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National Book awards: Jason Mott wins US literary prize for ‘masterful’ novel Hell of a Book

The North Carolina novelist has won the National Book Foundation’s award for fiction for his dark absurdist novel

The North Carolina writer Jason Mott has won the National Book Foundation’s 2021 prize for fiction, for his novel Hell of a Book.

The US foundation’s 72nd annual awards, presented online only due to Covid-19, were announced on Wednesday night.

The foundation described Mott’s book as a “masterful novel” that broke new ground: “A structurally and conceptually daring examination of art … [which] somehow manages the impossible trick of being playful, insightful, and deeply moving all at the same time.”

The novel interweaves the narratives of an author on a book tour (drawing on Mott’s own experiences), and a young black boy nicknamed Soot, who is relentlessly bullied by other children because of the darkness of his skin.

Mott said Hell of a Book was also inspired by the spate of black killings at the hands of US police in recent years, and what it means for a black man trying to keep himself safe on the streets of America.

“I’d like to dedicate this award to all the other mad kids, to all the outsiders, the weirdos, the bullied, the ones so strange that they had no choice but to be misunderstood by the world and by those around them,” Mott said in his acceptance speech.

“[This award is dedicated to] the ones who, in spite of this, refuse to outgrow their imagination, refuse to abandon their dreams and refuse to deny, diminish their identity or their truth or their loves. Unlike so many others.”

Mott is best known for his 2013 bestselling debut novel The Returned, about the reappearance of dead residents in a Missouri town, which was later adapted into the US TV series Resurrection.

The Harvard University historian Tiya Miles won the National Book award for non-fiction for All That She Carried. For that book, Miles tracked down the provenance of Ashley’s Sack: a piece of cloth from the mid-1800s embroidered with a message about the slave sale of a nine-year-old girl.

“My great grandmother Rose, mother of Ashley, gave her this sack when she was sold at age nine, in South Carolina,” the embroidery reads.

“It held a tattered dress, three handfuls of pecans, a braid of Rose’s hair. Told her, It be filled with my Love always. She never saw her again. Ashley is my grandmother. Ruth Middleton, 1921.”

The sack is now housed in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC.

The National Book award for young people’s literature went to Malinda Lo for Last Night at the Telegraph Club, a novel which tackles the challenges young LGBTQ people face, part of which is written in Chinese.

In an impassioned acceptance speech, Lo said the number of young adult books published with LGBTQ characters had grown significantly in the past decade.

“But the opposition to our stories has also grown,” she said.

“This year, schools across the US are facing significant rightwing pressure to remove books about people of colour and LGBTQ people – especially transgender people – from classrooms and libraries.

“I urge every one of you watching to educate yourselves about your school boards and vote in your local elections … we need your support to keep our stories on the shelves. Don’t let them erase us.”

The Latino poet Martín Espada won the National Book award for poetry for his collection of poems Floaters.

The National Book award for translated literature went to Aneesa Abbas Higgins for her translation of Elisa Shua Dusapin’s Winter in Sokcho, from French into English.

Women distinguished for contribution

Two lifetime achievement medals were also awarded.

Karen Tei Yamashita, the author of the novels I Hotel, Tropic of Orange and Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, was awarded the medal for distinguished contribution to American letters.

The Japanese-American writer said politics and resistance were at the heart of Asian American literature.

“For our community your recognition tonight is significant, especially this year post-pandemic, having weathered the Twitter of absurdity, corruption and mendacity, the brutality of racial profiling and the provocation of anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, anti-Muslim, anti-Asian hatred,” she said.

“In such times, may our writing forge tolerance and care.”

A lifetime achievement medal for outstanding services to the literary community was awarded to Nancy Pearl, an author, literary critic and the former executive director of Seattle Public Library’s Washington Center for the Book.

Pearl is best known for her bestseller Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason (2003), and as the founder of the One City One Book project that has spread throughout the world.

“I’m dedicating this to the librarians who do such essential work for their communities,” she said.

“One of the foundational principles of the public library is that it is a truly egalitarian institution, available free to everyone regardless of ethnicity, race, religion, age or economic status.

“As such, it is a democratising and unifying force in our society, which is needed now more than ever before.”

Announcing Pearl’s award, the Washington Post book critic Ron Charles said Pearl represented the ideal of a librarian.

“An activist for the unbridled pleasure of reading, she’s not a guardian of the treasures,” he said. “She’s a farmer of the orchard.”

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HELL OF A BOOK

by Jason Mott ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 29, 2021

By turns playful and surprising and intimate, a moving meditation on being Black in America.

A Black writer's cross-country book tour becomes a profound exploration of love, friendship, and racial violence in America.

