Hell of a Book

Introduction

Jason Mott’s novel Hell of a Book: or, The Altogether Factual, Wholly Bona Fide Story of a Big Dreams, Hard Luck, American-Made Mad Kid was published in 2021. It won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2021 and the 2022 Housatonic Book Award. With its two distinct yet interconnecting narratives, Hell of a Book is a playfully disorienting novel that carefully balances both tragedy and comedy. A nuanced meditation on grief, mental illness, and racism, it explores the fear of anti-Black violence and the challenge of loving oneself in the face of racial hatred. 

Mott is the author of several novels, novellas, poetry, and short story collections. This guide cites the Dutton paperback edition published in 2022.

Content Warning: The source material features explicit depictions of anti-Black police violence. Additionally, the source material deals with untreated mental illness. This study guide quotes but obscures the author’s use of the n-word.

Plot Summary

Hell of a Book has two parallel narratives that take place in alternating chapters. The first is set in rural Bolton, North Carolina. Written in the third person, this narrative follows a young Black boy named Soot, whose parents teach him how to turn invisible to keep him safe. A parallel narrative is written from the first-person perspective of an unnamed Black author traveling the world on his first book tour. He struggles with hallucinations, memory loss, and the unaddressed trauma of his parents’ deaths.

The novel begins with Soot at five years old hiding from his parents. Sensing that he is nearby, they joke aloud about what they should do. When they find him, the family celebrates and shares a big meal.

Chapter 2 introduces the first-person narrator. He is being chased naked in a hotel by a man whose wife he has just slept with. At breakfast the next morning, the narrator meets The Kid (Soot), who is visible only to him.

Soot and his father William go to visit Daddy Henry, William’s father. Soot learns that William used to be a great artist, but he stopped drawing because Daddy Henry forbade him from drawing Black people. William blames Daddy Henry for making him hate himself and his skin.

The narrator lands in San Francisco and meets his limousine driver named Renny.

William is sad to see Soot struggling with bullying. When they see a news report about a Black boy shot by the police, William doesn’t have the heart to have “The Talk” with Soot about the danger of racial violence. Later, William is out for a night jog. On his way home, he is stopped by a police officer and shot dead in front of his house. As William dies, Soot turns invisible, becoming The Unseen.

The narrator goes on a date with a woman named Kelly from his bookstore event in San Francisco. When Kelly gets a call from work, she and the narrator go to the funeral home where she is the funeral director. In the preparation room, the narrator sees Soot’s dead body full of bullet holes. He rushes back to the hotel, where Renny finds him drunk. Renny drives him home to stay the night with him and his wife, Martha. The next morning, Kelly drives the narrator to the airport.

Grieving townspeople are gathered in the church where the Reverend comforts them about William’s murder. Some of the men in town, including Soot’s Uncle Paul, go outside to express their anger and discuss how they might bring the officer to justice. Later, Uncle Paul teaches Soot how to use a pistol. One evening, they are pulled over by a policeman. Soot disappears momentarily, confusing both Uncle Paul and the officer. The officer is aggressive, but he lets them go.

Meanwhile, the narrator’s publicist Sharon plans for him to go to his hometown of Bolton, also the site of Soot’s murder. The townspeople welcome him warmly. He also sees The Kid there, and they get to talk again. The narrator and Sharon attend a town hall in Bolton where the minister asks the narrator to speak. The narrator is resistant, but he agrees. On his way home, the narrator is stopped outside at night by the ex-officer who murdered Soot. The ex-officer wants the narrator to write his story, so people know he is not a bad person.

Later, the narrator is in Denver for a big television interview. On stage, he begins to have a mental health crisis and hallucinates an emotional conversation with Soot’s mother, who also seems like his own mother.  After this, The Kid appears and asks the narrator to tell his story.

Soot is out for a walk at night when he is stopped by a police officer. When Soot starts turning invisible, the officer shoots him.

In the final two chapters, the first-person narrator speaks to The Kid about the fear that Black parents feel about the safety of their children and how difficult it is to love one’s skin in a world that hates it. Soot wonders if he and the narrator are the same person, but the narrator says it does not matter. Soot and the narrator discuss the importance of speaking out against racial injustice.