Capturing the anxious, self-aware mood of young college grads in the aughts, Private Citizens embraces the contradictions of our new century: call it a loving satire. A gleefully rude comedy of manners. Middlemarch for Millennials. The novel’s four whip-smart narrators–idealistic Cory, Internet-lurking Will, awkward Henrik, and vicious Linda–are torn between fixing the world and cannibalizing it. In boisterous prose that ricochets between humor and pain, the four estranged friends stagger through the Bay Area’s maze of tech startups, protestors, gentrifiers, karaoke bars, house parties, and cultish self-help seminars, washing up in each other’s lives once again.
Private Citizens is a darkly funny book that sometimes is just dark. It follow four supremely unlikeable 20-somethings in 2007 San Francisco in their daily lives for some kind of awful Breakfast Club of modern times.
It took me a really long time to start accepting that I hated everyone, that it was intended, that I could still like the book. After that, it flowed very easily, going from story to story, sometimes a bit confusing and often very frustrating.
I recognized myself and my peers in this awful story about the giant mess that our protagonists are.
It was great.
💬
Alex