The fact checker for a magazine has an unusual job. He has to take an article that an author has written and check any facts that are in the piece. Some facts are clear and can be checked through outside sources. Other things have to come from the writer’s source material, their interview notes, their perception of reality, which may or not be accurate. So it’s up to the fact checker to call a military widow to find out the color and size of her rug, or what her late husband’s t-shirts said, or when she found out about his affair.

It’s New York City, 2004, and after having to make that particular phone call, the Fact Checker was handed another story, called Mandeville/Green. Mandeville refers to the writer of the story, John Mandeville, and Green refers to the subject of the article, in this case, the Union Square Greenmarket. It’s a puff piece about a farmer’s market. It should be easy enough to check.

As the next few weeks go by, Fact Checker works on the Mandeville/Green article in between other short pieces with tight deadlines. He calls Tony Curtis to check on another article. But he keeps coming back to that Greenmarket article. It’s a nice story about a local farm and how they’re selling their tomatoes at the market. But there is a quote from a woman named Sylvia that is giving him pause. She says that there is something nefarious at the Greenmarket. But she doesn’t specify what it is. And the Fact Checker can’t get past that.

He decides to show up at the Union Square Greenmarket to see for himself. He ends up meeting Sylvia and tasting several varieties of tomatoes. But when he tries to ask Sylvia about what she said, he can’t get an answer from her. She asks him to come back another time to talk about what she had said to Mandeville. He comes back on Friday night and ends up at a dinner club where they are eating course after course of pork. Sylvia comes back to his place to watch baseball and ends up staying the night. She leaves him a note the next morning saying she’d get in touch with him. And then she disappears.

The Fact Checker has the option to let it go. He can sign off on the article and move on. Except that he can’t. He goes all in trying to find Sylvia again. He talks to her friends. He goes places he thinks she might be. He even goes to the farm where she had been growing tomatoes. He becomes obsessed with finding her. It takes over his life. The more he digs for the truth, the more elusive it feels to him, until he’s not sure what’s real or not and has to decide how to live in a world where facts may not always be what they seem.

The Fact Checker is a fascinating look at working at a magazine in New York. It’s about the details that make life interesting and how we choose to interpret them and turn them into the stories we tell ourselves. It’s character driven, told from the perspective of a man who struggles to understand relationships. His struggles to find the truth in a world that is rarely black and white could resonate with anyone trying to figure out what to believe in today’s America.

I thought The Fact Checker was interesting. Watching this man spin into obsession and then to confusion was quite a journey, but I liked the ending. It felt real and powerful and was a fitting conclusion to the story. I did think it got a little dry in the middle, and there was one disturbing scene where he goes to the writer’s home, but there were some scenes that were true gems. However, I would give this one a pass if you are vegan or sensitive to eating animals.

Egalleys for The Fact Checker were provided by Atlantic Monthly Press through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.

Interesting premise, a lot of promise overall. But ultimately- I was bored. I think a lot of my problem was the narrator himself more than the story or writing.

This is very much for fans of the New Yorker and New York City itself. It's a character driven tale where much of the action (such as it is) takes place in the Fact Checker's head. He's on a quest to find Sylvia, who has provided scandalous information about tomatoes but he's also thinking about all his different assignments. It's interesting for the most past but it does become wearisome at times. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. An intriguing debut.

This felt a little throwbacky as well, to the kind of serious New York Novels of early Jonathens Lethen and Franzen, a young writer trying to jam a lot of different ideas and distractions onto a skeleton. This follows a fact checker at a New Yorkerish magazine who gets involved with some intrigue at a organic market. There is sort of a mystery, but mainly a chance for Kelley to launch into discursions. This felt a bit unwieldily, but Kelley felt like a guy I wanted to continue to check out.

Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the advanced reader copy.

