Antioch

After finishing Antioch my initial impression is that this is an ambitious, but ultimately flawed debut novel. Jessica Leonard took on a highly creative concept but I think the book is marred by lackluster prose and perhaps too much ambiguity. I was drawn in at first by several subjects in the book: Amelia Earhart, shortwave radio, the mystery of Vlad the Impaler...but the book kind of lost me in the middle before picking up steam at the end, albeit the book ended without providing any clear answers. Antioch is filled with mystery and deception, as the story unfolds people and events are slowly revealed to not be what they seem, beginning with a cryptic radio transmission and spiraling out until this reader could no longer trust anything he read. The writing was inconsistent, sometimes interesting but sometimes the syntax and word choice were simplistic and even amateurish in some sections (in fact between the simplicity of the prose, the unrealistic way characters behaved, and the font I actually wondered if this was a YA book at one point), and plot sometimes felt disjointed. Having read the book, I understand that Bess is an unreliable narrator, and this may account for some of the strange turbulence I found in the plot and composition, but it nevertheless this made reading the book a somewhat unpleasant experience. This may have been the author's intention, but something about how she pulled it off didn't clue me in that it was intentional until the last few chapters, and my ability to enjoy what the author was doing was diminished by what I perceived to be poor writing. This may be a deficiency with me as a reader, or it may be in the writing of the book. Overall this book just didn't seem as polished as what I'm accustomed to reading. Hey, it's a debut novel! All the same, the unreliability of the protagonist felt a bit like a Monopoly get out of jail free card to justify the confusion and plot amounting to an abrupt and ambiguous end. Yes, there were breadcrumbs of the book's conclusion scattered throughout, but the ending still felt like it came way out of left field to me. I might have liked to know a little bit more of what was going on, what was real and what wasn't. I'm sure Bess would have too, and this may be the point. But overall Antioch felt like a book too convoluted for its own good, with a journey that didn't justify the concept of the book or provide a clear ending.

More like 3 and a quarter stars. Not bad for a debut novel!
On the cover, Paul Tremblay blurbs, “Antioch is full of twists, dread, and the unsettling fog of ambiguity.”
Whoo! He right about two of those descriptors.
The dread settles on the reader from the first page in Antioch and does not let up. I appreciated that and I was all in. There are some things about Antioch I really, really liked (or I would have stopped reading it). One, the tone. Fabulous. Two, Leonard's voice. Three, the setting. A bookstore with a bar that sells craft beer (I guess mostly Fat Tire?)- I'm in. Where do I sign up?
Balanced with the things that drove me a bit batty, I get the 3 and a quarter stars rating.
To be fair, I have never written a book. I have read thousands of them. So, I plan to tread very lightly here.
First, I really liked this bit: “There was something beautiful about someone asking you to stay with them....because caring was no longer a given in the world. Despite the great universal interconnection of all things, people had still, by and large, chosen not to care.”

Things happen to Bess (coming home to lights on, doors open, bottles smashed, front lawn dug up, etc) and she barely reacts to any of them. In fact, she has no reactions to most of the action in this novel. Even losing two whole days does not have her calling a doctor for help.
For living in this town for a while, she doesn't seem to know anyone except her coworkers and she seems to greatly dislike two of them. WTF is the story with Brandon?
For no reason, there is a chapter or two written in the second person.
When a historical society manages to magically appear in town, complete with a curator who may have answers, Bess can't work hard enough to get out of there-despite claiming to be hunting for answers. In fact, most of her conversations are tempered with “hurry ups” and “I don't have all day” when in fact Bess seems to have nothing but time.
But the main problem here is the ambiguity. I don't mind an unreliable narrator, but man, no one was reliable in this story. Facts were being obscured from the reader and the ending was super unclear. I don't know. I think Leonard was going for an ending similar to The Witch here and, uh, I'm just going to leave it at that. It's a foggy reading and I found it frustrating, especially toward the ending when things should have been falling into place. I kept thinking, why are you telling us the story if you won't tell us the story?

Some things that did not have any effect on my rating, but I feel are worth mentioning. Bess Jackson is black. Jessica Leonard does not appear to be. I really try to champion OwnVoices stories. At the same time, I don't mind when female authors pen male characters and vice versa. So, that's a me problem, and I need to think on that some more.
Two, I just loved holding the copy of this book in my hand. I loved the shape and size. It's slightly taller than a normal trade paperback? I don't know who printed it for Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing, but well done!