I'm currently clearing out all of the books that were published in 2019-20 from my title feedback view!

A novella that is deeply, deeply in love with its narrator's voice (and itself) which became exhausting - the loopy, looping sentences, the drops of high and low culture, the social media references that will age this narrative tremendously serve only to distance the reader and narrator from the narrative. You can see this book patting itself on the back. It's tiresome and I don't recommend a page of it.

Highly entertaining and really quite funny, though I can see the writing style not being more people's cup of tea. This book manages to satirize a pretty wide variety of topics and types, taking pity on nothing and no one, including itself: it is exactly the kind of hip writing that it wryly points at within its own pages.

I have only 1 reproach, and its that the narrative voice seems more in line with the author's abilities and experience than with those of the fictional protagonist's supposed background. It's not that the unnamed prisoner -- a most unreliable narrator -- doesn't have a good story, its that he tells it as a 1st person monologue... in Ryan Chapman's voice. Makes the whole thing feel just that touch more pretentious than it needs to be. One could, however, argue that making the voice more realistic would miss the entire point of the book.

I thought that I would like this one more than I did. It is a short (novella) about prison life in which a riot occurs that appears to possibly be due to the protagonist's own making. It is meant to be satirical and dark deliberately but at times felt gratuitous and with all the usual tropes of prison life. I guess it is because those "events and characters" actually exist in prisons, but trying humor about some of the issues just doesn't do it for me.

#RiotsIHaveKnown #NetGalley #SimonandSchuster

This book was not my cup of tea. I find the stream of consciousness style a la Chuck Pahliniuk to be exhausting with very little pay off. And even with the book so short, I couldn't bring myself to get past halfway. Not for me.

I enjoyed the tone of this short novel that takes place during a prison riot. Internally, there seemed to be another riot being known in the narrator's head as he flipped from subject to subject.

Published by Simon & Schuster on May 21, 2019

As Monty Python used to say, And now for something completely different:

The unnamed narrator of Riots I Have Known is in prison, reporting on a riot that started in A Block while hoping that his lover/rapist/protegee is safe. He edits the prison literary magazine (The Holding Pen) and has barricaded himself inside the Rosenberg Media Center for Journalistic Excellence in the Penal Arts where he is following the riot on television news, HuffPost, and Instagram while reporting on events as they happen. The editor tells us that rioting by the Latin Kings and Muslim Brothers is the sort of thing that inspired Sean Hannity’s Million Concealed Weapons March. The prison’s media center, by the way, is named for its wealthy donors to “honor their twin passions for rehabilitation and computer solitaire.”

Anticipating his death and dismemberment, the editor promises to provide the definitive account of The Holding Pen in what he believes will be his final Editor’s Letter. The magazine was the warden’s idea, a journal of the arts showcasing the reform-minded prison where its editor is incarcerated. Far from relating a definitive history of anything, the editor rambles distractedly (as one might do in a riot), telling us about his life in Sri Lanka, including the formative years he spent scouting for landmines and facilitating the bribes paid by the Hilton Hotels advance man, and his later work as a hotel doorman in Manhattan. It is the latter job that earned him his nine consecutive life sentences, for reasons at which he only hints.

The editor is a self-educated man (and an erudite prisoner, as his rich vocabulary and literary/cultural references demonstrate), his education allegedly and absurdly having resulted from devouring the prison library’s editions of Kafka and cast-off paperbacks. The Holding Pen is eventually noticed by the literary world, sparking a discussion of “post-penal lit,” and reaches respectable levels of site traffic after a Republican senator condemns the journal in a speech about “the bloated welfare state.”

Riots I Have Known is a very funny sendup of trendiness in the arts and snobbishness in art criticism, including the obsession with discovering “underrepresented voices,” ketamine addicts among them. While the humor is often focused on the contrast between inmates who contribute poetry, fiction, and art to the journal and the outside world that makes a fetish of the prisoners, Ryan Chapman has fun with relationship humor, corporate corruption, and prison violence (not typically something to laugh at, but Chapman makes it work, even when he’s being stabbed with a substandard shiv). Much of the humor succeeds; some is discomforting, perhaps intentionally so.

The novel is blessedly short, so the reader is not forced to dwell for long in the narrator’s unresolved hell. I’m not entirely certain of the point Chapman intended to make, but if he only intended to make funny references to condescension by the arbiters of culture, he succeeded more often than he failed. Chapman’s approach seems to have been: Scatter your jokes with a machine gun, then get off the stage and let the audience check for blood.

