon to be published book. He is highly uncomfortable answering tough questions, stupid questions, probing questions, questions he has been asking himself. Does a Black writer have an obligation to tell about the Black experience?
Using alternating chapters, we meet a ten year old boy nicknamed Soot. This child who has been bullied, ridiculed for the darkness of his skin, has learned how to disappear, in reality or in his head. But reality is changeable, our identities change. Mott explores this throughout, often leaving the reader confused. This was appealing to me and made me delve deeper. There is a fine exploration of self, love, friendship, racial justice. Mott required me to ponder all in these beautifully written pages. He does so with a gentle touch.There are moments of sadness and horror and those of hilarity.
If you don’t mind partly imagined characters and sometimes confusing dialogue, this book has much to offer. Although books that are described as “breaking new ground” or “revolutionary” aren’t always my favorite, this book was amazing. There are few writers who would be able to slide from heartbreaking to funny with Mott’s skill.
Using alternating chapters, we meet a ten year old boy nicknamed Soot. This child who has been bullied, ridiculed for the darkness of his skin, has learned how to disappear, in reality or in his head. But reality is changeable, our identities change. Mott explores this throughout, often leaving the reader confused. This was appealing to me and made me delve deeper. There is a fine exploration of self, love, friendship, racial justice. Mott required me to ponder all in these beautifully written pages. He does so with a gentle touch.There are moments of sadness and horror and those of hilarity.
If you don’t mind partly imagined characters and sometimes confusing dialogue, this book has much to offer. Although books that are described as “breaking new ground” or “revolutionary” aren’t always my favorite, this book was amazing. There are few writers who would be able to slide from heartbreaking to funny with Mott’s skill.
December 14, 2021
I didn't know what the hell I was reading for a while, but I didn't care. I was all in. Disorienting and dizzying, this book imaginatively illuminates the experience of a being a young black man in the US. There is a hilarious scene with Nicholas Cage and we are never sure about what is real or isn't - except through Soot who may be dead, but gives us a direct meditation on racism.
August 20, 2021
[Picure: fromAmazon]
It’s taken me two weeks to read Hell of a Book. Two LOooooNG weeks. I picked it up, put it down, and revisited parts, all with the hope that if I continued on I might align with the high praise already awarded this novel. Sadly, it didn’t happen and Hell of a Book, for me, became a Hell of a Book I just wanted to finish.
To be fair, it isn't a bad book. On the contrary. It's creative and original and I pondered its thought-provoking themes. The story starts off superbly and it pulled me right in! But the momentum didn't last. Some chapters became scattered and erratic and I simply lost interest.
The storyline is one of parallel timelines; an accomplished Black author on a book tour across America, and a young Black boy called Soot, named by school bullies for the colour of his skin. A silhouette of the author or the boy heads each chapter. Interwoven is a third character, a boy, known as The Kid. It’s up to the reader to decide “who” The Kid is and “how” he fits into the story. Is he real or imaginery? Is he the present or the past?
The book addresses racism, police brutality, and mental health, and what it means to be Black in America, especially in the South, which the book refers to as “Amercia’s longest-running crime scene.”
”You will be treated differently because of your skin. The rules are different for you. This is how you act when you meet the police. This is how you act growing up in the South. This is the reality of your world.”It is also a heartbreaking story of love and family and belonging, and of what it means to come to terms with the strictures of being Black in America.
“I’m not sure Black people can be happy in this world. There’s just too much of a backstory of sadness that’s always clawing at their heels. And no matter how hard you try to outrun it, life always comes through with those reminders letting you know that, more than anything, you’re just a part of an exploited people and a denied destiny and all you can do is hate your past and, by proxy, hate yourself.”A Hell of a Book also has plenty of light (some laugh out loud) moments. As a reader, I particularly enjoyed the insight it gave me into the pressures and expectations of life on a book tour.
”Sometimes, you tell people you’re an author and they’ll pull out their phone and Google you, right there in front of your face. They’ll type in your name and, depending on the search results, decide for themselves whether or not you’re truly what you say you are. The modern author is only as important as their search results.”So you know what I did when I read this, right? Yep, I looked up Jason Mott. An impressive oeuvre!
I really wish I could have enjoyed this book more. It's obviously a popular choice for many, but it wasn't for me.
