Harry Sylvester Bird

I fully expected to love this book based on the description - “a brilliant, provocative, up-to-the-minute novel about a young white man's education and miseducation in contemporary America” who falls in love with a black woman from Nigeria and is forced to reckon with his racist upbringing and society at large? Wow, yes, sign me up. Unfortunately, I found the description far more intriguing and powerful than the book itself.

It started off strong - we begin with a teenage Harry enduring a safari in Tanzania with his unabashedly racist parents, Chevy and Wayne, who “wear their ignorance with confidence, like a God-given and indisputable birthright” - but by the halfway point (once Harry moves out), it had become something I had to push my way through, and it remained that way through the end.

I understand that Harry, especially as he ages into adulthood, is not intended to be a likable character - but he really seemed to push the boundaries of an evil cartoon caricature. I was disgusted by him throughout most of the book (in some moments, that disgust progressed to visceral, skin-crawling repulsion). One of my biggest issues with this story: I couldn't for the life of me find any reason Maryam would tolerate five minutes in his company, let alone pursue a relationship with him.

At one point, Harry recognizes Maryam's (regrettably short-lived) frustration towards him, describing her as “visibly weary of me” - coincidentally, that's exactly how I felt about him and his cowardly, gaslightly, fetishizing, self-pitying behaviors. (I could go on.) This is a man who has accepted a scholarship from a white-supremacy organization and soothed himself by telling himself that it's OK because he's not white in his heart, a man who is constantly comparing his own life to that of slaves and concluding his own circumstances are as bad if not worse. How anyone could perceive him as sympathetic is beyond me.

To be clear, I'm by no means indifferent to this book: I actively hated it. I'm a white woman, and I am open to the idea that I was supposed to hate this book. Maybe there's something that hits a little too close to home: Harry's probably the type of guy to throw a BLM sign on his front lawn, then privately vote NIMBY (and on the off chance that a black family does move in next door, well, how “exotic” for him). That all said, I just didn't find any nuance in Harry's character. Even though he's supposedly reflecting back on his choices at the end, I saw no evidence of real understanding.

Two stars because the writing itself was strong, and frankly because even though I hated this book, it's an accomplishment in that it elicited such strong feelings. (I'm very curious to see how others respond to this book.)

Thanks to NetGalley and Mariner Books for an ARC in exchange for my honest (as honest as it gets!) review.

I understand the importance of satire, and for the most part, I enjoy it as a method of elucidating things that need skewering in culture. But this novel—where a young white man is convinced he's a Black man in the wrong body—didn't quite hit the mark. The book doesn't quite make the satire biting enough, and there are long passages where the plot feels almost too earnest rather than satirical. It is gorgeously well-written, but by the end, I didn't feel like the absurdity of the premise had paid off.