Eric

FYI this is a short-story collection, not a novel; the character cameos that bleed through a couple stories are so marginal they don't mean anything.

The first story ("The Feminist") was good, the second ("Pics") was okay but ended a little flat. I will say the texting dialogue in "Pics" is hilarious and pitch-perfect; it's actually the first page I flipped to in the bookstore and made me want to read the full book.

Each successive story in this collection is less impressive and more cringe than the last. The book is obviously supposed to be cringe, but I was cringing at the author's writing choices more than the characters' thoughts and actions.

"Our Dope Future" is a terrible cartoon version of a hustle-culture alpha male. This archetype should be so easy to critique, yet this story is just dumb.

The insane video-request description at the end of "Ahegao" was so long and over the top that it killed any honest reflection about how ruined Kant's sexuality had gotten from porn, instead making him sound like a fake 13 year old edgelord instead of anyone actually in his mid-30s.

And ending with a fake rejection letter from a fake publisher about the book itself is such a silly attempt to be cleverly meta and proactively self-criticizing: "You can't accuse me of sucking, because I'm admitting to it! In fact, maybe I was even trying to suck!" It's a scaredy-cat, have-it-both-ways defense tactic that insecure people deploy.

Starts to feel like a college-level creative writing assignment overall. Weird that this was longlisted for the National Book Award. If this even barely resembles how young people feel about relationships and sexuality in the 2020s, I feel sorry for them, they're doomed.

Really loved the setup of this novel, its incredibly well-imagined setting and its characters (at least all the non-rich ones), and the early depictions of summer camp life. The writing is intentionally suspenseful, with chapters ending on cliffhangers and the next chapter jumping to a different timeline and character’s point of view, making the book compulsive to keep reading. Because of all the timelines and perspectives, the story also feels very deep, lived-in and cinematic.

But once the girl’s disappearance and the (overlong) backstory of Alice and Peter are established across Parts I and II, the story becomes more than anything a police procedural, spending a lot of time with Judyta as she puts together the pieces of both the “current” case, of a missing 13-year-old girl, and the now-cold case of her older brother’s disappearance over a decade earlier.

It is also a stinging critique of “old money” families and how terrible they are in so many ways. On this theme I think the author is a little too heavy-handed (the rich men are, every one of them, emotionless blocks of wood); I think it would be a bit more effective if they weren’t such caricatures.

But I very much enjoyed all the more subtle ways the author gives real, nuanced empowerment to the various women in the story more than the men: Almost all of the book’s shifting perspectives are from women characters, despite plenty of men being part of the story, and the way the author imbues them all with unique examples of strength and unapologetic self-reliance is applaudable.

Takeaway line: ”The Hewitts don’t need to rely on anyone but themselves. / It’s the Van Laars, and families like them, who have always depended on others.” (453)

JFC. The end of the "Lunch with Bethany" chapter was almost enough for me to quit. There are a few scenes after that that are equally disgusting and awful. I was lucky enough to be warned about the "Rat" chapter and skip it. I can't believe so many people have been willing to read such horrifying details of violence, torture, and body mutilation.

The juxtaposition of Patrick's obsession with status, brands, music and restaurants against his complete apathy toward murdering people, and the way he and his (rich, white) colleagues are fully interchangeable and mistaken for each other, amount to a very well-done critique of superficial, materialistic 1980s yuppie culture, but I hated reading such sickening scenes.

To be overly brief, this book was pretty good, the setting was immersive, but the story was overlong. 400-450 pages would've been plenty. We don't need nearly so many examples of the obscene alcoholism of these young intellectuals.

The promotional summary gives an impression that the professor is somehow manipulating/masterminding his students' actions, but that is misleading -- I'd say you could literally remove him as a character and the story would be the same. Other details in the novel itself are presented as if they're clues, but are never mentioned again (e.g. the padlocked closet in Henry's bedroom, when Richard is recuperating there after his frozen winter). Which is to say, the novel is pitched as a suspense or mystery, but the story, its motives and perpetrators are all rather straightforward. There is no "twist" -- so if you're not into the story halfway through, you won't be rewarded by some big, final climax for sticking with it.

Worth reading as an archetype of the "dark academia" genre: campus as fishbowl, "town and gown" dynamics, superiority/entitlement of students from wealthy families, students who think their intellect is infallible, etc.

Bukowski's the type of author you know a lot of people read the wrong way, and glamorize the "confident IDGAF manhood" of the main character instead of seeing him as a (literally) filthy, chauvinistic relic of a thankfully-bygone era, writing obvious male fantasies about his many, effortless affairs with women, getting in fights and duping employers.

But the writing is easy and some of the vignettes are unique and memorable, so you have to kind of appreciate that. No one else is gonna casually mention leaving a "wet brown stain" when he sits on his bedsheets because lately he's been wiping with old newspapers and "often didn't get all of it cleaned off."

Treat these as cautionary tales of the effects of egocentric, toxic masculinity (and of course severe alcoholism) and you might enjoy them.