Private Citizens

I loved reading this hopelessly self-aware, wonderfully erudite, and viciously satirical novel about a quartet of earnest, screw-up millennials. This book is wall to wall observations, asides and digressions on the nature of personal identity in a digital age. It's almost too clever by half and I had to re-read it immediately after finishing it to figure out how I'd been fooled into thinking it clever. It's like an MFA class ate a thesaurus and shit out this book.

Tulathimutte admits to being clever as a pre-emptive defence against potential arguments that he's being ironic but then cops to the fact that acknowledging that invalidates his prior defence against trying to be clever - all embedded in the text of the story itself. If that kind of stuff makes you want to throw the book across the room — and really explaining it all makes me want to do just that — which he's also already made note of too. See - intellectual stalemate. Tony Tulathimutte is smarter than I am and has already invalidated any argument I may have had for not giving this book a full 5 star rating despite an altogether on the nose ending.

I loved this book - individual results may vary.