A man finds himself sprinting down the hallway of a Midwestern hotel, naked, a stranger (whose wife he's just been caught sleeping with) close on his heels. So begins our nameless narrator's book tour, which will take him around the country to promote his debut novel, Hell of a Book . As the author confronts the politics of publishing and marketing, he must answer to two very different perspectives: There are those, on the one hand, who believe in the impact of his book but wonder why he has chosen not to represent “the Black condition.” On the other hand, his media trainer advises, in a tone less flippant than sincere, that “the last thing people really want to hear about is being Black.” Meanwhile, he begins to form an unlikely friendship with a Black boy—a shadowlike, ever present 10-year-old he calls The Kid—as around them the country mourns another victim of police violence. Braided with the author’s narrative are chapters following the life of a boy referred to as Soot, which he's called by the kids in his rural Southern town on account of his very dark skin. Uncomfortable in his skin and bullied by his peers, Soot feels neither safe nor wanted in the world, withdrawing into himself and attempting to find some refuge in his imagination. When his father is murdered outside their family home, Soot finds safety in stories. As chapters alternate between the author’s and Soot’s perspectives, their narratives slowly begin to merge, unfolding into a story that is at once a paean to familial love and friendship and a reckoning with racism and police violence.

Pub Date: June 29, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-33096-8

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021

LITERARY FICTION

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New York Times Bestseller

by Catherine Newman ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 18, 2024

A moving, hilarious reminder that parenthood, just like life, means constant change.

During an annual beach vacation, a mother confronts her past and learns to move forward.

Her family’s annual trip to Cape Cod is always the highlight of Rocky’s year—even more so now that her children are grown and she cherishes what little time she gets with them. Rocky is deep in the throes of menopause, picking fights with her loving husband and occasionally throwing off her clothes during a hot flash, much to the chagrin of her family. She’s also dealing with her parents, who are crammed into the same small summer house (with one toilet that only occasionally spews sewage everywhere) and who are aging at an alarmingly rapid rate. Rocky’s life is full of change, from her body to her identity—she frequently flashes back to the vacations of years past, when her children were tiny. Although she’s grateful for the family she has, she mourns what she’s lost. Newman (author of the equally wonderful We All Want Impossible Things , 2022) imbues Rocky’s internal struggles with importance and gravity, all while showcasing her very funny observations about life and parenting. She examines motherhood with a raw honesty that few others manage—she remembers the hard parts, the depths of despair, panic, and anxiety that can happen with young children, and she also recounts the joy in a way that never feels saccharine. She has a gift for exploring the real, messy contradictions in human emotions. As Rocky puts it, “This may be the only reason we were put on this earth. To say to each other, I know how you feel .”

Pub Date: June 18, 2024

ISBN: 9780063345164

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION

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THE MAN WHO LIVED UNDERGROUND

by Richard Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 20, 2021

A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.

A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.

Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son  and Black Boy , this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.

Pub Date: April 20, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8

Publisher: Library of America

Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021

LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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by Richard Wright

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Hell of a Book: A Novel

• By Jason Mott
• Reviewed by Adam Schwartz
• July 20, 2021

A wry, wrenching tale of racial trauma in America.

Just over a third of the way into Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book , the narrator describes the wood-burning heater in his childhood home as having “more tricks than a carful of monkeys.” One could say the same about Mott’s wonderful new novel itself.

Hell of a Book is many things: part send-up of the publishing industry, part road-trip comedy, part metafictional sleight of hand. But at its core, the novel is a harrowing and powerful meditation on racial injustice and its effects on the human psyche.

The author of two poetry collections and three previous novels, Mott structures his latest work around two alternating narratives: One follows the unnamed author-narrator of Hell of a Book on a raucous multi-state book tour; the other tells the story of Soot, a young boy coming to terms with the injustices of his world.

Accompanying the narrator on this sometimes-rollicking book tour is the Kid. At 10, the Kid is “gangly, meek…impossibly dark-skinned” and invisible to everyone but the narrator. The Kid can pop up anywhere: a hotel breakfast lounge, in the back of a limo, in an airport or bar. They might bicker a little, but when the Kid isn’t around, the narrator misses him and worries about him. They click because they’re both traumatized by loss, by fear, and by the burdens of being Black “in a world that works the way this one does.”

Grief and mourning haunt much of the novel. A Black kid has been killed by the police. On the TV are news stories about marches and protests. Everywhere on his book tour, the narrator is confronted by people — talk-show hosts, readers, his agent — asking him about it. As the famous author of Hell of a Book , he’s expected to say something wise. But he’s frazzled, his mind working furiously — often futilely — to keep out the sadness of another “cop-killed Black kid.” 

The narrator’s method for dealing with the suffering of others is to retreat into a state of “persistent daydreaming.” A lauded writer, he is also an escapist, repelling fear, grief, intimacy, and loneliness with liquor, humor, noirish verbal gimmicks, and a powerful imagination. Of course, his methods for dealing with trauma aren’t very effective. And as the novel unfolds, pressures build and threaten to derail his book tour.

The other narrative that keeps this novel motoring is the story of Soot. Here, the setting changes to Soot’s hometown in rural South Carolina, and the point of view shifts to third person.

Like the Kid, Soot is 10, dark-skinned, and can also make himself invisible, albeit less reliably. For Soot’s father, William, America is terrifying. The dead Black kid on TV has the nation’s attention, and William can’t bear to explain to Soot that another racist cop has killed another innocent boy “that looked like him.”

In time, Soot’s family will also confront tragedy. Beautiful depictions of the family and the love that holds them together are juxtaposed with disturbing scenes of police violence and its aftermath.

Without resorting to sentimentality, Mott makes Soot’s innocence palpable. When Soot is cruelly bullied by another Black kid on the school bus because of his dark skin, readers see how colorism can poison relationships between Black folks. And while Soot has grown up in a home steeped with love, and his devoted parents have wrung themselves out worrying about him, his mother and father can no more protect Soot from sadistic peers than they can from sadistic cops.

