Viking Press
320 Pages
I read quite a few journals about books that are coming out and which books are hyped for release. When I first learned about How to Leave the House the professional critics were giving it high marks, and the premise seemed quite fantastic. Could this debut novel be the start of an amazing career for a talented new author? I always love finding new authors before they make the big break. There’s something fun about getting in on the ground floor, so to speak. I also hate writing bad reviews of books. My purpose is to get people to read. Sometimes, however, it happens. Maybe it was all the hype, but How to Leave the House by Nathan Newman did not live up to it. Not even close.
How to Leave the House takes place over twenty four hours in the life of Natwest, a down on his luck, college aged homebody. He is getting ready to leave for university after years of putting it off, despite his self-avowed intelligence. He delays his departure as he awaits a “very special” package. What’s in that package is the worst kept secret in the entire book. Every reader will know what he’s waiting for by page three. According to the critics, what happens as Natwest attempts to retrieve that package is pure hilarity. That is what dragged me into reading this book. I was sorely disappointed.
This book is not funny. Not even remotely. It’s a jumbled mess of at least four different points of view from a group of characters that have zero depth. There’s almost nothing in anything that these characters do that makes them feel like they could be real people. The exception I will cover in a moment. The adult characters seem like they’re written from the point of view of a person who just entered adulthood and is writing about what they believe adulthood is like. There is almost no reality in it at all. The characters end up being pawns being moved around on a board without any freewill whatsoever. The book ends up being a whiney, 300-page complaint by a millennial about why they think the world sucks. It’s depressing, and it reeks of a person who never has interacted with other humans other than through the sterile medium of digital media.
Newman did write one part very well. Natwest is a gloating know it all. The author drops random bits of intelligentsia throughout. It reads like a college student who has taken one class and now knows more than everyone else because they’ve “evolved” further than the rest of us. It’s something that we all do at that age. We take one class and think that we’re better than our parents because they would have never taken a class like that or would never think that way. This is the naivete of someone who hasn’t lived long enough in the world. They can’t imagine people outside their small, isolated fiefdom of family and friends to know that there are much larger thoughts going on. The author captures this perfectly with Natwest.
I wish that I liked How to Leave the House by Nathan Newman. I see a lot of potential here. But this book just didn’t do it for me. In my opinion, the best books to read are the ones that explore the human condition and make you feel something. I felt nothing here. I am afraid that there will be a generation or two of writers who are unable to capture that because of their aversion to actually interacting with humans. Nuance is lost in the digital medium and, unfortunately, it has harmed the way we view others. This is starting to affect some of the younger writers I’ve been reading. Hopefully, we can get to the point where we can treat each other with respect and courtesy, face to face. Until then, I fear this craft may suffer. We are social creatures by nature. We need to remember that.
Craig Bacon loves to read. He hates writing negative reviews, especially since he understands the hard work that goes into the process of writing.