Heading home from a well-needed vacation, trapped in a tube as it propels itself through the air on what feels like bottle rockets expedited by a relentless tailwind. I was introduced to Beauj, a hitman disillusioned by the world he exists in, and his adventure across the United States and eventually to Paris. His travels mirrored my own, even if they were to different locales.
I picked the book up at a local Barnes and Noble after watching a book club session with Patton Oswalt and Anthony Jeselnik, two comedians already familiar with the works of Sam Tallent. This proved to be an excellent decision. As soon as I got to this line, I was hooked:
"Their despicable, desperate, manufactured joy made him hope to die sooner." — Brut: A Novel
Tallent depicts a realistic perspective on both the small workings and the larger monotonous nature of the underworld through a person who seems to be disconnected from the throes of anything but disappointment, heartbreak, and malice.
The character suffers a few key issues: PTSD, a broken heart, and disconnection from the morality of his situation. Under it all, the pain is palpable. I ended up seeing a lot of myself in Beauj as he navigated the world he finds himself in.
While our paths through life are very different, the anxiety and hidden pain in the novel showed me the constant momentum I feel toward the next thing. Not knowing what's next is the hardest part of existing sometimes. Getting to see the end of this particular journey was fantastic.
It's rare that I burn through a novel in less than three days, but an example of what launched me through the text is another character, Gianna, an Italian woman whose thesis seems to be the full acceptance of becoming a weapon, which she refers to as "becoming the devil."
Sam Tallent blends dry humor, fast pacing, and the droll stagnation of the day-to-day working world into something more entertaining than the violence he inflicts on his characters and their families.
I recommend diving into this one. It's a lot of long, intricate words dressing up a great story, and its pace is excellently consistent straight to the end. Coming in at just under 360 pages, it's a good vacation or commute read.
It also made me want to go back to Paris, where the bulk of the chaos occurs, and reminded me to get out as fast as possible.