Hell of a Book alternates between two main stories. A nameless Black author tells his story in the first person. He is a daydreamer with an overactive imagination, a condition that he claims has been diagnosed by a mental health professional. These segments tend to be somewhat optimistic even though the author drinks too much and vomits frequently. His drinking and vomiting are most likely his reactions to the redundant questions he answers about his book. The book challenges the reader to figure out the plot of the book the fictional author is selling on his book tour. The fictional book is entitled Hell of a Book. When the story says this book is a love story, I think it is more the fictional book more than the actual book. Others might not agree, but I think the novel Hell of a Book that won the National Book Award is about identity, forgiveness, and acceptance more than about love.
Another segment is told in the third person and is much bleaker. A very dark-skinned boy, Soot leads a troubled life in Bolton, North Carolina. From an early age, his parents teach him to be invisible. He is bullied in school and does not feel comfortable in his black skin. When he witnesses his father being murdered by the police, it is a tragic life-changing event. Soot copes by delving further into his imagination and uses his stories to establish his identity. He is marginalized and lonely until he finds his voice in writing. And as the stories converge, the reader learns the impact of his formative years.
Another character is “The Kid,” who is invisible to anybody but the author. He is a very dark-skinned Black child who seems to be the author’s alter-ego. He helps ground the author when he encounters people on his book tour who recommend that he should or shouldn’t highlight the Black experience in his writing. The national book tour also documents the countless number of Blacks who have senselessly died at the hands of police and how commonplace or vanishing the memories are.
The book’s structure is unique and, like the characters, imaginative and fantastical. There are more questions than answers in the text. In an interview with the author, published in Southern Review of Books, Mott talks about the messages of the books being ambiguous and purposely posing questions without answers. Finding oneself and understanding how one fits in the world is difficult for all but especially onerous and ambiguous for Blacks. The Black author protagonist harps on many philosophical questions about whether Black authors must speak of the Black experience and how much they can disassociate. Mott describes the pain, loss, and oppression experienced daily in the Black community in an entertaining and sometimes hilarious manner.
Mott encourages the reader to look within oneself and decide whether self-acceptance exists. He also forces one to consider what is real and whether imagining things and exercising a creative spirit assists in accepting the harsh reality of life. He also provokes thoughts about relationships and uses symbolic names and events to illustrate strained relationships between Whites and Blacks.
