"You want to know who the antichrist is? The antichrist is a teenage boy, and do you know where he lives? In my house, up those stairs."

I loved this book but also don't want to recommend it to anyone because I'm a little scared I'm going to get canceled for rating it 5 stars. It's not horror, but it is horrifying. It's not comedy, but it is hilarious. Brad would roll his eyes at the idea of being one-dimensional enough to be sorted into a mainstream genre, anyway.

Brad Sela is 17, the year is 1999, & MTV is life. The Columbine shooters are famous, image is everything, & no one understands him. Until he meets Lu & Shane, new kids in school, who indulge his desires to do absolutely anything in order to feel something. Apathy is cool, but being complacent in it? Gag. These characters are all absolutely horrible to each other, because there's nothing quite as homoerotic as male rage, & feelings are for losers.

This is a vitriolic satire of society's toxic nostalgia for decades past. I've seen some reviews ding the author for use of more modern phrasing, but to me it almost felt like a fourth wall break, like he was mocking me directly for even reading this book. If you're just looking surface-level, it can read like a Y2K Pinterest board made by a member of Gen Z. But it's more like how embarrassingly tryhard it would be to live your entire mundane life as if it was the step-by-step construction of said Pinterest board, & then STILL not nail the aesthetic.

There is something so uncomfortably funny about this book capitalizing races correctly or censoring slurs in the same sentence where characters use the r-word. It's like the book is winking at you. "I know it's 2023, that would have been offensive to include." If you love Bret Easton Ellis to the point that you almost want to satirize yourself for enjoying the satire so much, this is the book for you. If you have any triggers at all, it it decidedly not for you.

Thanks to Filip @ Permuted Press, who reached out offering an ARC of this one in exchange for an honest review! I had a good time & feel kind of guilty about it, what more could you ask for?