Oh, George. 

Kate Greathead’s THE BOOK OF GEORGE (publishes October 8, 2024) features … wait for it … George, a white man who is given all the structural advantages in life and still seems to underachieve. The commentary on mediocre child-like white men in this book is fascinating. 

The reader does see where George learned to not be accountable: his family. His mother Ellen, notably, let him get away with things as his only boy and his youngest and didn’t take her mothering seriously, particularly after Denis left. It’s not like George came out of the womb entitled. 

George is not wholly unlikeable. Sure, he’s inconsiderate when he wants to be. He’s lazy a lot of the time. You just want to give him a kick in the butt. And you want his on again-off again girlfriend Jenny to realize that she is too good for George and put his sorry self behind her. 

There are a vast number of scenes in this book to pick from as the most “George.” The scene that pisses me off the most when Jenny comes over to pack his crap while he plays video games. 

There are a lot of small vignettes in this novel that really show off George’s immaturity. The author is a very deft writer down to the sentence because I could take so much from even a paragraph. I suppose it comes down to how I questioned spending my reading time on this underachieving white man when I could have been reading about more interesting and motivated characters who engage with the world in other books.