Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Length: 336 pages
Audiobook Length: 9 hours and 40 minutes
First Published: 2021
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Rachael’s Review
Jason Mott’s contemporary novel showcases two parallel storylines. In the first, an unnamed Black author sets out on a publicity tour of his latest book. During the tour, he keeps encountering the Kid, a possibly imaginary child. Along with this story, Mott interweaves the tale of Soot, a young Black boy with extremely dark skin facing injustices in the rural South. As the plot converges, Hell of a Book looks at the costs of racism in America.
Hell of a Book is a unique book that falls between literary fiction and satire. The author who serves as the protagonist is full of frenetic energy and an unreliable memory and would fit in perfectly with the madcap characters of Catch-22. Mott’s creative narrative keeps you unbalanced, a conversation-provoking study of what it means to be Black in America. All I can say is that Hell of a Book is a work of art you must experience for yourself.
Publisher’s Description
An astounding work of fiction from a 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 ten years. And in its final twists it truly becomes its title.
About Jason Mott
Jason Mott is the author whose works include The Returned and Hell of a Book. Visit the author’s website →
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