"Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard"
Coldplay - The Scientist

The 21st Century is off to a rough start. End-stage capitalism's ladder rungs are few and far between. Every time you succeed in taking a step up, you soon discover it is decayed and failing. War, recession, deadly viruses, algorithmic social media, surveillance technology, lethal drugs, fires, floods - it is a fraught time for all, but most especially for those just starting out and living on the edge.

Devyn Defoe's propulsive debut novel "Burnside" brings it all into focus in a marvelously engaging way. It's a jungle out there - housing and health care are unaffordable, public transportation is ratty and unreliable, jobs are underpaid and exploitative, law enforcement is disinterested and distracted.

But you still have to eat, sleep, work, dream, and procreate. Defoe's characters are rich and varied, fully believable at being unbelievable. The writing is engaging, full sentences with rollicking clauses, followed by single sentence paragraphs, and laugh-out-loud dialogue. The periodic set pieces are cringy and compelling.

The Patriarchy is alive, but deeply unwell. The majority of the unnamed males are generally clueless at best, criminal and fatally dangerous, at worst.

Best to keep your head down and spirits up. It's bound to get better, right? Great work, Devyn Defoe.

Special thanks to Astra House and NetGalley for the eARC.

“We were all moving much too fast; there were leaves over our eyes blocking out the sun, and too many people were dying by the river”.

September is left with a scar from an encounter with a homeless man and the fear that he is stalking her. Our unnamed narrator, September’s roomate, describes the Bowl as a violent, dangerous place with many murders, as well as bizarre events involving the locals.

I was never bored while reading this book because it kept me on the edge of my seat. It’s like a fever dream or a car crash that you can’t take your eyes off of. It’s incredibly campy and wild. I believe it stalled at times, but that does not detract from the story. One thing that had me confused at first were the nicknames for everyone; almost every character is nameless, and it took time to get used to. Overall, this was an excellent debut; I devoured it in three sittings!

Thank you Astra House for the early copy!
and congrats to Devyn Defoe for this great debut!

Burnside will be out August, 4! 🪩

How well can you really know a person?

I loved Burnside. It’s a smoggy book full of unusual, charming characters at bars and in bookstores, people you encounter as the world burns.

This book reminded me of being very young and watching Waking Life for the first time (complimentary). Once I just let myself flow with it like a dream it finally clicked with me. It's an often uncomfortable reading experience with just enough glimpses of humanity mixed in with the death and despair that exists all around us in this world. There are many times where it feels like a dystopia until a token from our universe is slipped in, like a book from 1992, or someone talking about Porland, Oregon.

The main character takes a long time to find her footing: she has nicknamed everyone unlucky enough to tread across her path with something flighty and quick, something that describes the person they say they are, but not who they are. Everyone gets tokenized and Flanderized until she finally really meets Burnside. She starts to listen more after that moment.

What a strange read. It's an interesting, meandering ride.

Thank you Astra Publishing House and Netgalley for the early copy!

a strange little book about the preconceived notions that we as a whole have about people -- both those familiar and unfamiliar -- and the ways they come to develop. the synopsis makes this sound more comedic, but it's actually a very hazy, mundanely absurd story sprinkled with humor throughout, something more akin to bunny. like, yes, of course there's a town run by feral children in which any adult that ventures into it mysteriously disappears & fish that insist on exclusively watching sailor moon, why wouldn't there be? the kind of stuff that forces you sit there and think about whether it was some elaborate metaphor or if the author was just smoking something. or both.

other reviewers believe that the tanner comparison is wrong but i disagree! defoe's comedy tends to veer more into the nonsensical while tanner's is a bit more grounded in reality but the delivery is quite similar -- the brief history of claudia thursday vs woodworkers was something straight out of worry.

overall i thought that this was such a great debut! i'll be sure to keep an eye out for whatever defoe puts out next.

Thank you to Astra Publishing House, Devyn Defoe and NetGalley for this Advanced Copy!!

This is a dreamy, strange debut novel.
Beautifully written, it balances realism with an almost surreal, dreamlike quality that makes the story feel immersive, intimate and slightly untethered.