I have another of Jason's books in my library - The Wonder of all Things. I'm prepared to give that a go. The style may be more to my taste.
July 17, 2022
"IDEAL FOR BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION!" boasts the inside cover of this surreal social satire.
That's not exactly wrong, but if I did belong to any kind of Book Club, I'd probably have to come down with a sudden case of Covid or Monkeypox the week this was up for discussion. (Surely one of the small silver linings to living in an era of global pandemics is having such convenient excuses for avoiding awkward social engagements?).
Because once again, I'm an EXTREME outlier for a book that has obviously resonated deeply with most of its readers. I knew early on that this wasn't going to be the powerful, devastating, "blow your mind" masterpiece it's been for so many of my favorite friends here on GoodReads.
Disclaimer #1: Satire is always "hit or miss" for me, too often self-consciously focused on clever concepts and "Big Ideas" at the expense of a compelling plot and rich character development, two essential components for me as a reader.
This delirious, dizzying fever dream of a social satire about a young Black author haunted by visions of a Black boy he refers to simply as "The Kid" while on a national book tour to promote his new book entitled....you guessed it....Hell of a Book, was just too broad and "on the nose" for my tastes. Most of the humor crash-landed for me with an awkward, muted thud, and the more deadly serious elements felt like a mediocre spoken-word poem about Racism, over-stretched across the thinnest of plots.
Disclaimer #2: Magical Realism is almost NEVER my cup of tea, and there's A LOT of it here. One of the rare exceptions for me was Jesmyn Ward's lyrical and haunting Sing, Unburied, Sing, a novel that incorporated an almost identical plot element several years before Jason Mott used it here, but with a lot more nuance and emotional resonance for me personally.
Disclaimer #3: While I usually love a good unreliable narrator, I'm also (overly?) sensitive when it comes to tone, and this main character's dry, snarky narrative voice annoyed the hell out of me. He's a big fan of film noirs and frequently adopts the persona of one of those films' protagonists, speaking in a hard-boiled detective style, calling women "Doll Face" and "Toots," etc., even after they've politely and repeatedly asked him to stop doing that, an obnoxious habit that I found as grating as nails on a chalkboard. Another GR review described this as "a hefty dose of straight man energy," and I think that's a perfect way to put it.
I desperately WANTED to love this as much as everyone else. I admire and respect Mott's earnest ambition in tackling heavy, heartbreaking, urgently relevant, and no doubt deeply personal themes about the vulnerability and terror that comes with being a young Black man in 21st century America.
But he isn't exactly covering new ground or saying anything that I haven't already seen explored more substantively and poignantly (for me personally) in other contemporary works like Between the World and Me, Open Water, and most recently, The Trees.
All three of which I'd highly recommend and consider far more deserving of this book's audacious title.
That's not exactly wrong, but if I did belong to any kind of Book Club, I'd probably have to come down with a sudden case of Covid or Monkeypox the week this was up for discussion. (Surely one of the small silver linings to living in an era of global pandemics is having such convenient excuses for avoiding awkward social engagements?).
Because once again, I'm an EXTREME outlier for a book that has obviously resonated deeply with most of its readers. I knew early on that this wasn't going to be the powerful, devastating, "blow your mind" masterpiece it's been for so many of my favorite friends here on GoodReads.
Disclaimer #1: Satire is always "hit or miss" for me, too often self-consciously focused on clever concepts and "Big Ideas" at the expense of a compelling plot and rich character development, two essential components for me as a reader.
This delirious, dizzying fever dream of a social satire about a young Black author haunted by visions of a Black boy he refers to simply as "The Kid" while on a national book tour to promote his new book entitled....you guessed it....Hell of a Book, was just too broad and "on the nose" for my tastes. Most of the humor crash-landed for me with an awkward, muted thud, and the more deadly serious elements felt like a mediocre spoken-word poem about Racism, over-stretched across the thinnest of plots.
Disclaimer #2: Magical Realism is almost NEVER my cup of tea, and there's A LOT of it here. One of the rare exceptions for me was Jesmyn Ward's lyrical and haunting Sing, Unburied, Sing, a novel that incorporated an almost identical plot element several years before Jason Mott used it here, but with a lot more nuance and emotional resonance for me personally.
