This book is no joke. Charlie Kauffman-esque in its surrealism that devolves into almost fever dream. The most unreliable narrator ever. Fantastic writing, and meaning, and it should be read by the masses.

Hell of a Book. A risky decision, that. Like naming your child Charity and hoping that she doesn't grow up to be selfish. Like naming your child Grace and hoping she isn't prone to clumsiness. Like naming your child Dick and hoping he doesn't become one, as it were.

What publisher would risk publishing a book under this title? You can sure it is one who has a hell of a lot of confidence that this will, in fact, be one hell of a book. My verdict: a resounding yes. I loved everything about this novel.

Ah but to explain this novel, this amazing work of art, without ruining its greatest asset: the ever-unfolding journey on which the narrator takes the reader! The format. It is safe to start there. The novel alternates its chapters between two voices - a Black, adult male, who is unnamed, and a Black child whose peers stick him with the unwanted nickname of “Soot” due to the midnight darkness of his skin. For purposes of this review, I’ll refer to them as the “narrator” and “Soot”.

The narrator is an acclaimed author whose first book has been launched successfully and who is hopping around the country on his book tour. He has received an advance from his publisher for a second book and is overdue in sending along a draft. Of course, he has spent the advance and has no ideas for his second novel. He jets around from Any Town, USA to Any Other Town, USA, where he is met by handlers to manage his schedule and keep him on time. Early on, the narrator explains to the reader that he has a rare condition that blurs the lines between reality and imagination. Characters appear in his midst and interact with him, and he struggles to decipher what is real.

The narrator meets Soot early on and determines he must be imaginary; after all, no one else can see Soot. On the other hand, Soot is adamant that he is real and shares that he has his own special skill where he can make himself invisible. The reader is left to ponder which is more likely - that the narrator has entire conversations with imaginary people or that Soot has a special ability.

There is more to the narrator’s world than himself, Soot, and the book tour. He happens, as they say, to be a Black man in a white America. His publisher has warned him to stay away from Black topics that might turn off readers and to ethnically neuter himself. But there is a growing din in the cities he visits on his tour as protesters rise up against police killings of Black Americans. By the end of the novel, he is admonished by his publisher for not doing more ‘for his people’. He is asked to be everything and nothing at the same time. Where does that leave room for a self?

The imaginary - or real - Soot has had a troubled life even at an early age. He is mocked and ridiculed by classmates for the tone of his skin. His father is gunned down by police in front of his own home, in front of his wife and Soot. The descriptions of the flashing blue lights, the sounds, and the thoughts and fears carry a weight and deliver a vibrancy in this scene, elements that echo throughout the entire novel.

The narrator’s visions - or are they real? - speed up to a frenetic pace as the novel progresses and reach a zenith after he visits his hometown. The locals in his hometown are interested in his every move and start raising specters of his past, aspects of his life that he cannot recall himself. He is morphed into the representative voice of a Black man by the hero worship or his town, the pressure of his publisher, and the hungry public.

There are a multitude of important questions at the center of this novel. When your country doesn’t grant you full agency, who are you but the reflection of someone else’s needs, fears, and desires? When simply the body you were born into makes you a threat to others, what wrong turns does your life take? What lives are written and a heartbeat away from being unwritten for no good reason?

Mott explores these complex dynamics in an exploratory way and with beautiful language, storytelling, poignancy, and humor because yes, it is one hell of a book.

Uniquely written, this reads as a very personal and painful account of racism and police brutality/fear in the US today. The author clearly shows how the history of racist actions and attitudes have affected the very soul of Black America. This is an important story and timely read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin House/Trapeze for the ARC to read and review.

This is a hell of a book. An author traveling cross country to promote his book, a young boy nicknamed Soot, and a boy the writer calls the kid. Are they real or imaginary? What’s not imaginary are the shootings of black people he keeps hearing about. A book I’ll be digesting and thinking about for a long while.

Thank you for the opportunity to review Hell of a Book by Jason Mott. In the sociopolitical moment we find ourselves mired in this year, I am so grateful to have this opportunity to read Mott's work- work that dives deep to the heart of the violence, racism, and challenges faced by so many. Mott's skill really drove themes home in this well-written novel.

Well-constructed satire of the book industry's publicity machine, but its unreliable narrator conceit ultimately falls somewhat short of the revelatory insight Mott appears to be striving for.

Jason Mott's Hell of a Book won't just make my best-of-the-year books list. We're not too far into the decade, but I'd be willing to bet that it will show up on my best-of-the-decade list for the 2020s. I read Hell of a Book in two days, and I resented every moment when I couldn't be reading it. One in, I wanted to stay there. Hell of a Book involves a dark version of magical realism and a fair bit of sarcasm, but none of this undercuts the real-world truths that Mott confronts readers with.

