HELL OF A BOOK by Jason Mott

The “Hell” part of this book’s title is certainly appropriate, and the subject matter is very timely.  Jason Mott makes crystal clear the life-and-death hazards of being a Black man, or even a Black boy for that matter, in this country.  Even white people like myself are now aware that parents of Black boys must have “the Talk” with their sons about possible confrontations with the police.  These days armed citizens are just as much as threat, as they have been known to gun down Black men out for a run or Black teenagers who ring the wrong doorbell.  This novel was invaluable to me from an educational standpoint in reinforcing the dangers that Black citizens have to navigate, but I was not wild about the two (or three?) confusing storylines here.  “Soot” is the nickname that a bully gives a young boy whose skin color is particularly dark.  Soot’s third-person narrative alternates with the first-person narrative of an unnamed author whose first novel is wildly successful.  Because he is Black, the author is expected to be somewhat of a civil rights advocate—a role which he resists—during his whirlwind book tour.  My problem with this book is that Soot and the author could be the same person, or Soot could be the same child as The Kid, whom the author encounters from time to time but no one else can see.  The author knows that he has difficulty distinguishing the real from the imagined, but then Soot develops a similar problem.  And as for The Kid being invisible to other people, Soot believes that it is possible to make himself invisible.  In other words, the boundaries between these three characters’ stories are fuzzy, and I was somewhat put off by these blurred lines.  In any case, if you can look past this indecipherable overlap within the novel, there’s a vital message there.