Sandwich Joe
Added to listLinguistics & Languagewith 16 books.
Added to listNonfictionwith 138 books.
Such an interesting concept, but the novel became stale in the second half. I did enjoy Hutson’s prose and her varied depictions of grief and anxiety. Also, the audiobook, narrated by Rachel Jacobs, was well done.
Such an interesting concept, but the novel became stale in the second half. I did enjoy Hutson’s prose and her varied depictions of grief and anxiety. Also, the audiobook, narrated by Rachel Jacobs, was well done.
Updated a reading goal:
Read 75 books in 2026
Progress so far: 38 / 75 50%
Penpal is genuinely, persistently creepy. Dathan Auerbach taps into something true about memory: we don’t experience our own pasts as continuous narrative — we experience them as fragments, and the spaces between are where this book lives.
The writing style is definitely a strange choice. There’s a formal quality to the prose that initially feels like a mismatch for the material. But it ends up serving the horror in an unexpected way, that the emotional distance reads less like a stylistic miscalculation and more like a man narrating events he still can’t fully metabolize. Whether that’s intentional or a happy accident, it works.
The ending, however, doesn’t quite stick the landing. Maybe it’s because it’s a bit rushed or maybe it just resolves too much. But for a debut novel that started as a series of Reddit posts, it has no business being this good.
Penpal is genuinely, persistently creepy. Dathan Auerbach taps into something true about memory: we don’t experience our own pasts as continuous narrative — we experience them as fragments, and the spaces between are where this book lives.
The writing style is definitely a strange choice. There’s a formal quality to the prose that initially feels like a mismatch for the material. But it ends up serving the horror in an unexpected way, that the emotional distance reads less like a stylistic miscalculation and more like a man narrating events he still can’t fully metabolize. Whether that’s intentional or a happy accident, it works.
The ending, however, doesn’t quite stick the landing. Maybe it’s because it’s a bit rushed or maybe it just resolves too much. But for a debut novel that started as a series of Reddit posts, it has no business being this good.