There is a sinking feeling that the characters in Hell of a Book cannot escape brutality from police, from the media, from colorism, from gun violence — “the soundtrack of America” — and from “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.”

The novel reflects the ugly realities of a nation where Black people are far more likely than white people to be stopped, searched, arrested , and killed by police. This is a book about what it’s like to live with those fears. Although the wisecracking narrator keeps up a chipper façade, he’s internalized these fears. Over and over, he’s racked by nightmarish hallucinations of innocent loved ones killed during encounters with the police. America, the novel shows us, traumatizes Black folks — even celebrated authors who grace the cover of Entertainment Weekly.

Here and there, Mott skewers dim white people who hide behind the myths about America. One white character, a media trainer, doesn’t realize that police violence against Black people didn’t start with the arrival of smartphone cameras. (Hilariously, he also thinks Kafka is a rapper.) When the narrator gives the Kid a version of the Talk, he takes aim at self-servingly naïve white folks:

“Most of them will think that everything is okay and that you’re being treated well enough and that everything is beautiful…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.”

For all its moments of levity, Mott has written a deadly serious story. By taking readers inside the psychic toll of racial trauma, Hell of a Book offers a disturbing portrait of a nation that’s been lying to itself all its years. In this way, the novel feels like a plea — intense, moving, urgent, and vital.

Adam Schwartz ’s debut collection of stories, The Rest of the World , won the Washington Writers’ Publishing House 2020 prize for fiction. His stories have won prizes sponsored by Poets & Writers, Philadelphia Stories, and Baltimore City Paper and have appeared in numerous publications. His nonfiction has appeared in the Forward, New York Daily News, Sewanee Review, Baltimore Sun, and elsewhere.

Support the Independent by purchasing this title via our affliate links: Amazon.com Or through Bookshop.org

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Hell of a Book by Jason Mott review — the novel that dares to be funny about Black Lives Matter

You’ll cry tears of laughter in this ingenious comic novel.

W ith the US embroiled in its painful, prolonged reckoning with police violence against African-Americans, it is timely — and perhaps not surprising — that the National Book award last month was given to this brilliant and inventive novel about race and discrimination in the States. What is most surprising, however, is how funny the novel is. Jason Mott, an already successful American novelist, has dared to bring anarchic farce, vertiginous layers of irony and often riotous hilarity to the Black Lives Matter movement and, indeed, to the entire field of portraying the black American experience in fiction.

Mott’s route into his subject is so sharp and funny — for the first uproarious third of the book, at least — that I frequently had tears in

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“Hell of a Book” by Jason Mott

Hell of a Book takes the nonfiction clay of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me and Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste and shapes an elegant yet whimsical vase. His fictional world teeters between the real and the surreal, between farce and tragedy. No wonder this novel won the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction! Why choose fiction instead of nonfiction as a vessel? To quote from the novel, “a good story was the only way to tell the truth.” Hell of a Book succeeds in giving readers both: a great story and the unvarnished truth, all without losing hope.

An unnamed Black author on a nationwide book tour serves as the unreliable narrator framing the story. The author has a condition, he explains. He can’t tell what is real and what is just his imagination running wild. Is he mentally ill? Drunk?  Damaged by a traumatic experience? Or just exhausted by the demands of the book tour? Despite the author’s grueling schedule of travels and interviews, he is supposed to be writing a second book. A publishing representative and bizarre media expert offer farcical guidance, adding to the tour’s surreal atmosphere.

The author claims he is telling us a love story. Not the kind of love story you think—even though he does have a few dates with various girls named Kelli, Kellie, Kelly, Keli—whoever. And he does have at least one hysterically funny sexual encounter. But that’s not the love story he is telling.

Hell of a Book is also the story of Soot , a Black child growing up in a small town in North Carolina. His parents taught him to be invisible to stay safe—but is safety possible for a Black male in America? Maybe not, yet Soot comes to believe in the power of stories to take away pain and offer “hope where there had been despair.”

Hell of a Book is also the story of The Kid, a Black boy who may or may not be real. Who are these Black children? What connection do they have to the narrator?

Sometimes, Mott shoves razor-sharp truth into the mouth of his narrator. Here’s a gem when the narrator is conversing with The Kid:

“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.”

He can’t bring himself to talk to The Kid yet about the police, about race, about survival. He hates to destroy the child’s innocence. He does try to teach him to love his skin color, using a metaphor of an ebony peacock he sees (imagines?) nearby:

“Its inky plumage scintillates in the afternoon sun, refracting the light through the lens of darkness and shooting out something more beautiful than I’ve ever seen before. It looks the way jazz might if it had a form that you could see that wasn’t Miles Davis.”

Mott’s poetic language shines in this and other examples of the “Black is Beautiful” message.