Disclaimer #3: While I usually love a good unreliable narrator, I'm also (overly?) sensitive when it comes to tone, and this main character's dry, snarky narrative voice annoyed the hell out of me. He's a big fan of film noirs and frequently adopts the persona of one of those films' protagonists, speaking in a hard-boiled detective style, calling women "Doll Face" and "Toots," etc., even after they've politely and repeatedly asked him to stop doing that, an obnoxious habit that I found as grating as nails on a chalkboard. Another GR review described this as "a hefty dose of straight man energy," and I think that's a perfect way to put it.
I desperately WANTED to love this as much as everyone else. I admire and respect Mott's earnest ambition in tackling heavy, heartbreaking, urgently relevant, and no doubt deeply personal themes about the vulnerability and terror that comes with being a young Black man in 21st century America.
But he isn't exactly covering new ground or saying anything that I haven't already seen explored more substantively and poignantly (for me personally) in other contemporary works like Between the World and Me, Open Water, and most recently, The Trees.
All three of which I'd highly recommend and consider far more deserving of this book's audacious title.
January 9, 2022
I read this book as a result of it winning the 2021 National Book Award (in the United States)
I have to say that I can see very clearly why it won – the National Book Award does seem to have a preponderance for topical/thematic books and this book with its core topic of police violence against black men is both topical and sadly timeless (one of the very points the books is making).
At the same time though the book is imaginative and innovative in a literary sense: with its two interleaved series of chapters which increasingly bleed into each other and in the way in which is it is a novel talking about novel writing. And while that can sound cliched – novelists talking about being a novelist – here it is much more profound. In particularly it addresses how as a black American writer there seems to be a burden placed on the novelist to make a binary choice and either consciously address or consciously not address the black experience in the US (both past and present) in a way that does not happen for a white writer (or if its does goes across a variety of different “elephant in the room” topics and ones which change over time – AIDS, 9-11, Trump, climate change … with race being only one of a range of topics).
And the book manages to be both light-hearted/irreverent and almost twee while at the same time addressing such a serious topic – a tone which is set from early in the first two chapters which set up the alternating storylines (the first a superficially neat third person story about a family who allow their son “Soot” to believe he is invisible as a way of making him feel safe, the second a first party account by an unnamed film-noir-line-cracking author escaping naked from a hotel room after being caught in flagrante by a cuckolded husband).
From there the two storylines initially crystallize.
Soot is a young, very black skinned boy – his parents take the decision to try to protect him from the racism he is already facing on the school bus and more importantly to shield him from knowledge of the institutionalised racism pervalent in the society in which he will grow up, by teaching him to be invisible – something which starts of perhaps figuratively but which quickly becomes literal. Soot sees his father gunned down by a cop in front of he and his Mother, but still seems to be largely shielded from the reality of racism, retreating instead into a world of imagination (including believing his father is still present although dead).
The author is on a book tour to promote his eponymous novel – one which seems to be a huge seller inspiring everyone with its story. The book tour itself is a not particularly subtle satire - taking place against a blur of cities and airports, radio and TV interviews, with a variety of bizarre escorts in different cities, the author largely on autopilot while he wisecracks and sleeps his way around the cities, at the same time under pressure from a manic publicist who senses he has already spent the advance on his unstarted second novel. The first novel itself we come to understand very explicitly does not deal with race (part of its wider appeal) – the author’s father as a child was a brilliant artist but got tied up with guilt over his art only being of white subjects and this guilt seems something the author is determined to avoid. Avoidance seems something of a liefmotif for the novelists life – avoidance of his past (we gradually come to realise the death of his mother from cancer is the core of the novel, but he seems entirely unaware of the reason for his father’s death when he was a child), avoidance of commitment (via wisecracks and casual affairs), avoidance of the news (in particular the police shooting of a black child which everyone else seems to be talking about), avoidance of reality (the author has a condition which makes it hard for him to distinguish reality and imagination – one he is told must stem from a childhood tragedy – one he cannot remember at all). This last point is key to the book as the author is in almost constant dialogue with a young, very dark sinned boy who only he can sense and who seems keen for the author to acknowledge him and his story.
And then almost immediately start to bleed into each other – are the two boys the same, is either of them the novelist, are there any autobiographical elements by Jason Mott himself – and then physically converge as the author’s publicist books him to speak at an event in the home town of the murdered boy, the author’s own home town.
