The Sellout

This book was somewhat of a disappointing read for me. While Beatty writes intuitively and intellectually, many of the references littered throughout this novel were simple inaccessible for me. The satire was heavily bitter as well in this novel. As a reader I also finished the novel completely confused and unsure about what the main point of it's inception really was. The novel is hugely topical and as a intellectual human being I am aware of the current state of America and how race is presented and dealt with within that country. However I only felt a vulnerability and a clarity from the author in the very last pages of the novel which I found such a shame . The novel overall was unfortunately a struggle and chore to get through as every sentence and chapter is time consuming to fathom through and make narrative sense of. This author makes you work for his plot.This novel had some real promise but I felt it tried to hard to shock and be funny and as a consequence the real raw storytelling and soul searching elements of the narrative which I would have loved were lost. I really wanted to dissect the character of bonbon and homity and marpessa but their character development and inner motivations were stifled for elements of the story to thrive that for me were either dry or ostentatious. An unfortunate 2.5, at a push a 3 out of 5 stars. I couldn't connect with the content that made this novel an award winning piece unfortunately. However it's a very current and topical novel that is very interesting and unique.