Arguably, the task of the modern novel is to address a moment in time, to articulate a particular kind of experience in as intimate a manner as a potential reader can stand, if not to precipitate change, then at least to bear witness. With his latest novel Jason Mott attempts to do just that, offering an increasingly untethered world a hell of a mirror through which to view itself.
Mott is a poet as well as a fiction writer, and it shows in the imagistic quality of his prose. Hell of a Book follows two alternating narrative threads. In one, an anonymous author embarks on a seemingly endless book tour, accompanied by a small black boy that only he can see. In the second, another young black boy named Soot is attempting to find his place in a world that perpetually finds new ways to tell him he is not wanted.
As the book tour rolls on and the relentless realities of Soot’s marginalisation become more and more intense, the narrative descends into the surreal, moving towards a conclusion only a clairvoyant reader could anticipate.
For all three, the Author, the Kid and Soot, the world is a haunted place. In their own ways, each of them is grieving for a life that has always seemed impossible in an America that discriminates against them for the colour of their skin, an America that wants them to disappear.
Full of strange and seemingly unconnected parts, a lesser work would have fallen apart at the seams, pulled asunder by the weight of its own incongruity. But Hell of a Book consistently proves itself to be more than the sum of its parts: a farce that provokes contemplation, a publishing parody that rings true; an honest and emotive meditation on systematic racial injustice and the myriad ways in which it breaks the human soul.
Sharp, funny, evocative, and never anything less than utterly poignant, Mott’s novel chronicles the experience and the cost of racism for black Americans with a clarity that is justifiably unsettling. Hell of a Book is distinctly American tale of racial trauma told with a dry, almost painful humour that scrapes at the reader’s heart.