Recommended and a worthy, timely, entertaining while thought provoking winner of the National Book Award.
4.5 stars.
I have to say that I can see very clearly why it won – the National Book Award does seem to have a preponderance for topical/thematic books and this book with its core topic of police violence against black men is both topical and sadly timeless (one of the very points the books is making).
At the same time though the book is imaginative and innovative in a literary sense: with its two interleaved series of chapters which increasingly bleed into each other and in the way in which is it is a novel talking about novel writing. And while that can sound cliched – novelists talking about being a novelist – here it is much more profound. In particularly it addresses how as a black American writer there seems to be a burden placed on the novelist to make a binary choice and either consciously address or consciously not address the black experience in the US (both past and present) in a way that does not happen for a white writer (or if its does goes across a variety of different “elephant in the room” topics and ones which change over time – AIDS, 9-11, Trump, climate change … with race being only one of a range of topics).
And the book manages to be both light-hearted/irreverent and almost twee while at the same time addressing such a serious topic – a tone which is set from early in the first two chapters which set up the alternating storylines (the first a superficially neat third person story about a family who allow their son “Soot” to believe he is invisible as a way of making him feel safe, the second a first party account by an unnamed film-noir-line-cracking author escaping naked from a hotel room after being caught in flagrante by a cuckolded husband).
From there the two storylines initially crystallize.
Soot is a young, very black skinned boy – his parents take the decision to try to protect him from the racism he is already facing on the school bus and more importantly to shield him from knowledge of the institutionalised racism pervalent in the society in which he will grow up, by teaching him to be invisible – something which starts of perhaps figuratively but which quickly becomes literal. Soot sees his father gunned down by a cop in front of he and his Mother, but still seems to be largely shielded from the reality of racism, retreating instead into a world of imagination (including believing his father is still present although dead).
The author is on a book tour to promote his eponymous novel – one which seems to be a huge seller inspiring everyone with its story. The book tour itself is a not particularly subtle satire - taking place against a blur of cities and airports, radio and TV interviews, with a variety of bizarre escorts in different cities, the author largely on autopilot while he wisecracks and sleeps his way around the cities, at the same time under pressure from a manic publicist who senses he has already spent the advance on his unstarted second novel. The first novel itself we come to understand very explicitly does not deal with race (part of its wider appeal) – the author’s father as a child was a brilliant artist but got tied up with guilt over his art only being of white subjects and this guilt seems something the author is determined to avoid. Avoidance seems something of a liefmotif for the novelists life – avoidance of his past (we gradually come to realise the death of his mother from cancer is the core of the novel, but he seems entirely unaware of the reason for his father’s death when he was a child), avoidance of commitment (via wisecracks and casual affairs), avoidance of the news (in particular the police shooting of a black child which everyone else seems to be talking about), avoidance of reality (the author has a condition which makes it hard for him to distinguish reality and imagination – one he is told must stem from a childhood tragedy – one he cannot remember at all). This last point is key to the book as the author is in almost constant dialogue with a young, very dark sinned boy who only he can sense and who seems keen for the author to acknowledge him and his story.
And then almost immediately start to bleed into each other – are the two boys the same, is either of them the novelist, are there any autobiographical elements by Jason Mott himself – and then physically converge as the author’s publicist books him to speak at an event in the home town of the murdered boy, the author’s own home town.
Recommended and a worthy, timely, entertaining while thought provoking winner of the National Book Award.
4.5 stars.
May 17, 2023
The title says it all. Not sure I can adequately review this, but this will be a book I think about for a long time. I already want to revisit it. Compelling, confusing, thought-provoking, beautiful, tragic, and a very necessary read.
December 17, 2023
All you really want is for the people around you to be safe. And there’s nobody in this world that you want safety for more than your children. So when you can’t give that to them, it swells up around your life. It swallows you up. You get afraid to let them leave the house because the monster of the world might come along and swallow them up. And the thing is that, eventually, that’s exactly what happens. Every child like you in this country has been swallowed up by the monster since before they were even born. And every Black parent in the history of this country has tried to stop that monster from swallowing them up and has failed at it. And every day they live with that.
