MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewThe title is a provocation, the jacket copy is offensively ludicrous, the cover art is a joke (a funny one). And because it’s written in a kind of bro speak, any randomly chosen page of Sean Thor Conroe’s first novel, Fuccboi, is liable to provoke mockery. Already, its premise has provided ready-made memes for rubbernecks assuming the author isn’t in on the bit ... It’s not an accident or a taunt that the authorial voice steals liberally from American and British Black vernacular English ... There’s some caricature to the prose, but this language...isn’t wholly unrealistic. It crops up all the time on social media, and routinely prompts debates over the use of Black slang by people who are not Black. In practice, it’s often cringeworthy, and Sean’s justification of his style — that it’s meant to lure \'people who don’t read\' — is the most offensive thing about it. But the author is candid about that process of appropriation ... Conroe uses the plausible deniability granted by autofiction to his advantage. Some of his trolling...can be attributed to the character. But sometimes, the text indicts its author. Sean asserts that one of the advantages of being a woman is that \'everyone needed moms; every woman could get paid to be a temporary mom.\' It reads like parody but Conroe’s treatment of his female characters echoes the thought: Most of them are caretakers ... The male relationships are more compelling ... This is Conroe’s gift. Deeply tuned into his single character, he’s able to capture evocative moments in a fresh voice ... But Conroe’s investment in Sean, which comes at the expense of everyone else, makes the author less daring than he might otherwise be. Anytime Sean does something \'bad,\' he’s redeemed in some way ... And at the end of the book, there’s a scene that I wanted to believe Conroe understood the discomfort of, in which Sean breaks up a domestic dispute between neighbors. But it hewed to the same pattern, and I couldn’t be sure whether or not he, the author, was being an idiot.