However, touches of poetry, magical realism, and the narrator’s fantasy world cloak the novel’s dark truths. One fact is that jobs with swing shifts often contribute to early death.  And “only certain tax brackets get the luxury of knowing something’ll kill you and being able to choose not to do it.” Another truth the book reveals is the fear Blacks carry with them every day:

The Fear. That’s the thing that was really dangerous. It had a fist in my stomach and wasn’t about to let go. My whole body felt like it wasn’t mine anymore. Like maybe it had neve been mine. Like it might suddenly be taken away from me at any moment and there was nothing I could do about it. What’s worse, there was nothing I would ever be able to do about it. That’s what the Fear really came down to. That’s what all of the other fears were derived from people of a certain skin color living in a certain place. But it wasn’t just a fear, it was a truth. A truth proven time and time again for generations. A truth passed down through both mouth and mandate, from lip-to-lip legislation. Certain bodies don’t belong to their inhabitants. Never have, never will again. A persistent, inescapable, and horrific truth known by millions of unsettled bodies. The Fear. . . . Can’t ever forget that you don’t belong to yourself anymore, but to the hands, fists, cuffs, and bullets of a stranger.

Back to the love story the narrator says he is telling. No, it isn’t a happy-ever-after ending with one of the Kellys. More like a twist on the myth of Narcissus—one you should read and discover for yourself. Hell of a Book is more than one hell of a book illuminating one of this country’s most fundamental social issues. Hell of a Book is a truly gorgeous novel.

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• About the Book

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 urgent: since 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 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 10 years. And in its final twists it truly becomes its title.

Audiobook available, read by JD Jackson and Ronald Peet

Hell of a Book by Jason Mott

• Publication Date: June 28, 2022
• Genres: Fiction
• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Dutton
• ISBN-10: 0593330986
• ISBN-13: 9780593330982

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Reading Through the Awards: Hell of a Book by Jason Mott

In a continuation of our series of micro-reviews, assistant editor Brandon Williams brought together a group of ardent readers to give their quick-hit impressions of recent novels which have won major awards from the literary world. Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book , winner of the 2021 National Book Award, is our next selection.

Quick Book Summary (from the official blurb) : “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 urgent: since 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.”

In Hell of a Book by Jason Mott, an unnamed author goes on a book tour across the country, converses with a possible figment of his imagination, and a boy named Soot deals with bullying and loss. Each of these characters must reflect on and reckon with their Blackness, and Mott manages to execute these in often comedic ways. In one of the many meta moments of the novel, the narrator/author seemingly discovers that he’s Black. This triggers several conversations about his life, his skin color, and his book with several charming side-characters. Echoing the humor sprinkled throughout, Mott manages to simultaneously ground his world in current events like Black Lives Matter protests and keep it suspended in the strange interactions surrounding those events. In a similar move to amplify that floating nature of the narrative, every person he meets raves about his book, but the author hardly even knows what it’s about. “Hell of a book,” he and everyone around him says, but specifics are nonexistent on the page. At the same time, the novel explores the story of Soot, a young Black boy who wants to (and can?) turn invisible. Soot more immediately navigates the trauma of bullying, loss, and what it means to him to be Black in America—something the author also must process. At its core, Hell of a Book is about love of family, of self, and how to protect and preserve that love.

Hell of a Book is smart, immersive, cinematic and hilarious. There is a real electricity to the voice: both a moral urgency and an insistence on entertaining. Mott miraculously plants his novel very firmly in the present moment and American history, the novel calling equal parts to Ralph Ellison as it does to, say, Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole. It reminds us that, in all the heated urgency that was 2020 (and, less so, unfortunately, 2021) American racism — and our often-scripted responses to it — is nothing new. The novel coerces us into the uncomfortable question: how much has changed, really, from when Ellison published his Invisible Man in 1953 to Mott’s publication of Hell of a Book (featuring, it’s worth noting, the invisible and possibly imaginary character, The Kid) in 2021? Still, the book is not perfect. And, you know, I refuse to play the grouchy highbrow critic undermining a good and serious book for its playfulness. But the irony of the book, its blunt awareness of its artifice, its often-detached rendering of our writer-protagonist… there’s something about it that stopped me from feeling as invested and moved as I wanted to be. The novel indulges in its cheekiness . There is something thrilling about voice and dialogue to be sure, but there are moments nonetheless that, instead of deepening theme or advancing narrative, just sort of… linger. Which I mostly didn’t mind: Mott can damn well write. But there are sections of the novel that feel prolonged, indulgent, lost in conceit and voice and narrative frenzy.

Which is not to dismiss the fact that this is a very good book. I had a lot of fun reading it; I felt challenged and stimulated by the questions it asks about author and audience, the commodification of a writer’s identity, the ways our collective liberal consciousness confronts and ignores police brutality, the ways our collective humanity becomes shallowed by hackneyed news-cycle cliches. It’s funny: I’d probably like this book a whole lot more if I didn’t come in thinking, So what’s this National Book Awarder all about ? It’s an interesting thing, how these accolades color our expectations and reading experience. What really matters is this: Hell of a Book is indeed a very good book — and despite its flaws, maybe even a great one.

Joshua Olivier

Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book , more than anything else, is a series of old stories framed in new ways. A successful writer on his first book tour self-destructs while grappling with alcoholism, mental illness, and a past he doesn’t want to remember or acknowledge; a Black boy with uniquely dark skin tries to find his place in a country inundated by racially-motivated police shootings; a book reckons with itself as a story and stories as reality.

