The setup is practically foolproof, but that shouldn’t discount Tulathimutte’s talent for comedy. A funny situation doesn’t always lead to funny writing, and Tulathimutte frequently proves his ability to nurse laughs even from dire, awkward, uncomfortable situations, not just from explicitly amusing ones ... At times, Tulathimutte overextends the joke: One character claims not to have an email address, which seems far-fetched for this generation. And he can take too much pleasure in ridiculing millennials, Internet trolls and even people sincere in their efforts at self-improvement. Then again, it’s a comedy — and one that is, in all respects, emotionally engaging and more than satisfying.
The unpacking of socially accepted logical fallacies might not sound like the stuff of an engaging novel, but, somehow, it is. Tulathimutte punctuates these long-winded critiques, sometimes stuffed uncomfortably into the mouths of his characters, with absurd humor and hilariously uncomfortable descriptions of sex.
This material is the stuff of easy satire, but Mr. Tulathimutte is keen to probe the underlying anxieties and insecurities of his characters, making them more empathetic and appealing than they might have been.
Where Middlemarch achieved understanding for even its most flawed characters, no one in Private Citizens rises above the level of detestable ... Maybe if Tulathimutte had allowed himself to play the classic realist narrator, his characters could have enjoyed a little more space to act. Instead, they are cramped and inert. Very little happens to or is done by them for most of the book, and the flimsy threads of plot run alongside each other rather than intersecting ... In the absence of complex characters and a detailed social world, Private Citizens is less Middlemarch and more I Love the 00s.
Private Citizens takes its title as a paradox, or as a challenge. To adapt a Jenny Holzer–ism, can people who aren’t political live exemplary personal lives? Is it possible to have politics without identity, or identity without branding? ... Tulathimutte’s realism tends to be hysterical as in ha ha, and his bouts of overplotting feel more like spitballing.
...certain books are aware of being read. Crafted but self-conscious, these books luxuriate under the reader’s eye, ready for examination. And some go further still, tautly anticipating their readers’ responses. Private Citizens, the debut by Tony Tulathimutte, is one such novel, hyperaware of its embodiment ... This voice always seems to delight in being a half-step ahead of the reader—not to mention of the characters, who are astutely observed and terribly endearing, even at their worst ... Racism in America—where the fear of others and their perceptions so often guides reactionary behavior—lingers behind the novel’s plot. And because Private Citizens, with its millennial characters, is so much a part of its time, that reality haunts its reading, too ... Where Private Citizens succeeds is in its use of over-the-top scenarios, not because that’s how life really is, but because that’s how it really feels.
Tulathimutte is a slapstick curmudgeon who goes hard on his characters, setting in store for them sufferings that run to extremes of physical disfigurement. The novel is as funny as it is dark, and things get very dark, indeed ... We know millennials as bogeychildren of alarmist trend pieces and the catchall hand-wringing of an aging commentariat. Tulathimutte is on the front line of writers showing that they’re also worthy heroes and heroines of the American novel.
Tulathimutte has an ear for the new-age language of personal empowerment that is turned to justify the selfishness of capitalism. His clever characters analyse themselves and each other — using their academic intelligence to diagnose their unhappiness. But at times this analysis is overdone ... Dialogue elsewhere is superb: the language of 'tech-bros' and 'marketing ronins' is brilliantly recreated. His pacy storytelling recalls Jeffrey Eugenides, in particular The Marriage Plot: graduates full of theory and ideals, trying them out against capitalism for the first time, each novel featuring a tall manic depressive a little like Wallace. To mention Tulathimutte in such company suggests what a promising debut this is: it may have a few weak notes, but shows prodigious talent and intelligence.