The premise of THE FACT CHECKER--when a magazine fact checker get obsessed with finding a woman named Sylvia, as part of checking an article about a food market--sounded quirky and like the kind of book that succeeds or fails on the execution of the writing. Unfortunately, the execution failed for me. It wasn't really clear why the fact checker became so consumed with finding Sylvia and the writing, on a line level, felt a bit too navel gazing at times.

Going to start by saying if you don’t like character driven stories, this isn’t for you. There’s a lot of details that make up the story and paints a picture of who the fact checker is, but don’t necessarily push the plot. The little antidotes are interesting, but if you’re more of a plot person, you might see them as useless. Overall, a great debut novel.

The Fact Checker – Austin Kelley
A witty, fast-paced novel that explores the intersection of truth, journalism, and personal bias. Kelley crafts a protagonist whose job is to uphold facts in a world where misinformation runs rampant—only to find their own beliefs challenged in unexpected ways. Sharp, thought-provoking, and timely, this novel is both entertaining and unsettlingly relevant in today’s media landscape.

I really wanted to love this. I love stories about writers, writing, and all of the ways it can go haywire. The Fact Checker left me disappointed.

While the premise was fantastic, the execution failed with dropped plot points, odd inner dialogue and just....overall, a story that puttered out.

I do enjoy Austin Kelley's writing, but this one maybe needed more work.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This sounded interesting but it was hard to really get into it.

Two things I liked though: 1) the writing, and 2) the main character's job as a fact checker was cool, I don't know how accurate the representation of that type of job was, but it seemed like a pretty cool job.

Beyond those two things though, I was lost. His obsession with Sylvia struck me as excessive, and by the end of the book I thought he was behaving completely differently than at the beginning - and not from growth or anything like that. He just seemed like a different person. Also just wasn't a fan of the ending, felt anticlimactic.

If you’re a fan of The New Yorker magazine, you will have immediately spotted the use of its iconic font on the cover of this book, and will assume that The New Yorker is the real source of the details about fact-checking articles and the interactions among authors, fact-checkers, and the many human sources whom the fact-checker must contact. For the TNY fan, it’s an attractive setting for a comic novel about the misadventures of our fact checker protagonist, as he becomes obsessed with one female source in an article about a popular organic produce market in Manhattan called the Union Square Greenmarket.

When the source, Sylvia, seems to disappear after having made a comment about nefarious doings at the Greenmarket and leaving a cryptic note for the fact checker, he begins a peripatetic tour through places connected to Sylvia, including a squatters’ whole-animal supper club, a direct-action network’s barge on the filthy Gowanus Canal, various pubs, and a cultish farm near the New Jersey pine barrens.

All the while, the first-person narrative spools out in the form of the fact checker’s stream-of-consciousness descriptions of what he’s doing and, even more so, what he’s thinking about, including many unusual and surprising facts he’s picked up in his work, but especially all his doubts, fears, and self-recriminations. Some of this is funny, such as his description of several phone conversations with the actor Tony Curtis, a lot of it is facts he’s learned from his work, some of it is thought-provoking observations, and one bit is appalling. The appalling bit occurs around three-quarters through the book and <spoiler>is his recounting of going along with a food author’s insistence that he help the author slaughter a lamb</spoiler>. The long scene is described in stomach-churning detail and casts a pall over the rest of the book. I really wish this scene had been left out of the book, and it will be an upsetting surprise for many readers.

The book could also have used an editor’s help with its ending. It just sort of fizzles out. Still, I’m not sorry I read it, because I did think much of it was appealing as a comic character study.

Fact-checking business is something that attracted me towards the book. I never knew that every article ever published is checked thoroughly by a fact checker and it requires a lot of investigation and interrogation. However, I was a bit disappointed at the end, it felt like something is missing.

Story was about a single piece about a new tomato market and some nefarious business attached to it. Fact checker had to confirm the details but he got stuck in the story, found a wonderful woman who disappeared and he kept going after her.