At its best, the novel uses its humor and metatextualness to tackle familiar political and human concerns in a way that feels fresh. The unnamed author’s voice zings along like a go-kart, often laugh-out-loud funny and always aware of itself as voice, just as the book is always aware of itself as a book—the author’s novel, for instance, is also titled Hell of a Book , and he’s often unable to distinguish reality from fiction. Other standout examples include a scene wherein the author abruptly realizes he’s Black—which in addition to being hilarious raises some hard-hitting questions about identity and presentation—and one in which he’s confronted by a police officer responsible for killing a Black boy who refuses to take responsibility for what he did. “And that,” diagnoses the author, “[is] the whole problem.” The boy—nicknamed Soot—takes over for alternating chapters; these passages serve to ground the book in a childhood where being Black is a dangerous reality Soot’s parents continually try to shield him from, until they can’t.

At its worst, Hell of a Book gets lost in its own sense of untetheredness. Toward the conclusion, as the author’s break from reality becomes complete, some of the metatextual elements start to feel too familiar, and the characters Mott has spent the bulk of a novel molding lose some of their definition as people. It’s hard to feel by this point that they aren’t simply stand-ins for a generalized Black American experience, especially as the text calls in to question specifics of those characters’ histories and personalities. As purposeful as this may be, it also undermines one of the novel’s central theses: that people killed in the US as a result of their Blackness are first and foremost people with bodies and minds and communities. Although not every move Mott makes pays off, make no mistake— Hell of a Book grapples with race and violence in the US in a way that demands you pay attention. It’s imperfect, but also layered, timely, and very much worth reading.

Benjamin Van Voorhis Curated by Brandon Williams

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Hell of a Book

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***2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER*** ***THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER*** Winner of the 2021 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize Finalist, 2022 Chautauqua Prize Finalist, Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing Shortlist, 2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Shortlist, 2022 Maya Angelou Book Award Shortlist, 2022 Carnegie Medal Longlist A Read With Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick! An Ebony Magazine Publishing Book Club Pick!  One of Washington Post 's 50 Notable Works of Fiction | One of Philadelphia Inquirer 's Best Books of 2021 | One of Shelf Awareness's Top Ten Fiction Titles of the Year | One of TIME Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books | One of NPR.org's "Books We Love" | EW ’s "Guide to the Biggest and Buzziest Books of 2021" | One of the New York Public Library's Best Books for Adults | San Diego Union Tribune —My Favorite Things from 2021 | Writer's Bone's Best Books of 2021 | Atlanta Journal Constitution—Top 10 Southern Books of the Year | One of the Guardian 's (UK) Best Ten 21st Century Comic Novels | One of Entertainment Weekly 's 15 Books You Need to Read This June | On Entertainment Weekly 's "Must List" | One of the New York Post 's Best Summer Reading books | One of GMA's 27 Books for June | One of USA Today 's 5 Books Not to Miss | One of Fortune 's 21 Most Anticipated Books Coming Out in the Second Half of 2021 | One of The Root 's PageTurners: It’s Getting Hot in Here | One of Real Simple 's Best New Books to Read in 2021 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 urgent: 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.

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• ISBN: 9780593330999
• Release date: June 29, 2021
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Fiction African American Fiction Literature

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OverDrive Read ISBN: 9780593330999 Release date: June 29, 2021

EPUB ebook ISBN: 9780593330999 File size: 1667 KB Release date: June 29, 2021

• Jason Mott - Author
• Formats OverDrive Read EPUB ebook
• Languages English

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Hell of a Book: National Book Award Winner and A Read with Jenna Pick (A Novel) Hardcover – June 29, 2021

• Print length 336 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Dutton
• Publication date June 29, 2021
• Dimensions 5.81 x 1.21 x 8.52 inches
• ISBN-10 059333096X
• ISBN-13 978-0593330968
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved..

I. In the corner of the small living room of the small country house at the end of the dirt road beneath the blue Carolina sky, the dark-skinned five-year-old boy sat with his knees pulled to his chest and his small, dark arms wrapped around his legs and it took all that he had to contain the laughter inside the thrumming cage of his chest.

His mother, seated on the couch with her dark hands folded into her lap and her brow furrowed like Mr. Johnson's fields at the end of winter, pursed her lips and fidgeted with the fabric of the tattered gray dress she wore. It was a dress she'd bought before the boy even came into this world. It aged with him. Year upon year, the blue floral pattern faded, one shade of color at a time. The threads around the hem lost their grip on things. They broke apart and reached their dangling necks in every direction that might take them away. And now, after seven years of hard work, the dress looked as though it would not be able to hold its fraying fabric together much longer.

"Did you find him?" the boy's mother asked as her husband came into the room.

"No," the boy's father said. He was a tall man with large eyes and a long, gangly frame that had earned him the nickname "Skinniest Nigga Breathing" back when he was a boy. The name had stuck over the years, lashed across his back from childhood to manhood, and, having never found a cure for his almost mythological thinness, the man had taken to wearing long-sleeved clothes everywhere he went because the empty air held within the sleeves made him look larger than he was. At least, that was what he believed.

He was a man who had been afraid of the eyes of others for all of his life. How could he not want his child to learn the impossible trick of invisibility?

