Who, THE HELL, let Bobby Hall, a.k.a. Logic, a.k.a. Bobby Tarantino, a.k.a Young Sinatra, a.k.a. Sir Robert Bryson Hall II, write a book.
— Austyn K. A.
The debut novel from Mr. Hall, Supermarket, surprisingly captures the struggle of mental illness, the search for passion, and the desire to feel normal. And it does so all wrapped up in an exciting but grinding, psychological thriller package. Oh wait, no, that’s the description for Fight Club (1996/9), which is all this book really is. That being said, I still read it in two days.
I can see what Hall was going for in his attempt to emulate a cult classic rewrapped in a teen-focused book. What’s great about this book is that it makes you blur the lines between yourself and main character Flynn. He’s a failing writer who was recently dumped and on the search for a job that’ll give him some steady cash. That’s not what necessarily makes you feel that you’re one-in-the-same with the lad, but instead is that he just simply doesn’t know what to do to feel good again. With the pandemic pushing through for the third year, there’s an almost uniform feeling amongst everyone that we’re struggling to remember how we obtained joy. But, this was written before pandemy times, and with that in mind, I’m not sure how well this book would resonate with he majority of the population. Unfortunately, that’s kind of all there was in terms of good things about this book (besides the familiar feeling of Fight Club (1996/9)).
Hall used the epic-twist-formula to a T making the ending, no matter how quick, pretty predictable. Working through Flynn’s eyes you begin to notice the limited interaction the character has with others. And I don’t mean that in the “this book is an introspective analysis of what it is to be a human so you only need to understand one character” kind of way, I mean it in the “wow, this guy is the only person involved here so he’s obviously going to be the cause of everything in this book whether its good or bad” kind of way. On top of that, Hall pulled from his rap career the thing people often have most about his style, over-the-top focus on what is the black person. Very specifically is an exchange with a black supermarket worker where Flynn has an internal monologue discussing how okay his prejudicial view of the worker is because she is the black stereotype. Then there’s the love interest, Mia. She’s written in a way that seems like she was an afterthought. Fight Club (1996/9) gave us Helena Bonham Carter as Marla, a love-interest with a purpose to balance and check therein character. In Supermarket however, Mia is really there just as an object of use for Flynn, something for him to take his mind off other things. Oh, and the writing itself, not like the content, the literal words on the page, was garbáge).
I said, he asked, she said, he asked, I this, I that. Maybe it’s just because it’s his first novel, maybe it’s because it was intentional, but the way he has to lay out every bit of a conversation can be disruptive to the immersive nature of reading. Most readers can naturally tell who is saying what, after the initial phrases of a dialogue, but Hall makes sure you know who’s saying what by ending almost every sentence with some kind of identifying verb. Not only does the writing style remind you you’re reading the book and not in the book, so does the number of fourth wall breaks, where Hall feels the need to explain the difficulties of writing a book. Like, you don’t need to explain you struggled writing the book, we can see it. I’m not really sure that there’s much more wrong with this book other than that, but these issues are STRONG and make it a dissatisfying read once you get to the end.
All-in-all, if I hadn’t read/seen Fight Club (1996/9) already maybe I would’ve liked this book a whole lot more, but I did read/see it and so this book was kind of a wash. But hey, if you have a kid in their teens or haven’t read/seen it, maybe give it chance. Big props to Hall for trying to make the medium-switch from music to book because that’s a challenge, but maybe he should just stick to the beats.
Official Rating: 7/13
The Inconsistent Times 