PositiveBookforum... uses the conflicts between life and work and online distraction to explore the vast, modern experience of attempting to stay present even as social media fosters a constant need to click and return. This tension creates a chasm between the narrator’s reality and his fantasies fostered by the internet ... does not fit into the usual framework of self-absorbed man gleefully driving toward self-destruction ... Castro’s debut novel uses the process of writing (and not-writing) to reflect on social media’s inescapable and numbing pull. It also upends the historical \'drug novel\' by offering a portrait of what life looks like in recovery. The narrator’s hopeful reorientation out of this simulated, technological world opens space to be present, to think of his partner, and to return home humbled by the machinations of the actual world. Of course, like the novel itself, this is all a process, and Castro leaves us wondering how long it will all last.
