Hell of a Book
Jason Mott · 2021
A Black novelist on a book tour keeps seeing a Black child who may or may not exist. Mott weaves together the absurdity of literary celebrity and the very real nightmare of anti-Black violence with a structure that earns its emotional ambitions.
The case against
Mott keeps asking whether The Kid is real long after you have settled into the ambiguity, and the book-tour satire (interchangeable interviews, handlers, hotel rooms) repeats one joke past its shelf life. When comedy and grief finally collide the impact is real, but the two registers spend half the novel avoiding each other.
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