An unnamed narrator guides us through her life and through her lens it becomes clear the way we perceive others, and the way we are perceived rarely reflects the truth. The characters felt human and real and the observations are mostly subtle, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions much like the narrator.

Burnside feels less plot driven and instead provided an interesting exploration into the banality of life with a feminist undertone (at least that was my take away) Whilst the pacing on the slower side, it was atmospheric and very well written. I’d definitely recommend this to readers who enjoy literary fiction that prioritises atmosphere, introspection, and social commentary.

Review also posted to StoryGraph and GoodReads

I was provided an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts and review, thank you to Astra House and the author for this galley!

If you like your humor dry as a piece of used 120 grit sandpaper lying for days in the Arizona sun, this one’s for you!(complimentary). I thoroughly enjoyed this read and found myself gleefully making my way through it in just a few sittings. Defoe has such a unique voice—sparse dialogue mixed with hilariously esoteric references. The publisher describes this debut as being perfect for fans of Emma Cline or Joy Williams, who I think are both apt comparisons. I’d also agree with those who’ve described it as Lynchian, the most direct comparison (to me) being Twin Peaks—especially for the mix of both dark and light humor, as well as the dreamlike quality that permeates the book.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️, would read again!

P.S. Poor possums):

Utterly dizzying, almost entrancing. Every time I opened this book, my head began to spin. Scenes spun into each other. Paragraphs never seemed to end. Burnside flares with fatigue and despair over the 21st century.

It is clear that this book is set in the 2020s. I absolutely love it when books date themselves. There’s subtle references to internet culture; there’s the absurd reality of a feminist juice shop that doesn’t pay its women workers well. Defoe criticizes the superficiality of the 2020s, linking this shallowness of human connections to neoliberalism and late stage capitalism. Our unnamed narrator, her best friend September, our narrator’s boss—they all exhibit individualism where it seems like their vision is funneled to see only what they want to see. Detachment is the consequence of neoliberalism.

Burnside is highly observant. And these plethora of observations prove that knowledge is a burden. Our narrator treads life with this paralyzed passivity. She’s taken by fatigue over global crises. There’s so much despair lingering in the thick paragraphs (which were unnerving to my eyes but an effective choice for the stream-of-consciousness narration). Our narrator is so cynical and I can’t blame her.

Besides being cynical, she is also avoidant. Despite having love for her best friend September, it’s clear that their friendship is complicated. I appreciate the nuance to girl friendships. Love, admiration, envy, resentment. Our narrator talks more about September than her own self. Yet, the majority of her frustrations are left to rot as unsaid grudges.

I’d recommend Burnside for those who enjoy slow-paced studies on what it means to be a human in the age of late stage capitalism. It begs the question: what actions are morally acceptable for survival? Defoe writes in such a descriptive and evocative manner that pairs well in making her criticisms on capitalism not sound preachy. Burnside prompts so much introspection. Reading this felt like a dream on repeat, where the details are fuzzy yet you can feel every single scene.

Dreamy, strange, and entirely propulsive, this debut completely sucked me into its chaotic, wildfire-plagued California setting. Following the bookstore-clerk narrator through a landscape of late-stage capitalism and paranoia kept me hooked from start to finish.

I loved this book. Unique writing style that is grounded, funny, and perceptive. The dynamic of the main character to her friend September and the world around her was engrossing. I would highly recommend this book and look forward to what the author writes next.

Burnside is the kind of book that gets under your skin and stays there. Devyn Defoe has built something genuinely singular here: a dusty, polluted California fever dream where feral children roam abandoned almond orchards, towns keep spontaneously combusting, and two disaffected young women spiral into a collective obsession that says everything about how we assign blame, fear the wrong things, and eat each other alive in the process.
The unnamed narrator and September are exactly the kind of messy, brilliant, frustrating women I love spending time with. Their world is grimy and funny and deeply uncomfortable in the best possible way. The "breasturant," the raccoon-infested rat bus, Claudia Thursday as a character name alone -- Defoe has an eye for the absurd details that make a fictional world feel disturbingly real.
But underneath all the dark comedy is something genuinely sharp and angry about girlhood, scapegoating, and the way late capitalism turns people against each other instead of the systems crushing them. The Burnside of it all hits hard.
If Ottessa Moshfegh and Joy Williams got together in a Sacramento dive bar and wrote something together, it might feel a little like this. Highly, highly recommend.

