By engaging with what the author calls 'thickets of untruth,' this book could not be more timely ... The Fact Checker lands as a clever caper not just about sometimes elusive truths, but also about 'the paralysis of encyclopedic doubt.'
It’s a sprightly hyperlocal caper that is also, intentionally or not, a Notes and Comment on the fragile state of urban intellectual masculinity ... One of the novel’s charms is uncovering the vulnerable ornaments—wacky statues, call girls on 11th Avenue, subterranean oyster restaurants—of an increasingly 'Big Box Manhattan.'
While The Fact Checker is uneven, it’s a fun and quick read, and it does raise some of the most relevant questions du jour: What is a fact? What is truth? And who gets to decide?
The fact-checker’s efforts to find out if anyone’s heard from Sylvia are amusing and picaresque—and indeed, The Fact Checker is a comic novel—but I still found myself yearning for more intrigue, for the drama and absurdity to be ratcheted up. By the time the fact-checker has made it to New Egypt’s farm in New Jersey, ready to cause some real trouble in the name of his quest, much of the novel’s space has been taken up by quiet misadventures, and the big finale doesn’t quite land as hard as it should ... Still, the narrator of this debut novel has a cutting, incisive voice, and his shaggy story entertains—akin to something a friend might tell you over a couple of beers. He’s an interesting guy to spend time with, even if his story falls a bit flat on the page.
The pedantry of this self-appointed detective is a source of humor, as he not only corrects everyone’s mistakes but fills the narrative with needless factual specifics ... But though the persnickety caution is amusing, it yields a tame and anticlimactic ending. Mr. Kelley could have revved up the craziness of his plot and gone for something conspiracy-laden and Pynchonian. He instead is determined to abide by the rules of realism.
The Fact Checker follows a more pedestrian narrative path ... The climax... is underwhelming, but arguably, it must be ... Kelley’s protagonist doesn’t save the day; he doesn’t even understand it. This makes The Fact Checker a book that is intensely aware of its time. Perhaps we need more subtle comedies like this to help us comprehend what has happened to the truth.
In his sort-of-mystery debut, with understated humor and zippy prose, former New Yorker fact-checker Kelley is a fluid and funny writer, divertingly digressing on the nature of fact-checking and filling out a backstory for the narrating Fact Checker, who, both well-informed and hilariously unaware, is as charmingly pedantic as a character could be.
Kelley is a former fact checker for The New Yorker, providing excellent insider knowledge for this novel ... Kelley’s debut is poignant, funny, and full of the quirky characters that make life interesting.
Kelley’s droll and pithy narration propels the story, as does the impressive plotting as the narrator uncovers clues about illicit opioid sales at the farmer’s market, which he worries is connected to Sylvia’s disappearance. Readers will be swept up.
[A] mostly charming debut ... Most of this novel is wonderful, but there are a few serious caveats. One, there’s an early giveaway of the outcome of one of the narrator’s central quests, which dilutes its interest for the reader. Two, there is a disgusting and totally uncalled-for scene of gore, sure to turn off readers of the vegetarian persuasion. Somehow, after that nightmarish interlude, nothing seems as funny, and the close is a bit of a fizzle ... This comic novel opens brilliantly but goes a mite awry by the end. Still, a bravura debut.
