There are a few things that make me leery when reading a debut novel: 1) When one of the blurbs is by someone who is listed in the acknowledgments (Well that was nice of your friend/writing mentor/college roommate Dennis Cooper to say he loves this book very much); 2) When the book is, oh, say, about a bartender, and in [...]

Andrew Davidson’s debut novel The Gargoyle, is the kind of book that gives me nextbookaphobia. This is a condition marked by great fear of starting a new book because there is no way that it can possibly live up to the last book you read, because that last book was really fucking good. I’ve experienced this condition exactly twice this [...]

After drifting for a few years, the accident-prone former Hard Ten bartender Mike Mercer is inspired to become a cop when he reads a newspaper article about a San Francisco goodwill police officer who practices his mime routine while walking his beat. Mercer — nicknamed “Boy Thirteen” by his colleagues and the hero of Doug Dorst’s debut novel Alive in [...]

According to a New York Times Magazine feature on Charles Bock, it took the sadist 11 years to write his first novel Beautiful Children. Then, 406ish pages of the hardcover later, Charles Bock gives a shining example of why one should not spend 11 years on one book. Mainly, this beast is full of words. The story centers on the [...]