Fever dream. Excellent writing. Really did not love there are zero chapters. Otherwise, great debut novel.

From the first sentence on, this novel reads like a tricksy combination of deeply crafted literary writing mixed with completely unrehearsed slam poetry and I can’t say I always loved it but I’m going to give it five stars. The epigraph is Elfriede Jelinek, which probably gives you more information about the novel than I just did. Try it.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC! All opinions are my own.

A surrealist novel told via an unnamed narrator. Her roommate, September, has an unpleasant encounter with a homeless man, and from then things take a turn for the bizarre. Initially a bit dull, but the prose was enchanting at times. It’s fever dream, Lynch adjacent, commentary on class and identity.

Reading this novel made me feel as though I was straining to comprehend my ordinary life through the haze of a multisubstance hangover (complimentary). There is a certain effortful quality to the prose, despite its clarity, that I think has to do with the unusually long paragraphs paired with quite short sections or fragments. It's a disorienting combination (also complimentary).

Devyn Defoe has crafted a darkly humorous novel that both interrogates and satirizes philosophy—Anthroposophy in particular—alongside capitalism and the visceral disappointments of contemporary life. Awash in the city's moral and cultural effluvia, the unnamed narrator and her roommate drift through an urban landscape of hollow relationships and emotional inertia. In the novel's second half, Defoe's prose strikes an atavistic nerve as the narrative expands into a sharp feminist critique of a world in which men remain an inescapable threat to women's lives. Defoe excels at peeling back the veneer of everyday existence to expose the dirt and grime underneath.

When I finished reading the last sentence of Devyn Defoe’s debut novel Burnside, something truly bizarre happened…the book disappeared.

I would love to be able to tell you that what occurred was some magical manifestation that pulled my physical copy of the book from our reality and tucked it away neatly into some sort of phantom realm where another sentient being was equally surprised by the sudden arrival of a random book as I was in dealing with the sudden loss of that same tome here in my own center of space and time. But the truth of the what actually took place is far more boring, much less nuanced and just sort of…normal. (The app that I use to read ARCs made the decision to delete the file the exact moment I finished the book due to it being archived in advance of its actual release. See? Totally boring, totally normal.)

But given the level of introspection and investigation into the concept of “what it all means” that Burnside is rife with throughout its immensely captivating pages, it wouldn’t have shocked me if on some cosmic level, the universe put the exact text that I’ve wanted, needed and have been longing for right in front of me just long enough for me to consume it, to learn from it and to absorb it before yanking it away and leaving me to pick up the scattered pieces of my psyche and figure it out all on my own. It’s a lesson that consistently occurs within the pages of this fascinating book and one that it’s unnamed narrator struggles with in ways that will feel all too familiar for anyone that’s ever floundered, failed or fucked up when making the decisions and the moves that you worry will ultimately define the entirety of your adult life.

At it’s core, this is the story of two friends that each travel down a different path of illumination in the aftermath of an altercation that occurs at a coffee shop between the narrator’s friend, September, and a local homeless man named Burnside. And not to spoil anything, but the moral quandary and the overall lesson we arrive at stem from this initial interaction, but what occurs between the beginning and end of the story’s spectrum blossoms in the manner of someone that has thrown a haphazard collection of seeds over the width of a bare patch of garden and allowed nature to transform the landscape in the kind of disastrously beautiful way that occurs only when you allow something to be wild, to work together and against each other, to aid and consume one another, to be free.

September believes that this single altercation with what is assumed to be a homeless man is the beginning of a long campaign of a stalker and in this assumption, our narrator begins to perceive the cracks in her longtime friendship with September and the people that surround them both as her own interactions with Burnside don’t line up with the picture that her best friend is allowing the community to paint of him. What starts as a minor, polite gasp of shock at September’s coffeehouse altercation with Burnside devolves into a panicked campaign against the man who is quickly accused of not just stalking September, but also being the sole perpetrator of the wildfires hundreds of miles outside the city.