…
Laugh all you want, but I think learning to love yourself in a country where you're told that you're the plague on the economy, that you're nothing but a prisoner in the making, that you life can be taken away from you at any moment and there's nothing you can do about it - learning to love yourself in the middle of all that? Hell, that's a goddamn miracle.
Hell of a Book is a hard book to describe. It alternates between two stories. One storyline is a sort of coming-of-age story about a young boy whose skin is so black that the other kids nickname him Soot. The other storyline is about a never-named African-American author who is on a book tour for his wildly popular new book that (🚨 meta alert 🚨) is also called Hell of a Book. The author keeps seeing and talking to a boy he starts thinking of as “the kid,” but because he has a condition where he has trouble distinguishing his imagination from reality, the author isn’t sure if the kid is real or not. And, everywhere the author goes, people keep mentioning the shooting of a young boy ….
It’s hard to know what Hell of a Book is really about at first. It feels meandering, and Soot’s story seems so unlike the author’s, the former’s rather serious and the latter’s often comic. There are hilarious scenes skewering the publishing industry, book tours and signing books, the media, even fans. Depending on whether you believe he’s imagining it or not, the author has a serious conversation on a plane about fame with Nicholas Cage.
But those themes alone, and great writing, do not win a National Book Award. What Hell of a Book is really about is being an African-American in contemporary America. The ever-present fear of being killed by the police, the resignation to that fear, and the aftermath. And it’s also about the obligation—and whether there should be an obligation—for black writers to speak and write about such concerns (because, interestingly, the author’s novel is not about race, but something else). There are long soliloquies on these issues of race, racism, violence, and obligation that are powerful and riveting. And the ending, the revelation of the possible connections between between Soot, the author, and the Kid, gives the reader more to think about.
Hell of a Book is not the easiest read, both because of the meta/possibly magical reality aspects and the all-too-tragically-real themes. But it’s definitely worth reading. Recommended.
December 27, 2021
In some ways this is a racially driven spin on a Greek tragedy narrated by a black author whose book was recently published. Oddly enough his story is also titled "Hell of a Book", and as popularity grows, he's sent on a national book tour where fantasy and reality kick in. Mott toggles the reader back and forth between the tour and a young boy called 'Soot' due to his coal black complexion. Soot thinks little of how his parents taught him to be 'invisible', and his periodic appearance tells his back story illuminating racial injustice. A metaphor, when the young author 'imagines' Soot's presence he acts as mentor, friend, and big brother using the boy's story to reflect upon. As with most rising stars, celebrity takes the form of judgement, carousing and drinking in order to counter insecurity. As the author shares his desire to be loved and appreciated by the opposite sex, his detachment and ego work against him. Saddened by what he's witnessing, Soot's attempts to help fall flat.
Having read similar stories, this stands alone due to the approach, lyrical prose and unique plot. Well paced and written, it lives up to its title much as the fictional author lives up to his. Jason Mott leaves the question of whether the author and boy are one in the same. Regardless its engaging on many levels for those who enjoy the genre.
Having read similar stories, this stands alone due to the approach, lyrical prose and unique plot. Well paced and written, it lives up to its title much as the fictional author lives up to his. Jason Mott leaves the question of whether the author and boy are one in the same. Regardless its engaging on many levels for those who enjoy the genre.
March 20, 2022
I just really appreciate when a work feels honest.
December 17, 2021
This won the National Book Award and was long but not shortlisted for the @tournamentofbooks for 2022 so I decided to go ahead and read it. Previous books have used satire to discuss the Black experience in America. This book uses what I'm going to call meta-satire to discuss the experience of how we talk about the Black experience in America, particularly around the BLM movement, even more particularly how the media covers the issue in interviews with Black people.
The narrator is a Black author in his 30s who has written one "hell of a book," or so everyone keeps telling him. He is on book tour and keeps encountering a young boy with very dark skin, who may or may not actually be there. Other details about the boy but also the author's own experiences are revealed as the book progresses.
There is the focus of the book and then there is the writing style of the book - the first scene is the author escaping an angry husband - he had been sleeping with that man's wife at a hotel - so it starts with a bang with wry humor and self-observation even while in the middle of an action scene. He reverts to noir-speak with the ladies and the entire book has a strong narrator presence. I liked it in the beginning. But then the author chooses to repeat himself ad nauseum as it reaches the end. I'm sure it was for a good reason but it made the book, especially the ending, too long. By the time I was finished, I was desperate to be at the end.