"It's okay," he said. "We'll find him soon. I know it. I'm sure that, wherever he is, he's fine. He can take care of himself. He's always going to be fine." He took a seat beside his wife on the tired brown couch and wrapped the spindly reeds of his fingers around the fidgeting doves that were her hands. He lifted them to his lips and kissed them. "He's a good kid," the father said. "He wouldn't just up and leave us. We'll find him."

"He's the best boy in the whole world," the mother said.

"Maybe he just went off into the woods to find some briarberries. I bet that's where he went."

"You think so?"

The father thought for a moment. "Not sure, but I'm hopeful, Dollface." The boy's mother chuckled at "Dollface" and dabbed the corner of her eye. Was she crying?

The groundswell of laughter that had been tickling the boy's throat for so long finally-as he sat, invisible and unseen only an arm's length away-faded at the sight of his mother's tears. His arms tightened around his legs.

He shouldn't have done this. He shouldn't have made them worry like this. They were good parents and they hated worrying about him. A lead ball of regret formed in the boy's stomach. It rang and drummed through his entire body. He needed to stop this trick he was playing on them . . . but how?

What could he do? He was less than two feet from where his parents sat, but guilt over his mother's tears pushed down on the hands that would reach out and touch her and let her know he was there. It weighted down the tongue that would sing her name and free her from fear.

There was no way, his five-year-old mind figured, that he could let them know that it had all been a joke. He could never explain to them that this was all meant to be fun. Not just fun, a celebration! After all, he had done it! For three years now, his mother and father had been trying to teach him to become invisible, to become "The Unseen." That was the name the boy's father gave to it. He said the words with a fantastic tone. He spoke with his hands in the air, sweeping back and forth gently like he was playing some magical instrument. "You will become The Unseen," the boy's father said. He added an almost spooky "Ooooooo" to the end of it sometimes. "You'll be unseen and safe for as long as you live," his father said. ". . . Can you even imagine it?"

It was the words "unseen and safe" that made his father smile. It was the boy's favorite smile, like he was watching his father gain everything he had wanted out of his life.

Unseen and safe.

Sanctified words.

"What should we do?" his mother asked her husband.

"Should we just call it quits?" replied the boy's father. He put a spindly hand on his forehead and looked very dramatic all of a sudden, the way people in movies sometimes did. And, yet, the boy thought he saw the beginnings of a smile hiding in the shadows of his father's face. "I mean," the boy's father continued, "if he's gone, maybe we should make like a banana and split. We could pack it all up and head out west somewhere. I hear they got tons of kids out there who need a fine set of parents like us."

The boy's mother smiled as though her husband had told a joke. Humor was one of his gifts. His jokes painted the walls of his family's home in brushstrokes of laughter.

But, in spite of the fact that he knew his father was trying to be funny, the boy heard his words and imagined his parents leaving him and, once again, the sea of fear swelled up inside of him.

"No, no, no," said his mother.

And just like that, the fear ebbed.

"You're right," his father said. "We could never leave him. He's just too great. No other kid in this world like him. So what should we do?"

"I have an idea," the boy's mother declared. Excitement filled her voice and spilled over into the boy. His mother always had the best ideas.

"We'll cook everything he likes to eat. All of it. One big meal like they used to do back in the old days. And the smell of it will go out all over the world and find him. That'll bring him home!"

The boy almost cheered. A great dinner of all his favorite things. All of it spread out on the kitchen table, one dish after the other. The idea that the smell of the foods he loved could go out into the world and bring him home . . . it was like something from one of the books he read at bedtime: all myth, and dream, and splendor.

The boy's father leaned back for a moment and looked at the mother through squinted eyes. "His favorite foods?" he said, stroking his dark, narrow chin. "You reckon that'll work?"

"I know it will," his mother said. "He'll smell them. The chicken. The macaroni and cheese. Maybe even a sweet potato pie or two. He never could turn down sweet potato pie."

"Pie you say?" The boy's father licked his lips. "You could be onto something with this scheme of yours. It's got legs, I think. Just like you." He kissed his wife's neck and she laughed the light, lilting laugh that she sometimes did late at night when the two of them were alone in their bedroom with the door locked.

"Stop that," she giggled.

"I don't know," the father said, his mouth a wry grin. "I still think we might could go out west and find a new kid. I hear they make some out there that actually like to eat their vegetables."

The mother laughed and the boy almost laughed too. "No," she chuckled. "We'll cook and he'll come back to us. Just you watch."

She stood then and brushed off her old dress as she always did and she went into the kitchen. For a moment, the father stayed in the living room and stroked his chin again. "Well, kid," he mused, "wherever you are in this world I hope that you know that I would never move out west and try to find another son. You're the only ankle-biter I could ever want." Then he stood and went into the kitchen and began helping his wife.

Before long, the house billowed with the smells and sounds of the boy's favorite food. The chicken fried in a heavy black skillet and the macaroni bubbled and baked in the oven. There were sugared strawberries, and muscadine grapes, and leftover pound cake that the boy had forgotten was still in the house. Even though he was still hidden, his stomach growled so loudly that he feared it would give him away. But his mother and father didn't seem to hear and so he was able to continue to sit-even with the hunger in the pit of his stomach-and close his eyes and smell all of the dancing aromas.

In that moment, invisible and buried in his parents' love, he was happier than he had ever been. And soon, in spite of his hunger, he was asleep.

He awoke to the feeling of his father lifting him in his arms.