The cast of characters that Devyn introduces are all distinct and each is uniquely integral to the overall direction of the story despite the narrator never allowing us the closeness of knowing their actual names, but rather hiding them behind an assortment of nicknames that run the gamut between familiarity and an arms-length distance. But in truth, it’s the landscape that envelops the cast of Burnside that stands out as having the largest impact on all of the lives contained within it.

Taking place in what appears to be a neighborhood in Sacramento, California, our narrator only refers to her surroundings as “the bowl”. This section of Sacramento feels familiar in that way that all neighborhoods of major cities that exist in that capitalist limbo between “somewhat affordable, yet run down artsy section of town” and “Starbucks-led gentrification that erases all culture”. It is a part of the city that is forgotten while also being on the radar of all the wrong people. Bodies have been washing up in the nearby river for decades, the legacy of local serial killers continues and the police laugh in the faces of those that have been burglarized, but the wine bars, the coffeehouses and the condos being birthed in vacant lots all distract and delight from the chaos its inhabitants deal with just to get by.

Burnside is a masterpiece of fiction in the way that it plays with the current balance of struggle, ambition and apathy present among anyone that’s just trying to make it from one day to the next with the least amount of time spent driving to the middle of nowhere just to scream your head off to alleviate whatever it is you’re so desperate to stop feeling. Devyn Defoe writes with an artistic flair and a clarity that feels as if it defies the fact that this is her debut novel. This is a mystery novel that never proclaims itself to be one. Rather, you just sort of end up in the middle of a constantly evolving tale of intrigue that only deepens your need to understand what exists at the heart of everything contained within its pages. The payoff of this remarkable story is an object lesson regarding the human condition that should feel blatantly obvious to anyone and everyone, but still seems to elude most of the people that initially surround our narrator and likely most of the people that surround you in your own reality.

Thank you to Astra House (@astrahousebooks), Devyn Defoe (@devyndefoe) and NetGalley (@netgalley) for allowing me the opportunity to read an advanced copy of Burnside and to review my time spent with it.

A quirky, fever dream of a novel about the judgements we pass on others and how that reflects how we feel about ourselevs. This was totally unlike anything I've ever read. I was hooked from page one.

There is an apathy that bleeds into fear so easily when you’re young, even more so when you exist surrounded by both a housing and climate crisis. The unnamed narrator and her friend live in these times alongside us. They make ends meet at jobs that seem to almost contradict their own existences, interact with both strangers and friends who could almost be figments of the imagination, and stumble into the all too human desire to misplace blame on people just failing to navigate a broken system. Each sentence is a dizzying polluted reflection of the world around us. Dreamlike and philosophical underneath the humor, Defoe creates a beautiful absurdity that you can only find mirrored in the real world.

Every year or so, a new book trend comes out that takes the online book community by storm. We've cycled through 'messy girl lit', 'sad girl lit', 'feral girl lit', 'hot girl lit', and now everyone is talking about 'weird girl lit'. I find that a lot of these books aren't necessarily the greatest and sure might fit the general themes or aesthetic of the current moment, but lack actual substance. Burnside stands as a compelling alternative to this phenomenon and I think readers who are intrigued by these trends (and mostly, I'm talking about the 'weird girl' trend) but are left feeling uninspired by their execution will find a lot to write home about with this debut!

Burnside is a bizarre, dreamy tale that I think is best experienced going in blind. I feel like a lot of books get it wrong by describing themselves similar to Lynch, but I thought it was entirely spot on here. Defoe's prose took me by surprise too, and this was every bit the fever dream I've seen it described as.

A sure to be talent and I think that even with only one book under her belt, Defoe is ahead of her peers. I'm excited to see how her career develops.

A dizzying dreamlike story. This book is so well written Devyn takes you on such a journey and paints you a vivid picture of all of these characters. An immaculate work of literary fiction that will go down in weird girl book history. I fell in love with this cast of characters.