The narrator is a Black author in his 30s who has written one "hell of a book," or so everyone keeps telling him. He is on book tour and keeps encountering a young boy with very dark skin, who may or may not actually be there. Other details about the boy but also the author's own experiences are revealed as the book progresses.
There is the focus of the book and then there is the writing style of the book - the first scene is the author escaping an angry husband - he had been sleeping with that man's wife at a hotel - so it starts with a bang with wry humor and self-observation even while in the middle of an action scene. He reverts to noir-speak with the ladies and the entire book has a strong narrator presence. I liked it in the beginning. But then the author chooses to repeat himself ad nauseum as it reaches the end. I'm sure it was for a good reason but it made the book, especially the ending, too long. By the time I was finished, I was desperate to be at the end.
November 18, 2021
****ETA National Book Award! WOOOOHOOOOOOO****
I am broken. There is not much I can say that will not give away the surprises of this book so I am going to go with a pretty non-descriptive, but still true statement. This is about a sort of inverse double-consciousness, or maybe double unconsciousness that flows from the constant message that you need to make yourself invisible, about how PTSD is part of life for so many black Americans. And from that everything flows. I will also say this book is funny - you will laugh as it eviscerates you. And I will say the writing is spectacularly good. You won't read anything that feels truer.
ETA a quote from the end of the novel which tells you everything and nothing about the story itself:
“Laugh all you want, but I think learning to love yourself in a country where you’re told that you’re a plague on the economy, that you’re nothing but a prisoner in the making, that your life can be taken away from you at any moment and there’s nothing you can do about it — learning to love yourself in the middle of all of that? Hell, that’s a g--d---mn miracle.”
I am broken. There is not much I can say that will not give away the surprises of this book so I am going to go with a pretty non-descriptive, but still true statement. This is about a sort of inverse double-consciousness, or maybe double unconsciousness that flows from the constant message that you need to make yourself invisible, about how PTSD is part of life for so many black Americans. And from that everything flows. I will also say this book is funny - you will laugh as it eviscerates you. And I will say the writing is spectacularly good. You won't read anything that feels truer.
ETA a quote from the end of the novel which tells you everything and nothing about the story itself:
“Laugh all you want, but I think learning to love yourself in a country where you’re told that you’re a plague on the economy, that you’re nothing but a prisoner in the making, that your life can be taken away from you at any moment and there’s nothing you can do about it — learning to love yourself in the middle of all of that? Hell, that’s a g--d---mn miracle.”
February 28, 2022
Although the audio was terrific, I wish I had this in written form so I could share memorable quotes. Alas, you're stuck with my reactions and thoughts instead of Mott's. This would make a great group read and discussion, from both the content and the format used to tell this story, which was inventive and effective.
An unnamed author on book tour, facing the rigors of endless appearances and repeated discussions of "A Hell of a Book"; a "condition" resulting in difficulty telling reality from imagination/hallucination; a backstory and current reality he keeps at a distance; and a culture that he runs repeatedly into--an unpredictable literary ride where I laughed, cringed, and was left deep in thought.
It's hard to capture this book without giving it away, and it's best experienced with little foreknowledge. If offers a range of focus, from the dog-eat-dog world of publishing and the expectations attached, to systemic racism, to our momentary fixations on trauma (that then all-too-soon fade), to parental efforts to keep their black children safe, to how losing parents can shape our existence, no matter how old we are when they go...and much more. And it is all handled in a seamless flow beginning as scattered experiential tributaries that converge by the denouement.
Although none of the content is new or revelatory, this rendition of living black in America was skillful, thought-provoking, and packed a punch that was all the more powerful because it was camouflaged and subtly delivered. I was riveted to this story, and was once again reminded of the things that need to change....hoping movement in that direction won't be sidelined, like the books mentioned that reach their expiration dates almost as soon as they hit the market. We need longer memories and attention spans than that.
An unnamed author on book tour, facing the rigors of endless appearances and repeated discussions of "A Hell of a Book"; a "condition" resulting in difficulty telling reality from imagination/hallucination; a backstory and current reality he keeps at a distance; and a culture that he runs repeatedly into--an unpredictable literary ride where I laughed, cringed, and was left deep in thought.
