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Content snapshot
Flag an inaccuracy →What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.
Violence
Very heavy
The police killing of a Black child and the murder of Soot's father are the novel's twin wounds, revisited throughout
Language
A lot
Profanity throughout the tour chapters, plus racist language directed at Soot
Sexual Content
Some
The book opens on the aftermath of an affair — the narrator escaping a hotel naked — and there is talk of sex on tour, but nothing is described explicitly
Substance Use
A lot
Steady drinking as self-medication across the book tour
Emotional Intensity
The heaviest element
What this book is about
Mott's National Book Award winner follows an unnamed author across a book tour he can barely stay inside, accompanied by a ten-year-old called The Kid, while alternating chapters follow Soot, a very dark-skinned boy in the rural South whose father is murdered. Kirkus describes "a reckoning with racism and police violence," with the country mourning "another victim of police violence" as the tour proceeds, and calls the result "playful and surprising and intimate" and "a moving meditation on being Black in America." The novel opens with the narrator fleeing a hotel room naked after being caught with a stranger's wife. The comedy is a coping mechanism and the book says so.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Police killing of a Black child and the murder of a father
Colorism and childhood bullying
Dissociation and unreliable perception treated as trauma response
Reader Verification
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