📚 The beginning of the story was fantastic. The basics of fact checking were beautifully defined and the procedure to do so was highlighted.
📚 The female character disappears by 40% of the book and after that the story becomes meaningless.
📚 There are several incidents mentioned here and there in the book which have no relevance to the story. Maybe author wanted to talk about topics such as - drug dealing at public places, protestor groups and their meetings, contaminated water issues, routine of a farmer, molestation at work, being non-vegetarian but everything gets mixed up.
📚 Writing is superb, have never read something so crisp and fresh. There are many funny incidents and some events where the character contemplates interrogation.
📚 It was about tomatoes and by the end, there are many things revealed by lead but everything remains open and left in confusion.
📚 If we were supposed to predict then I feel that I don't know what the question was? There is no clarity by the end and I don't know what to predict from this pretend ending.

If you want to explore some different writing or profession then go for it!!

The Fact Checker boasted a compelling concept and delightful insights into the fact-checker's world, especially its connection to his fixation on Sylvia. The opening was excellent. Unfortunately, the plot and pacing faltered, and the humor could have been sharper. Fans of traditional detective stories might appreciate this modern twist.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

This was a DNF for me. I hung around until about the middle and realized that I just did not care at all about the characters or story.

I had the pleasure of talking to the editor about this book at Bouchercon (specifically the cover) and I finally got a hold of it and started reading. It’s a wonderful mystery about heirloom tomatoes and reminds me of early Jonathan Ames and Bored to Death. Love it.

The main character in The Fact Checker is, indeed, a fact checker (and is not really named). This was an interesting premise and I had really high hopes for it. But alas, the pacing and style didn't work for me. I found the humor not to my taste and I struggled to connect with the Fact Checker or anything he was doing.

If you're looking for a modern take on a classic detective story, this might be right up your alley though.

Thanks NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for this digital advance reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Fact Checker had a fascinating premise and I absolutely loved the quips about the life of a fact checker and how those processes built into his near-obsession with Sylvia. The beginning of the book was incredibly strong.

However, many of the underlying plot points and pace just didn’t work for me, and I hoped the humor would come out in more clear ways. If you’re someone that loves mystery and more classic/on the nose detective stories, I think you’ll enjoy this modern take on it. Thank you NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the ARC!

This was a mildly amusing book. I did feel it dragged a bit--especially for a relatively short novel. The plot was a bit thin but I did learn about fact checking.

I didn’t really enjoy this book. I thought that it was boring. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen and the one time it actually did the follow up was extremely disappointing.

I devoured this book. I love a voice-driven narrative, and The Fact Checker's wry observations charmed me. I'm also a sucker for facts woven into fiction and this book is studded with historical context without ever feeling dry or boring. It was a clever trick on the author's part to weave a farmer's market mystery throughout the story, but I would have kept reading even without it. Some readers may find the ending a bit rushed, or disappointing, but I didn't have that experience; the narrator gave us so many clues throughout the novel that we might not truly find out what happened to Sylvia, and the way the mystery (and novel) concluded felt authentic to the story and satisfying to me as a reader. Ultimately I found this delightful and can't wait to read more by Austin Kelley.

Thank you, NetGalley, for sending me this ARC before it's published. The book is set around a fact checker who must investigate every detail set before him, so far as feeling the need to question if any detail is entirely true. When his friend, Sylvia, disappears without confirming the "“nefarious business” at the farmer’s market, the fact checker is on the case. Though finding out what's so nefarious about a farmers market is more difficult than it seems and the investigation leads the fact checker spiraling. Will he find the answers he was looking for?

As promising as the plot was, I can only give this book two stars. I enjoyed the beginning of the book and the main protagonist reminded me of Arthur Less from the Andrew Sean Greer's Pulitzer Winning Novel "Less," I fell out of interest halfway through the book. While the parts that led the main antagonist into interesting settings, the inner dialogue did not make the story as engrossing.

But the fact remains (I had to say it) I enjoyed Kelley's writing as it shows much talent when the main antagonist was active. I hope to see more of their work in the future.