Publication Date: 25/01/2022 ISBN: 9781472293107 Category:

Fuccboi

Sean Thor Conroe

Publisher: Headline Publishing Group
Publication Date: 25/01/2022 ISBN: 9781472293107 Category:
Hardback

£16.99

Quantity:

Description

‘Got under my skin in the way the best writing can’ SHEILA HETI, author of MOTHERHOOD

A fearless and savagely funny examination of masculinity under late capitalism, from an electrifying new voice

Set in Philly one year into Trump’s presidency, Sean Thor Conroe’s audacious, freewheeling debut follows our eponymous fuccboi, Sean, as he attempts to live meaningfully in a world that doesn’t seem to need him. Reconciling past, failed selves — cross-country walker, SoundCloud rapper, weed farmer — he now finds himself back in his college city, trying to write, doing stimulant-fueled bike deliveries to eat. Unable to accept that his ex has dropped him, yet still engaged in all the same fuckery — being coy and spineless, dodging decisions, maintaining a rotation of baes — that led to her leaving in the first place. But now Sean has begun to wonder, how sustainable is this mode? How much fuckery is too much fuckery?

Written in a riotous, utterly original idiom, and slyly undercutting both the hypocrisy of our era and that of Sean himself, Fuccboi is an unvarnished, playful, and searching examination of what it means to be a man.

‘Terse and intense and new and sort of fucked up but knowingly so. I loved it’ TOMMY ORANGE, author of THERE THERE

‘Attempt[s] to do what in 2020s America is tricky verging on taboo: to write like a man, not an ideal’ ROB DOYLE, OBSERVER

‘Like Knausgaard, Conroe has a knack for making the mundane enthralling’ CHRIS POWER, author of A LONELY MAN

‘How brilliant to finally have a novel that examines contemporary masculinity with such candour, with such humour and style as to immediately read like amodern classic’ BARRY PIERCE, IRISH TIMES

Publisher Review

Terse and intense and new and sort of fucked up but knowingly so. I loved it -- Tommy Orange, author of THERE THERE A book to argue and laugh with; be appalled and impressed by. Fuccboi wrestles with big questions about masculinity and modernity, but best of all are its intimate and domestic moments: like Knausgaard, Conroe has a knack for making the mundane enthralling -- Chris Power, author of A LONELY MAN Dare I be so dispotic as to proclaim Fuccboi a necessary novel? You bet I do. How brilliant to finally have a novel that examines contemporary masculinity with such candour, with such humour and style as to immediately read like a modern classic. Sean Thor Conroe is a real one -- Barry Pierce * Irish Times * A blistering debut * i-D magazine * a debut coming-of-age (but probably not in the traditional sense!) novel about hypocrisy and self-awareness * Nylon magazine * Conroe's writing percolates with savage humour and wry observations on human complexity . . . Conroe works with a really rare audacity and slyness -- Anna Cafolla * AnOther Magazine * Admirably fresh . . . Conroe maybe a solipsist, or rather, his younger, fictional alter ego is a solipsist in the autofictional novel called Fuccboi. But he's good company -- thoughtful, insecure and questing. And he has a distinctive, compelling voice that strikes me as utterly of its moment, of this moment, when the podcast is a primary form of communication, the concept of masculinity is both indeterminate and suspect and the role of the novel is also under suspicion. As bookish as this novel is, it seems like a genuine attempt to speak to some of those who don't normally give a shit about books, or at least, those who don't read The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books -- while also being worth the attention of those who do. -- Jay McInerney, author of BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY * Wall Street Journal * I enjoyed being led through the vagaries of Sean's "sus hetero bro" existence and appreciated his attempt to do what in 2020s America is tricky verging on taboo: to write like a man, not an ideal. -- Rob Doyle * Observer * Modern mores and a certain type of twentysomething male energy clash colourfully in the vibrant voice of this debut novel * Observer * One of literature's most exciting new voices . . . explosive. Fuccboi has crawled up people's backsides in a way only the best fiction does, especially when it holds a mirror up to the cultural zeitgeist. * The Face * Fresh prose, colloquial and poetic * Vanity Fair * Got under my skin in the way the best writing can -- Sheila Heti, author of MOTHERHOOD Sean Conroe isn't one of the writers there's a hundred of. We won't tell somebody 'Sean Conroe' when we meant to say the name of another writer we got confused with Sean Conroe. He writes what's his own, his own way -- Nico Walker, author of CHERRY Blazes a sonic trail through the tangles of experience. A contemporary kunstleroman - a coming of age of an artist. So much about the struggle to find a nourishing and communally beneficial but still honest and not self-suppressing way to be a man -- Sam Lipsyte, author of HARK A completely unique voice . . . sounds like no one I know -- Scott McClanahan, author of THE SARAH BOOK

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