I don't, however, want to say a lot about the book's contents in this review because I don't want to influence others' reading of it. The novel is grounded in the frequent police use of lethal force that inspired the Black Lives Matter movement and the long history of that violence that predates our particular historical moment. The chapters of Hell of a Book move among the experiences of three (or more? or fewer?) Black men—actually two boys and one man. The boys' lives have been irrevocably altered by police violence. The man, an author who has difficulty separating the real and the imaginary and who travels the country on a seemingly endless book tour, wants to do all he can to ignore the situation of these boys and others like them, even as story after story after story of their lives and others' dominates the news.

Read this book. Read it. Read it when you have few enough interruptions that you can immerse yourself in its world and live there for a while.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher; the opinions are my own.

You must read this book. I was very impressed with Mott's book The Returned but this is even better. Some people will not like it because you have to think too much, too bad for them because its a great book. I think 50 years from now, college students will be writing papers about it. High school students might be answering essay questions about it if we progress far enough. Conservatives will not like this book, but should read it anyway if they want to understand the Black Lives Matter movement. There is nothing in the book about the experience of being a black man that I havent read before but I think the book is so engaging that maybe, I hope, a few people will have their eyes open. And if you are black or an ally, just read it because it really is a hell of a book.

An unnamed author of a best-selling novel entitled, Hell of a Book, is on a national book tour when he randomly (or so it seems) encounters a boy who exudes a surreal sense of familiarity. The child mysteriously reappears (unescorted) and engages in thought-provoking conversation at key points throughout his travels around the country. The reader is forewarned by the author himself that he has "a condition" - an overly active imagination where he sometimes has difficulty discerning what and who is real or not - thereby making him a questionable narrator. However, an incident in the story is grounded in realism -- within this world, the news headlines yet another story about an unarmed child shot and killed by police. There are national protests and heavy media coverage documenting the demands for justice. The gravitas and frequency of this tragedy (the senseless, recurring loss of an unarmed youth at the hands of law enforcement) awaken ghosts from the past that exacerbate anger, fear, hate, and angst addling the author's already delicate mental state.

Prepare yourself because this book has heavy themes: colorism, system/institutionalized racism, generational trauma, police violence, discrimination within the workplace, mental illness, internalized self-hate, need for optimism, self-love, etc. Although disturbing on many levels - I was all-in early on and wanted to understand if and how the shooting, the author, and the boy eventually come to a reckoning and to see if there were any connections among the three seemingly unrelated threads. I was not disappointed. I think fans of Paul Beatty, Mat Johnson, Colson Whitehead will appreciate the style/form and humor.

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Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin/Dutton Books for allowing me access to this book.

This book review will be posted on NetGalley, NCBC’s blog, and Goodreads.

An urgent, funny, heartbreaking, poignant, confounding, stylish novel that is both timely and timeless. The story unfolds in two strands, the first featuring an African-American author on a book tour for his bestselling novel Hell of a Book. No matter what city he goes to, someone wants to know what he thinks about the most recent tragic police shooting on the news. But the author is afraid of saying the wrong thing. It’s not just that he wants to keep the focus on book sales (though he does), but also because he experiences daydreams so vivid he can’t always tell the difference between imagination and reality. His story converges with that of a young black boy called The Kid who only the author can see. When the strands come together, it’s a hell of a thing.

Well that was a hell of a book. Pulled you right in. Very good and very sad to hear the experience of black people in our part of the world.

I will admit that it took me a bit of time to get into this book. However, after about fifty pages, I could not stop reading it. This is really a brilliant and (dare I say) important novel. There is so much going on in these pages. There is also a lot of wisdom. It accomplishes that difficult task of being simultaneously funny and profound. I found the voice of the author immensely appealing. I sincerely hope that this book finds a wide readership. I will be recommending it to many.

I finished HELL OF A BOOK last night and I have feelings but I'm not sure what those feelings are. It's an interesting read and up until the end I had no idea where the author was going (if I'm honest, I'm still not sure I know where he was going). It's a chewy sort of book, and full of a lot of issues to do with race and mental health. Perhaps my feelings about it come from a struggling sort of desire to understand it at a level beyond the text itself. It feels like an important book, and one that could take multiple readings and deep discussion.

Hell Of A Book is a story hard to pin down. Rooted in current events of police brutality against Black Americans, this book is topical, yet a reminder that these events have always been happening. You can almost feel how tired the author is as he works through injustices and trauma felt by so many.

The story is told from the alternate perspectives of a Black child whose father was murdered by a cop, and an adult Black author who has written the aptly named Hell Of A Book. Elements of mental illness, trauma, and magical realism keep you guessing until the end and maybe even after. It's a story meant to be discussed with others and will make a great book club selection.

This book was pretty unique and I appreciate being able to read it early! I think our patrons will really like it.

This is a book that is going to stay with me for a long time. Reading it feels at times like following a dream sequence, but at other times it is so sharply in focus that it hurts.