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2022 reads, #18. Wow, I went through quite an emotional journey with this book, starting with the fact that I initially gave up on it only 25 pages in, because it originally looked like it was going to be just another stupid Brooklyn hipster MFA novel by another stupid Brooklyn hipster MFA author about a bunch of stupid Brooklyn hipsters who no one can stand yet everyone keeps seeming to write books about; and I've already had enough of that kind of nonsense in my life in the last year, so I put it down quickly and added it to the pile of books to take back to the library on my next trip. But like all of these kinds of DNF novels, before I turned it back in I skipped ahead and read the last chapter, just so I'll know how it ends; and that's where I discovered a scene with our stupid Brooklyn hipsters still whining and griping at each other, but now with apparently some kind of supernatural monster tearing down the hallway of the Brooklyn loft they're all in, wreaking havoc and trying to destroy them all. So at that point I was like, Well, fuck, I guess I gotta go back and read this entire thing, because that was simply too intriguing a detail to let pass by.

While doing that, then, I also took some time to read everyone else's reviews of the book here at Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ, something I don't do until afterwards with books I like, but that I do in advance for books I'm on the fence about; and it was there that I saw that nearly every review now posted of this novel says something along the lines of "OMG THE LAST CHAPTER OF THIS BOOK BLEW MY FREAKING MIIIIIIND;" and that's when I started suspecting that this is one of those stories in the tradition of The Sixth Sense, where the story itself is actually only mediocre once you stop and really examine it, but has such an explosively unique and surprising ending that it literally changes how people feel about the 300 pages or two hours of film time that came before it. And so that's how I approached this book when I finally sat down and read the entire thing -- wary and on the alert for evidence that it was only going to be so-so, forgiving of the second act even while trying to make my way through it as quickly as possible, so that I too can see what everyone else has been raving about once you finally make it to the climax.

And indeed, be forewarned that you're going to have to pretty much read the entire first half of this book before anything interesting actually happens, but that you can't skip it because it sets up everything that pays off later; and that you need to go into it understanding that the characters are not just being needlessly cruel to each other in this first half randomly, but that there's a logical and clever purpose behind every snotty barb and half-lidded shrug we see. That's a good example of what makes this book so frustrating yet so memorable, especially for people like me who are heavy readers; for despite being a Brooklyn MFA hipster herself, author Beth Morgan has not even the tiniest interest in turning in a traditional MFA three-act structure here, which results in things like the first and second halves being essentially two entirely different books (the latter very similar to Donnie Darko, the former reminiscent of that horrid go-nowhere character study in Kenyon Review you once choked down when you were 19 because you were trying to sleep with the author), or the fact that one of the major characters just dies out of the blue with no notice at a certain point, far from a place of climax or resolution that such a death would normally occur in an MFA novel, and in fact looks at first like it doesn't even have anything to do with the bigger plot going on, until you finally get to that infamous last chapter and say with a big smile, "Ah, okay, I see now where this was going."

That's courageous of Morgan to do, and I can imagine her horrified professors during the first draft of this marking out giant sections with a red pen and scribbling "NO NO NO!!!"; and it also goes a long way towards explaining why the marketing staff of Little, Brown seems to have become completely befuddled by how to actually sell this book to the public, so made the unfortunate decision to present it as a goofy Millennial comedy about an trainwrecky Instagram influencer whose antics destroy the lives of a bland couple who develop a mutual obsession with her, when in fact this book doesn't resemble that description in even the slightest way. (Like these other idiosyncrasies mentioned, although Morgan does make our titular Jen an Instagram influencer, as an excuse for why our narrating couple know of her in the first place, we learn by the end of the book that that has not even the tiniest bit to do with the actual story being told here.) And of course this doesn't even touch on what turned out to be my personally favorite aspect of it all, that while the man in the protagonist couple looks at first to be just another cardboard-cutout whiny hipster bro, his actions become more and more repulsive and unforgivable the longer the pages continue, until we finally realize by the end that he's not actually the protagonist but the antagonist. This, then, makes for an extremely clever and interesting "anti-villain" tale, in the spirit of Breaking Bad or A Confederacy of Dunces, my absolute favorite genre of storytelling; and anti-villain tales are tough to pull off, because you basically have to hide the fact at first that the main character is actually the villain and not the hero, and then deal with the reader fallout when they've realized that you've tricked them.

I know it sounds like I'm revealing a lot of spoilers here, but let me assure you that I haven't even gotten to the actual surprises in this book, and that there isn't anything I've said here that should ruin your enjoyment of this fascinatingly unique story, but in fact should hopefully guide you into not giving up on it on page 25 like I originally did. A beautifully flawed, unforgettable debut novel, I can say with a bit of certainty even now that this will most likely be showing up on my "best reads of the year" list come December, and I'm now looking strongly forward to whatever darkly surreal nightmares Morgan has for us next.