It's hard to capture this book without giving it away, and it's best experienced with little foreknowledge. If offers a range of focus, from the dog-eat-dog world of publishing and the expectations attached, to systemic racism, to our momentary fixations on trauma (that then all-too-soon fade), to parental efforts to keep their black children safe, to how losing parents can shape our existence, no matter how old we are when they go...and much more. And it is all handled in a seamless flow beginning as scattered experiential tributaries that converge by the denouement.
Although none of the content is new or revelatory, this rendition of living black in America was skillful, thought-provoking, and packed a punch that was all the more powerful because it was camouflaged and subtly delivered. I was riveted to this story, and was once again reminded of the things that need to change....hoping movement in that direction won't be sidelined, like the books mentioned that reach their expiration dates almost as soon as they hit the market. We need longer memories and attention spans than that.
December 12, 2022
". . . White writers don't have to write about being White. They can just write whatever books they want. But because I'm Black . . . does that mean that I can only ever write about Blackness? Am I allowed to write about other things?"
Meet the author. He's coasting on the success of his first book - believe me, it was a hell of a book - and he's on the road promoting it. He's also blown through the advance on his next book, and hasn't written a word of it yet. He's got a fondness for liquor and ladies, and lately he's been seeing dead people.
Yeah, it's been one hell of a book tour.
Mott presents a clever, intelligent and original look at both the publishing industry and race in America.
It was a fascinating read, and I can't wait to see what he does for an encore.
Hopefully he's written at least a few words of his next book . . .
Meet the author. He's coasting on the success of his first book - believe me, it was a hell of a book - and he's on the road promoting it. He's also blown through the advance on his next book, and hasn't written a word of it yet. He's got a fondness for liquor and ladies, and lately he's been seeing dead people.
Yeah, it's been one hell of a book tour.
Mott presents a clever, intelligent and original look at both the publishing industry and race in America.
It was a fascinating read, and I can't wait to see what he does for an encore.
Hopefully he's written at least a few words of his next book . . .
October 25, 2021
This turned my world upside down. I wasn’t ready. I kept eagerly turning the pages because I wanted to know what the hell was going on. And there is A LOT going on. It’s never boring. Contemporary fiction that takes risks; gotta love it. It’s weird to say that a book about this subject matter (police brutality, #blm, racism) is wildly entertaining, but what can I say? It was a hell of a ride. And what an ending.
November 27, 2021
Is it possible to laugh while your heart is breaking? Well, Jason Mott provoked this reaction in me while reading his latest novel, Hell of a Book.
In an interview with BookPage Mott says, "A massive amount of its creation was simply the act of me trying to figure out my thoughts on life as a Black American.
Identity and hiding are the two most prominent themes in this story. The author, Soot, and The Kid are struggling to figure out who they are in the context of the U.S. south. Two of these characters want to be left alone, and the other wants to be seen (and accepted) as he is. They use stories as a way of coping with their realities. With a deft sprinkle of magical realism and a mix of satire and the news headlines, Mott pulls me into his story, and I stay engaged through the absurdities and the tragedies.
While I feel the last section of this book is a bit repetitive in its message, this reiteration does not dim the potency of this work. I know this story will stay with me and it reminds me to continue to examine my own biases in my thoughts and interactions with all people, including those of different races.
Thank you to the lovely Bonnie G for putting this book on my radar well before it won the National Book Award.
In an interview with BookPage Mott says, "A massive amount of its creation was simply the act of me trying to figure out my thoughts on life as a Black American.
Identity and hiding are the two most prominent themes in this story. The author, Soot, and The Kid are struggling to figure out who they are in the context of the U.S. south. Two of these characters want to be left alone, and the other wants to be seen (and accepted) as he is. They use stories as a way of coping with their realities. With a deft sprinkle of magical realism and a mix of satire and the news headlines, Mott pulls me into his story, and I stay engaged through the absurdities and the tragedies.
While I feel the last section of this book is a bit repetitive in its message, this reiteration does not dim the potency of this work. I know this story will stay with me and it reminds me to continue to examine my own biases in my thoughts and interactions with all people, including those of different races.
Thank you to the lovely Bonnie G for putting this book on my radar well before it won the National Book Award.
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February 27, 2021Giveaway Win!
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