"There you are," his father said.

He carried his son into the dining room, where the table was covered with all of the boy's favorite foods.

"There he is!" the boy's mother screamed at the sight of her son. Then she hugged him so tightly that he could hardly breathe. That was always his favorite type of hug. It was like melting into the summertime earth.

And when the hug was over, his mother kissed him and asked, "Where were you?"

"I did it," the boy exclaimed. "I really did it!"

"Did what?" his father asked.

"I was invisible!"

His parents' eyes went wide as star magnolias.

"No!" his father exclaimed with joy, looking very dramatic like TV people again.

"You really did it?" his mother asked, equally elated.

"Yep," the boy chirped, almost laughing. "I was in the living room this whole time. Unseen just like you said. It really worked, Mama!" 

Then his mother hugged him and the three of them danced and laughed and smiled like they never had before. In that moment, the worries that had always hung over their heads were suddenly gone. It was as though all three of them might suddenly levitate off of the floor, float up into the blue sky that sprawled itself out long and wide above the small country house that the family called home.

The next day, the boy, still drunk on sweets and wonder, asked his father: "You really couldn't see me, could you?" "It doesn't matter if I saw you or not," his father said. "All that matters is that you felt safe."

The thing to remember is this: above all else, this is a love story. Don't ever forget that.

But now that that's out of the way, let's get acquainted:

It's 3 a.m.

It's 3 a.m. and I'm somewhere in the Midwest-one of those flat states where everyone seems nicer than they should be. I'm in a hotel. In the hallway. I'm running. No, actually, I'm sprinting. I'm sprinting down this midwestern hotel hallway. Did I mention that I'm naked? Because I am.

Also: I'm being chased.

About fifteen feet behind me-also sprinting, but not naked-is a very large man wielding a very large wooden coat hanger. Sometimes he holds it like a baton. Other times he holds it above his head like a battle-axe. He's surprisingly fast for a man his size.

The very large man with the very large coat hanger is draped in Old Navy couture: beige straight-fit stain-resistant khakis, argyle sweater vest, brown twill boat shoes that may or may not be faux leather. He's a family man for sure. 2.3 kids. Dog named Max. Cat named Princess. Aquarium that's on its twelfth goldfish named "Lucky." He drives a Camry and lives on a cul-de-sac in a home surrounded by a picket fence. There's an in-ground pool in the backyard. He's got a healthy 401(k).

He's everything a responsible adult should be.

He looks to be about the same age as I am-leaving the decadent comfort of thirty and reluctantly knocking on the grizzled front door of forty. And for an instant, as the two of us sprint down this luxurious hotel hallway-feet thumping on the carpet, lungs burning, arms pumping like oil wells-I think about stopping and asking him how he built that life. How he made it all come together so perfectly. How he managed to do everything I've been unable to. I want to hear his secret.

But as I take a look back over my shoulder, I see him raise that coat hanger of his into a battle-axe position and shout, "My wife! That's my wife! We made babies together!"

No. This won't be the day I find out the secret of people like him. All I can do now is try to stay ahead of that coat hanger. So I put my head down and try to remember what my high school track coach told me: "High knees. High head. High speed."

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Dutton; First Edition (June 29, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 059333096X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593330968
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.81 x 1.21 x 8.52 inches
• #235 in Southern Fiction
• #4,306 in Black & African American Literature (Books)
• #6,242 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the author

Jason Mott lives in southeastern North Carolina. He has a BFA in Fiction and an MFA in Poetry, both from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His poetry and fiction has appeared in various literary journals. He was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize award and Entertainment Weekly listed him as one of their 10 "New Hollywood: Next Wave" people to watch.

He is the author of two poetry collections: We Call This Thing Between Us Love and "...hide behind me..." The Returned is his first novel.

The Returned has also been optioned by Brad Pitt's production company, Plan B, in association with Brillstein Entertainment and ABC. It will air in March, 2014 on the ABC network under the title "Resurrection."

Customer reviews

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• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 57% 26% 11% 4% 2% 2%

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Customers say

Customers find the humor in the book poignant and challenging. They also disagree on the romance, with some finding it real and touching, while others say it's disjointed and questionable. Readers also disagree about the writing style, with others finding it smart, relatable, and talented, while still others find it confusing and difficult.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the emotional impact of the book heartbreakingly poignant, terrifying, and depressing. They also say the sentences are moving and vivid. Readers also mention the book weaves together a deeply meaningful and painful narrative.

"...This is all real in Hell of a book. This book will make you laugh, cry , frustrated, disappointed, depressed, hopeful, and truthful to the person in..." Read more

"...like they’re straight out of a 1940s Bogart film, while other sentences are so moving and vivid, you want to close the book and hug it for a..." Read more

"...Humorous and poignant , it speaks truth in a way that can't be ignored." Read more

"Compelling and profound . I don’t even know where to start, so I’ll just say that I am changed after reading this book...." Read more

Customers find the book humorous and poignant. They also say it speaks truth in a way that can't be done.

