Review by Booklist Review
This compelling and thrilling novel begins with an unnamed narrator on the run with an envelope full of money and one plan, to disconnect from all technology. After abandoning his car, he hides in a working-class neighborhood where immigrants are being terrorized by ICE. He lives in a room rented from a cantankerous landlady, Autumn, who is suspicious of his every move. He allows himself the luxury of only a small radio, and he spends his days surreptitiously watching the dynamics of the local children as if they are a TV show. Diligently avoiding all security cameras, he wanders the city, constantly ensuring his digital footprint is nonexistent. While very different than Dee's last novel, the expansive and much-praised The Locals (2017), his latest shares some traits of his earlier fiction in the setting and how he depicts the violence and destruction of governmental policies. His humor is reminiscent of Jean-Philippe Toussaint's Television (1997), and the propulsive plot echoes Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity (2003). Dee's impressive versatility is on display once again in this scintillating and entertaining tale.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Dee returns 11 years after his Pulitzer finalist The Privileges with an energetic character study of a white man determined to escape from his life. It starts with a burst of electric first-person action, as the unnamed narrator drives on back roads across the country, keeping off the interstate to avoid cameras, with $168,048 in cash. The narrator dishes an acerbic perspective on the passing roadside ("unzoned hellscapes in which every fast-food restaurant on earth operates a franchise side by side") and his aversion to surveillance belies a vague paranoia. He rents an unlisted room in a small unspecified city from Autumn, a healthcare worker and heavy drinker. There, his self-imposed isolation proves easier in theory than practice. After a child named Abiha accidentally drops her notebook outside Autumn's house on her way to school, the narrator returns it. The satisfaction of helping Abiha, whom he describes as a "person of color," whets his appetite for more acts of anonymous charity with his surplus of cash. Before long, he arouses suspicions from Autumn, the neighborhood children, and the police, setting him on a collision course with the life he left behind. Though a bit slim, Dee's work grapples intriguingly with the narrator's liberal myopia. It stands as a showcase of Dee's masterly prose. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
How does one disappear in a city full of people? This is the problem facing the narrator of this latest from Pulitzer Prize finalist Dee (The Privileges). Dee introduces us to…well, we don't know who. All we know of our nameless narrator is that he is on the run for stealing a sum of money he believes will last him the rest of his life. To cover his tracks, he changes his name and abandons everything that can be connected to him. The best place for him to hide? A city. On Sugar Street, to be exact. But it turns out that people and connections to them are not so easy to avoid. Over time, while he continues to "hide," his interactions with the people around him increase until they reach the point where the walls of his isolation crumbles, and he is discovered. Though we never find out his name or very much about him, his voice and his story are compelling. VERDICT A story of the desperation and ultimate impossibility of isolation, Dee's narrative is a spider web of questions that won't let readers go, questions like where does insanity begin and end? Readers of Dee's earlier novels will not want to miss this page-turner.--Michael F. Russo
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