This odd and surreal debut novel had me from the start at the offhand mention of Thomas Moynihan’s Spinal Catastrophism, kept me through the looming, ever-present dread circling the disaffected post-hipster community of an unnamed Northern? California exurb, and ultimately lost me at the hot air balloonist trapped in the city of feral children.
A lot worked here! An interesting, non-linear style full of digressions, anecdotes and backtracking; and a strange but mostly believeable cast of weirdo characters (not a single one with an actual name, I believe, except for the titular & tragic Burnside). Some scenes went on too long, especially towards the end - see above re: feral children - but I’ll gladly read anything else that comes my way from Devyn Defoe.

At the summer camp I attended as a kid, campers had to partake in a final test at the end of the week. We were blindfolded and placed in a single file line conga-style, with our hands on the shoulders of the camper in front of us. We had to navigate the grounds like this in silence. We were familiar enough with the sensory details at that point. We identified the dining hall by its pancakey scent; recognized the horse’s whinnying when we weaved past the stables. Despite the presence of these markers, we were clumsy and disoriented nonetheless. With only the set of floating shoulders beneath our palms to steer our path, we lost control of our feet, tripping over tree roots and knocking our toes into each other’s boot heels. Reading Burnside felt a lot like this. Defoe maintains the contours of a world we know—the novel is set in a fictionalized version of Sacramento called “The Bowl,” for instance. There is the ubiquity of a small-ish town where everyone is deep in everyone else’s business, the mythology that emerges through rumor, the self-consciousness and self-righteousness of early adulthood. But as the particulars of The Bowl emerge, the familiar falls away and we must trust our leader to guide us through the weeds.

Burnside falls somewhere in the “weird girl lit” spectrum, though it is distinctly earnest and without gimmicks. It evokes Twin Peaks and River’s Edge; surrealism wedged into the mundane. The residents of The Bowl are teeming with characterization, each completely original, delightfully weird, and somehow familiar. Defoe’s brilliance and command of language is on full display. The prose is confident and lyrical, replete with long sultry sentences à la Didion. I enjoyed the modernist-style hypotaxis, though I sometimes felt like I needed a break, a rhythmic shift to change things up. But Burnside does not allow passivity from the reader, it demands attentiveness and rewards those who stick with it. There is euphonic language, visceral tension, emotional resonance, and characterization so specific it really feels like peering into the life of someone I might meet at a dive bar or a bus stop or an estate sale.

This is not a book I would casually recommend to just anyone, which is actually quite a refreshing experience. In a publishing landscape that seems to favor mass marketability over subtlety and nuance, Burnside stands out.

This was a fantastic debut. I wasn't sure I was going to like all the little nicknames given to the characters but it worked out and actually ended up loving it. Also was a interesting plot! Felt it was original and fresh! Looking forward to more from this author!

Burnside is a Lynchian fever dream that at times perplexed me, at times made my skin crawl and at times made me confused. In Devyn Devoe’s debut she writers about two roommates, our narrator who is nameless and her friend September (also nameless). Following an interaction with a homeless man leaving September scratched, both girls begin on two separate paths. Our narrator becoming more and more aware of her surroundings, how people around her narrate stories to their benefit and how violent yet blasé her environment is. And September who appears to lean into the environment.

I left feeling very struck by the end of this and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. “The Bowl” as our narrator describes is a post-capitalism hellscape of a town in California. Where there is commentary on climate, the economy, victimhood and just who is allowed to be safe anymore. Turning the final page of this book and being in our present world did not feel entirely different from one another.

Thank you NetGalley for the arc!

What an absurdly good time I had with this book. Defoe’s writing took me a minute to get into, but soon it was easy to fall into the melodic prose and the story carried me away. The characters are fully fleshed out and I loved the cinematic setting of “The Bowl”. I’m very excited for what Defoe writes next!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

Thanks to Netgalley and Astra House for the ebook. An epic, and word stuffed, first novel that tells the uneasy life of our narrator and her best friend, September. It takes place in a warped, or slightly futuristic, California, where fires and serial killers feel just a few streets away. The woman have menial jobs, almost forgettable boyfriends and they also slowly struggle through college, with no real plan for the future. They are surrounded by characters who are almost as odd as their nicknames. It’s a fantastic glimpse into the mind of an exciting new author.