Lipstein of plagiarizing Kolker’s article — his novel was finished long before the Times piece appeared — but Last Resort offers an uncanny dramatization of the issues Kolker explored. Clearly, we live in an age sweaty with anxiety about authenticity ... If you’ve ever wondered where writers get their ideas from, Last Resort is wicked fun. If you’re a writer, Last Resort is heartburn in print. Splayed across these pages is the dark terror that lurks within any creative person’s breast: the embarrassing facts that might demolish the glorious claims made in the name of literary invention ... As Lipstein skewers the pretensions and delusions of literary ambition, he reveals the mental tricks that allow writers to imagine that they care only for art, not money or fame. And he exposes the extent to which novelists will go to ignore, obscure and even deny their sources ... expands into a deliciously absurd comedy about literary fame. This is Lipstein’s first novel, but he has somehow already acquired a bitterly accurate understanding of the tiny arena in which reviews, blurbs, book signings, Goodreads comments and puffy author profiles can coalesce to make a writer rich — or notorious ... is ultimately about the difference between what we say we want and what we pursue at our own peril. And that’s a conflict any of us can relate to, even if we haven’t stolen a friend’s story — yet.

... incredibly entertaining ... If Lipstein had written a less cunning book, he might have contrasted Caleb with a character who represented artistic purity, whatever that is. But everyone here sits somewhere on the grifter spectrum, including the real people (Avi, doomed woman, repressed married couple) upon whom Caleb’s characters are based.

Funny, stylish and accomplished, it is a satirical caper about the tangled roots of creative inspiration and the indignities of authorial ambition. There is a time-honoured – some would say moth-eaten – tradition of novelists writing novels about novelists, from Roth and Updike to Rooney, Ferrante and Jean Hanff Korelitz. Are such books interrogations of the moral and material conditions of authorship, or exercises in literary navel gazing? And who on earth wants to read another one? For much of this novel, I was surprised to find myself thinking: I do ... Lipstein sets up this dilemma, and traces the fallout from it, with a formal and stylistic swagger that more experienced novelists might envy. But at a certain point the question I found myself confronting was: who cares? Both money and acclaim undoubtedly have their upsides, but in themselves neither can give life or a novel meaning. Lipstein knows this: Last Resort is an unsparing satire of a generation of millennials who fear that their lives lack gravitas and emotional depth. Every gesture is inflected with painful self-awareness, a first approximation of feeling ... stakes everything on the hope that being knowing enough about knowingness, and ironic enough about irony, can help a novel transcend its own self-consciousness and point to something more profound. You won’t read a more brilliantly executed literary romp this year. But at a certain point you may find yourself longing for something a bit more … well, you know, whatever the opposite of empty is.

... savvy but maddening ... savvy but maddening ... [an] almost perfectly plotted debut novel on a topic — creative envy and artistic theft — that tastes like catnip to many readers of literary fiction. Unfortunately, it’s all brought down by a fatal flaw: its characters ... in place of the careful balance of shade and empathy maintained in Bad Art Friend, we have a pile-on of bad-taste friends not even drawn sharply enough to evoke dark amusement ... On the level of character, we are in for far more of the same: broad types making inane observations we are perhaps meant to sneer at. (If not, more’s the pity.) And yet the novel is so easy to read ... What to say about a book that’s so infuriating but has one of the best endings in recent memory? ... Come for the idea, stay for the plot, try to ignore the characters, savor that conclusion. And pray that, in the future, Lipstein finds a way to populate his spellbinding stories with characters who can live off the page.

Lipstein deftly uses the publication of a widely read but critical article reviewing Caleb’s novel to raise an interesting philosophical interpretation of novel-writing as a way to cheat mortality ... The narrator’s extraordinarily rich inner life makes this novel tick but carries with it the risk of pacing his story too slowly between major plot points; there is much ruminating leading to quotidian busyness on the part of the narrator, which might enhance characterization but does not always move the narrative forward ... Lipstein’s treatment of the writing and publication of fiction is refracted through an ingenious lens. The legal wrangling results in the notions of authorial credit and authorial remuneration being split apart, the concept of ‘story’ is set against that of ‘novel’, and ‘character’ distinguished from ‘real person’ ... Although certain turns in the path nearing the novel’s ultimate resolution may strike readers as at times unrealistic (until the reveal of a final, clarifying plot twist), Lipstein presents a richly drawn and clever tale. He is adept at weaving timelines, framing with finesse scenes involving multiple flashbacks. Lipstein is a confident writer, presenting a complex and often funny story involving a panoply of characters under pressure, both social and legal.

The novel is asking the reader to reckon with their own notion of what an idea is worth, and maybe where does one person’s art stop and another’s begin. Lipstein is shrewd enough to examine these questions with the right touch of irony so that Last Resort never feels didactic or too satirical. Instead, the book and its ideas serve as provocative conversation starters ... a reflection on the messiness of life and art—how their respective messes and meaning making are one in the same.

Lipstein wittily captures all the savagery of the publishing industry, from Goodreads reviews to awkward author photos. But for all the metafictional layers here, at its heart this is a surprisingly traditional, almost Dickensian, story about the vagaries of fate ... For anyone who can’t look away from a juicy literary scandal.

... fluidly written but tepid ... a series of schadenfreude-laden missteps that, while occasionally entertaining, do little to illuminate why Caleb is stuck repeating old wrongs. The underdeveloped characters add to the muddiness at the heart of this story. This lands decidedly off target, somewhere between fairy tale and satire.