The Book of George by Kate Greathead: advanced book review
The Book of George by Kate Greathead
thank you to Henry Holt for the chance to read this novel early by sending me an advanced copy. on bookshelves October 8.
Overview: George is a genius. Then he's a man-child. A predictable tragedy that befalls many precocious children. George's life fails to launch after college. He meets a girl that would give him her entire world, but he squanders it one careless dirty dish at a time. He's incapable of caring for himself, of doing for himself, of making things happen for himself. Or maybe incapable is the wrong word. George simply refuses to do it. The Book of George is hilarious, but it's also a quiet tragedy of everyday life. Overall: 4.5
Characters: 5 If An Abundance of Katherines grew up, it would become The Book of George, and I find that uniquely delicious. George is a brainy, awkward child. Then he's an average college student, paralyzed by perfectionism and indecision. He's unable to choose a path, doesn't devote himself to a career–even when his girlfriend takes on supporting him to allow him to write full time as an unproven voice. George spends the entire novel depending on others because he can. Largely, he lives with his mother or with his girlfriend, in what is essentially her apartment. George fails to launch because he fails to try, and he is enabled in this pursuit. George is infuriating, but there's just enough to keep you hoping he'll get his shit together as the decades go on.
George's world is mostly filled by his family and Jenny. George and Jenny date various times over the course of the novel. They love each other, but as the book observes at one point, there's a certain doom in their original dynamic. Meeting so young, being so impressionable, settled bad patterns into the bones of their relationship. It's fascinating to watch the problems develop from this original symptom. Jenny is framed as maybe not the brightest, overly well intentioned, but a large part of that seems to be George simplifying who she is in the service of his own narrative. This creates an interesting layer to the characterization in the novel. His sister is the biggest advocate for their breakup, from a firm belief that Jenny deserves more. This says horrible things about me, but George's older sister Cressida might be the character I relate to most. His mother struggles with enabling George out of love and being incredibly frustrated with the way he lives his life. It is all so painfully realistic.
Plot: 4 The book takes place almost as a series of vignettes scattered across the decades of George's life. Sometimes, they come from a single year, sometimes a span of a few that run together. For each chunk of life there's a few scenes paired together that exemplify where George is at in life. You never know who George is going to have in his life, where he's going to live, or how he's going to make money when you get dropped down in a new phase. This allowed Greathead to take a very slice of life approach while keeping the pacing up.
Writing: 5 Greathead has a command of voice that truly blew me away. Especially in a third person novel, there's a rarity in books achieving characters that fully explode off the page like George does. This is somewhat ironic considering that the whole concept of George is that he's any millennial man. He's an animated archetype. The start of the flap copy literally reads, "If you haven't had the misfortune of dating a George, you know someone who has." She does a fantastic job of building out a world and progressing through it in a way that reveals all of George's foibles while making him compelling.
It's funny that there seems to be a trend this year in books written by women about lost, child-like millennial men fumbling in the tunnel relationships and their careers and everything else in life. Dolly Alderton's latest novel, Good Material, also comes to mind. Perhaps, this is because the final chapter gives the girlfriend the final word.
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