Hell of a Book ★★★★☆

Hell of a Book is doing at least two things at once, and it knows it. That's the point.

I read this one after I read his next one, which references his National Book Award win. This one is more serious and introspective, almost autobiographical, whereas the other was fantastical. Definitely great writing of conversations, though.

On the surface it's a road-trip novel about a Black author on book tour, chasing (or being followed by) a kid who may or may not be real. Underneath it's about Shuguya, a real Black boy killed by police, and the impossibility of telling that story in a way that doesn't get absorbed and neutralized by the same culture that produced it. The novel earns its National Book Award.

What stayed with me was how precisely Mott captures the psychological tax of being Black in America. Not as argument but as texture. The narrator lands in North Carolina and smells "humidity, pine trees, thinly veiled racism." That's it. No elaboration needed. Or the observation that the people who benefit from a system never see it as a system at all - "History has always been kind to them," so they assume things are basically fair. It's the most compressed version of that idea I've read.

The book is also sharply skeptical of its own genre. There's a moment where an editor tells the narrator that first-time authors always think their book is about the characters or the subject matter, but that's wrong:

"That's like saying the Mona Lisa is about a woman with a wry smile."

Mott earns the right to make that joke because he actually delivers on it.

The one line I keep coming back to is tagged as a favorite in my highlights:

"It's impossible to care about everyone. So you pick your battles…It's a type of emotional triage."

That's not cynicism. It's an honest accounting of how compassion actually works when the demand for it is infinite and the supply isn't. The book sits with that tension without resolving it, which is the right call.

Not a comfortable read, but not trying to be. More highlights below.

Edition Read

• Edition Type: Paperback
• Number of Pages: 322 pages
• Date First Published: June 29, 2021
• Publisher: Dutton
• ISBN10: 0593330986
• ASIN: 0593330986
• Language: English

Description

An astounding work of fiction from New York Times bestselling author Jason Mott, always deeply honest, at times electrically funny, that goes to the heart of racism, police violence, and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans and America as a whole

In Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book , a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.

As these characters’ stories build and converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art and money, it’s also about the nation’s reckoning with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news. And with what it can mean to be Black in America.

Who has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind? Unforgettably told, with characters who burn into your mind and an electrifying plot ideal for book club discussion, Hell of a Book is the novel Mott has been writing in his head for the last ten years. And in its final twists, it truly becomes its title.

Source: GoodReads

Notable Highlights

“Treat people as people. Be color-blind. Love openly. Love everyone.” And then, in the same breath, he would have to say to his son: “You will be treated differently because of your skin. The rules are different for you. This is how you act when you meet the police. This is how you act growing up in the South. This is the reality of your world.” [loc. 1226]

“Everything you’re saying is true and real, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s impossible to care about everyone. So you pick your battles. You limit how much you invest into the world and into people. It’s a type of emotional triage.” [loc. 1466]

That’s a common mistake among first-time authors. They think their book is about the characters or the story or, if it’s nonfiction, the subject matter. But that’s all wrong. That’s like saying the Mona Lisa is about a woman with a wry smile.” [loc. 1482]

We have to admit that maybe some of us actually have it better than others and, in having it better, we have to admit that maybe we could get by with a little less so that others can have a little more and that means giving up some of the things that we have. [loc. 1630]

We’re all afraid of being at the bottom of life’s shit stack. We’re all afraid of being poor, being injured, helpless, handicapped, all of the things that make us look at other people and say, ‘How bad. Somebody should do something to help them.’ The thing we’re most afraid of is being the ‘them’ in that equation.” [loc. 1643]

That’s what I call “Now-stalgia.” When you know a time in your life is gonna last forever, even before the moment is over. [loc. 1780]

“I live three thousand miles away,” I say. “The sun is 93 million miles away,” she replies. “But you can still feel it on your face, can’t you?” [loc. 2536]

He’s around all the time now, like a shadow after Hiroshima. [loc. 2776]

And they’re going to always treat you differently than they treat themselves. They won’t ever know about it—at least, most of them won’t. Most of them will think that everything is okay and that you’re being treated well enough and that everything is beautiful. Because, I guess for them, all they can imagine is a world in which things are fair and beautiful because, after all, they’ve always been treated fairly and beautifully. History has always been kind to them.” [loc. 2848]

The humidity hits me in the face as I step out onto the jet bridge and I know for sure that I’m back in North Carolina. I know all the smells: humidity, pine trees, thinly veiled racism. It’s what home feels like for me. [loc. 3004]

the South is America’s longest-running crime scene. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. [loc. 3009]

Despondent, maybe. Confused, certainly. Horny, without a doubt. But happy? No. I’m not sure Black people can be happy in this world. There’s just too much of a backstory of sadness that’s always clawing at their heels. And no matter how hard you try to outrun it, life always comes through with those reminders letting you know that, more than anything, you’re just a part of an exploited people and a denied destiny and all you can do is hate your past and, by proxy, hate yourself. [loc. 3366]

“But how many books you read don’t make you a good or bad person. How many books you read is just how many books you read. [loc. 3534]

Pain makes people selfish. We only have so much so I can’t take yours too. I can’t carry your water, Kid.” [loc. 4133]

Laugh all you want, but I think learning to love yourself in a country where you’re told that you’re a plague on the economy, that you’re nothing but a prisoner in the making, that your life can be taken away from you at any moment and there’s nothing you can do about it—learning to love yourself in the middle of all that? Hell, that’s a goddamn miracle. [loc. 4304]