A more annoying premise for a book is, frankly, hard to imagine. And yet, here I am, recommending it. What’s good about a novel with a plotline so insipid it borders on openly hostile? Well, for starters, it’s funny—a rare and cherishable quality in contemporary literature ... It also contains some of the most accurate—and accurately abject—depictions of the experience of using the internet ever captured in fiction ... establishes Castro as a psychologically precise chronicler of life online ... these acidic tangents about the state of online discourse are stingingly exact ... While the "Internet novel" is now its own subgenre, it’s still rare to see these commonplace experiences of being online rendered quite so realistically, with an eye toward the unflattering, humiliating, and true ... People often dismiss writing tightly focused on the self as 'navel-gazing,' but the flamboyant, defiant solipsism of Castro’s protagonist isn’t quite that. If anything, 'anus-gazing' would be a more appropriate descriptor, considering the narrator is pooping, thinking about poop, or emailing his friend about poop for a remarkably large portion of the novel. All the scatalogical talk blends together with all the screen-time descriptions—sometimes the protagonist is both pooping and browsing Instagram—suggesting a connection: In the end, it’s all the same shit.

Compact, brilliant, and very funny ... Determinedly accurate and not a little uncanny ... If all of this sounds a little grim, it is. Kind of ... But also it’s exuberant, light at all the right times, and very, very funny. Castro closely catalogs nearly every step of his narrator’s writing process ... The Novelist pays explicit homage to its major influences ... The Novelist finds its comedy in the new self-hobbling patterns spawned by social media. Which are not exceptional for Castro, or for his novelist. Perhaps this is why the novel is so affecting. We know its sting. We are complicit. Technology is taking our attention, too.

What’s incredible is not that Castro keeps this up for the entirety of the book, but how well it works ... The Novelist’s observations about using social media are accurate, but where the novel really exceeds the standard criticism is in turning this distraction into the drumbeat of modern life, on top of which a compelling guy riffs about life, literature, and pooping ... Castro has an ear for comic timing and eye for the kind of observations that linger just below consciousness ... uses what could be a tedious framework to unfurl a poignant backstory about a sensitive kid who struggled with addiction, got in trouble with the police, and got sober, while still struggling with the fundamental questions of how to live and be an artist.

... excels in ways other than this conceptual premise; the novel features exquisite moments that blend vivid description with abject, ridiculous situations. Nobody writes ass-wiping like Jordan Castro ... Castro’s shit immerses readers in the visceral experience of the present. He extends this thorough description to other moments, as his prose reveals the intricacies of shame and abjection in everyday life, where the protagonist scrolls through Instagram feeds of vague acquaintances, reflects on past mistakes, and fails to write his novel ... There is a compelling formal unity to the book, as it shows how fictional works always partake of multiple genres simultaneously; a character thinks they’re living in a comedy, only to find tragedy on every page ... Jordan Castro writes well. Across his debut novel, he demonstrates technical skill, able to mingle genres and details into compelling and pleasurable prose. In the process, he reveals that — even if his protagonist doesn’t know it — there is so much more to a novel than autofictional backflips or life that you can get wrong.

... 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.

... an engaging reflection on the anxieties of writing autofiction, and of the genre as it exists today. This is where The Novelist shines—not only in its exploration of the conventions of the genre, but in his experimentation with it as well. This novel, if at times tedious in its granular approach, breathes air into a tired form ... very little of The Novelist is devoted to the nitty gritty details of the narrator’s substance abuse. This is an inspired choice; it’s a feat to write a novel about addiction without including the particulars. These off-camera details of the narrator’s addiction become both the elephant in the room, and something else altogether—everything about him is in some way informed by his addiction. In refusing to write a drug novel, he is nonetheless doing just that ... By bringing attention to all that may be lobbed his way, those critiques are blunted in the process—if Castro has already acknowledged any controversial threads here, what is left to do? This seems to be a trend in fiction where any controversies are explained away within the text. This is made doubly so with autofiction, where separating the author from the narrator can already be a difficult task. Despite this, Castro continues to lean into the knottedness of autofiction at his own whim ... Ultimately, Castro surrenders to the greater pressures at play in the genre, and welcomes the collapse between the various competing forces in the novel. Between the fictitious Jordan Castro and the narrator and the author, between fiction and real life and all that comes in between. In rejecting autofiction, The Novelist ultimately welcomes it.

With a wry knowingness reminiscent of Ben Lerner’s characters, Castro’s protagonist spends more time texting friends about his ablutions than writing and even more time fantasizing about completing his novel than writing it ... The metafictional elements do work supremely well. This is a confident, unique take on autofiction, a form that lends itself well to Castro’s focus on the endless distractions of modern life, and it is hilarious and enthralling, to boot.

The meticulous accounting of a day in the life of a struggling Baltimore novelist ... Castro manages to trace the process of his protagonist’s distracted thoughts. Their quotidian miniaturism bears the influence of Nicholson Baker and Lucy Ellmann, making for a welcome relief from the novelist’s obsession with the internet. Struggling creative types will undoubtedly see themselves in this confident and surprising chronicle.

This novel meticulously tracks the myriad ways a writer can procrastinate or be distracted while working on a book ... In this relatively short book, a lot of time is spent on bodily functions ... While the mundane elements of the book can at times be overwhelming, there are moments that feel genuinely clever ... The novel opens up in its second half, with the narrator reflecting on his sobriety, but it can be frustrating getting there ... Deadpan and scatological, this will likely be a polarizing book.