pickDude I loved this book. This is how to write an unlikeable narrator without making the whole book too miserable to read. This is also one of the only multiple perspective (kinda) books where I enjoyed reading every perspective. I related to Megan in a lot of sad ways and it captured the fears of adulthood well
so-soI‘m not sure what to make of Butler. She writes these Eeyore-like millennial anti-heroes that are just hard to get behind. This time with a foil upbeat, Christian hot mess. Then it just ends…
Megan, full of millennial ennui and hate for her job, works with Jillian, an upbeat mom with a special-needs kid, who just believes everything will work out. The book follows the women together at work and outside as they both dig holes in their lives. ⬇️
so-so⭐️⭐️⭐️ • I liked The New Me a lot more, but this is also a perfectly depressing read. Again, would only recommend this to a select few.
"Jillian, for the fourth or fifth time in her life, realized she was capable of murder."
Mood.
"She felt like a warty little toad or a troll or a guy who was so visibly lonely that everyone thought he might start beating off or crying just for the feeling of connection he would get from all that wild, concentrated attention."
"Not having a direct answer to this, Megan began the painful process of shutting the fuck up. The psychological resistance she felt was intense enough to have a physical counterpart, which was a grating feeling in the center of her chest."
A cluster B mood.
"The cigarette undid her tension from the top down, liquefying her brain, lungs, fingers, bowels, spirit, etc."
"Just as a thought experiment, Megan scanned the room for potential weapons."
The story of my working life. I work at a restaurant, so I really don't have to scan very hard.
pickIf you read Halle Butler's The New Me and thought "that was good, but it wish it were bleaker and the characters were more unlikeable...".
That said, I found it quite addictive - I wanted to look away, but I couldn't. Like A New Me, this if another dark take on modern (working) life.
How could someone not understand that other people could be unhappy? What kind of callous, horrible bullshit was that to say to a bunch of 20-year-olds, particularly when this was the time in life when things were even more acutely painful than they were in high school, that nightmare fuck, because now there were actual stakes and everyone was coming to grips with the fact that they‘re going to die and that life might be empty and unrewarding.
Sneaking a few pages of this National Book Award 5 Under 35 pick before picking up my kid at school
pickMy name and set in Chicago! Loved this book about two awful people ❤
pickMy favorite book of 2015. A kindred-spirit to Alexandra Kleeman's You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine.
Jillian | 