"This book defies definition, but I was hooked from the first page. Humorous and poignant, it speaks truth in a way that can't be ignored." Read more

"Beautiful, horrifying, insightful, humorous (at times), and heartbreaking - Jason Mott has masterfully woven together the racism of decades past..." Read more

"...This book is both humorous and heart-breaking.The story focuses on an unnamed narrator who is an author on his book tour...." Read more

"...Cinematic, funny , heart-wrenching, and timely, this novel examines an author's relationship to his own story, trauma, imagination, the history of..." Read more

Customers find the book's cover very true. They also say the book has a lot to learn.

"...to say and so many questions to ask but at the end of the day this book is real ...." Read more

"...Humorous and poignant, it speaks truth in a way that can't be ignored." Read more

"...The cover is so, so very true . We all could learn a lot from this book." Read more

"Loved the book. Read in 2 days. Could hardly put it down. Funny, true , sad...." Read more

Customers are mixed about the writing style. Some find the book smartly written, literary without being stiff, and relatable. They also appreciate the skill and utility of words. However, others say the book is confusing, repetitive, and tedious. They feel the story stalls and lucidity diminishes.

"...A Hell of a Book is fantastical without being fantasy; literary without being stiff ; message-bearing without being preachy...." Read more

"...From that point onward, the story stalls and lucidity diminishes until it becomes clear that we are reading the ramblings of an uncontrolled..." Read more

"...hauntingly beautiful, powerful, empowering, and exceedingly well-written . This is a book to be passed on to friends, family, and future generations." Read more

"When you start this book, It may seem slow and confusing . It takes awhile before things start to come together...." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the romance in the book. Some find the pain, love, and sadness real, while others say the plot is disjointed, questionable, and not hopeful.

"...The pain is real, the love is real , the sadness is real, but most of all the hope is real...." Read more

"...Cynical and dark and rambling and not hopeful .I was unable to finish it." Read more

"...reads like it is part memoir, with a bit of fantasy and a healthy dose of a love story ...." Read more

"...The plot was disjointed and questionable ." Read more

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Hell of a Book  by Jason Mott is the Read with Jenna July pick. Plus more book club news from the LA Times , Marie Clair e, and Roxane Gay. The 2021 Colorado Book Awards winners have been announced. The 2021 Wellman Award Shortlist is also announced. Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood gets reviewed. Janelle Monáe will publish The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories from Dirty Computer   in April 2022.  A Most Agreeable Murder , a forthcoming whodunit by first-time novelist Julia Seales, will get big screen treatment. Plus, a reimagined Harry Potter returns to Broadway.

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Book clubs & awards.

Roxane Gay’s Audacious Book Club at Literati is reading The Five Wounds  by Kirstin Valdez Quade (Norton; LJ starred review).

Marie Claire ’s virtual book club pick for July is Skye Falling  by Mia McKenzie (Random House).

The 2021 Colorado Book Awards have been announced.

The 2021 Wellman Award Shortlist is announced by the North Caroline Speculative Fiction Foundation. The award was “founded in 2013 to recognize outstanding achievement in science fiction and fantasy novels written by North Carolina authors.”

LA Times reviews What's Done in Darkness   by Laura McHugh (Random House): “McHugh is tremendously skilled at conveying dire poverty while acknowledging the fears such privation provokes in others — resulting in a punitive lack of empathy among other classes.”

The Washington Post reviews  Freed: Fifty Shades Freed as Told by Christian by E L James (Bloom Books): "In the end, Freed hammers home the point that while women may enjoy submission in the bedroom ... they do not enjoy being controlled and oppressed outside it."

Briefly Noted

NPR has “July Book-Ahead: What We're Excited To Read Next Month.”

USA Today shares “10 new LGBTQ books to celebrate Pride Month" and “10 notable LGBTQ novels that will educate and entertain.”

The Minnesota Star Tribune recommends “light reads for any time.”

The Chicago Tribune presents “The Biblioracle’s best books of 2021 so far.”

BookRiot shares “ 7 Crime and Mystery Books by LatinX Authors" and “5 New Books that Will Transport you to the Beach.”

Harper Voyager will publish the speculative book   The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories from Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe in April 2022. Tordotcom has more.

Oprah and Jenna Bush Hager talk book clubs at OprahDaily, which includes a recap of Jenna’s 31 picks.

The Seattle Times interviews Zoe Hana Mikuta on debut   Gearbreakers  (Feiwel & Friends: Macmillan), her two-book deal and being optioned for film.

The Rumpus talks with Jonathan Parks-Ramage, about the “dangerous myth of the ‘perfect victim’” and his latest book Yes, Daddy  (HMH).

Kate White, The Fiancée (Harper) asks top crime authors what “books they keep revisiting” for CrimeReads. Also Tracy Clark, Runner (Kensington) considers the complexity of writing PI’s of color.

Authors on Air

Dark Pictures has optioned Not Dead & Not for Sale by Scott Weiland with David Ritz (Scribner), a memoir from the late singer of the Stone Temple Pilots .  Variety has the story.

A Most Agreeable Murder , a forthcoming whodunit by first-time novelist Julia Seales has been optioned by TriStar Pictures. The book is slated to publish in 2023.  Deadline reports.

A reimagined Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling will return to Broadway as as a single show instead of a two performance experience.   The Hollywood Reporter has more.

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Ethan Smith

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.

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Jane Fitgzgerald

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Run Your Week: Big Books, Sure Bets & Titles Making News | July 17 2018

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LGBTQ Collection Donated to Vancouver Archives

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