RECOMMENDED

Riots I Have Known is a slice-of-prisoner-life novella. An unnamed prisoner, who is hiding alone in the prison’s Media Center during a riot, describes his two year journey within the prison walls and the riot that is occurring around him.

The narrator is the editor of the literary-lauded prison monthly magazine, The Holding Pen. The warden likes the prestige the magazine gives him and so throws money at the project. He also approves the poetry and stories within the magazine including “Mi Corazon en Fuego y Mi Plan de Fuga”. Unfortunately, neither the narrator nor the warden understands Spanish or that the poem details the poet’s escape plan. The escape, and by extension the poem, begin the riot.

The narrator casually mentions the horrors of prison life. He meets his companion McNairy by being violently raped by him. The narrator meets a long-time prisoner who has survived three famous prison riots. The narrator pays him a carton of cigarettes for three rules of surviving prison riots:
1. “Stay in your cell and lock yourself in.”
2. “Hide your cigarettes under the bed slab.”
3. “If you possess the fortitude to knock yourself unconscious, it’s a useful alibi for the exhausting post-riot investigations.”
Unfortunately, the narrator is too short of cigs to pay for the other nine rules…

While not for sensitive readers, I enjoyed Riots I Have Known. It is different from most mockumentary-type books. It is written with a literary voice. Rather than being laugh-out-loud funny, it requires some thought to see the humor, and irony, in the narrator’s situation. The book has an underlying theme that echoes One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Prison has its own culture that doesn’t work to “fix” law breakers. If anything, it encourages violence to prevent victimization by other inmates.

Whether you read it for the prison stories at a purely surface level or drill-down to the weightier themes, Riots I Have Known is an excellent short read. 4 stars!

Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with an ARC of Riots I Have Known by Ryan Chapman. In exchange I offer my unbiased review.

I have a feeling this is a case of wrong reader, right book. I’m the type of reader who enjoys a story, not a soliloquy or diatribe, and while the unnamed narrator is beyond clever and astute his wit was burdensome for me. I just don’t have the patience for satire or the perseverance for parody. I like my humor straightforward and this was dark and twisty.

I’m sure others will find this novella hilarious and thoughtful. There are certainly many pensive musings and laugh out loud absurdities but for me it was too difficult to get through all the monologues and biting commentary. Ryan Chapman is a talented author and I would gladly attempt another book by him in the future.

This book was vivid and engaging from the first lines. Chapman has a talent for both dialogue and description. A recommended fiction choice.

I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
Thanks NetGalley!

The book is narrated by an unnamed sri lankan prison inmate during a prison riot. The book is funny and yet poetic at times.
interesting read, but i'm not sure it'll ever be one of my favorites.

It's arguable that this is laugh out loud funny- there are certainly chuckles and head nodding- but there's no debate that it's clever and well written. Chapman is making fun of a lot of things using an unlikely narrator in an unnamed Sri Lankan inmate in a New York prison. Huh? That's right. This is occasionally a bit overwritten but you will keep reading. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Impressive debut novel about a Sri Lankan inmate waxing poetic with a heavy dose of satire about prison riots. The cadence of the humor took a bit for me to get into but once I settled it, I was fully in for the ride. I would be interested to hear this one on audiobook both because I sometimes find satirical novels easier to feel on audiobook but also because of the clear voice of the narrator which I think would translate well to audio.

I wasn't even sure how to rate this book. I requested this book because it sounded intriguing and it sounded like it would be funny but also thought provoking. "Smart, wry, and laugh-out-loud funny" said the reviews. In retrospect, I should have known better than to attempt a book on satire. Satire, sarcasm, and dark humor are not my thing. I like heavy/serious books, I like light/funny books, I like a very wide range of novels but I have historically never been a fan of satire. It feels off to me. If you have a point to make, make it. Don't make it in a way that's belittling and underhanded.

I know this is a point of view and completely my opinion. I also know that it's hard work to write a novel so I am going to do my best to make sure this review is not colored by my anti-satire bias as much as possible.

This is an interesting story by a Sri Lankan prison mate during a riot. He is locked in the media room in the jail and narrating the events of his life. It's mostly written in a stream of consciousness style and it weaves in and out of present day and is set against the backdrop of this big riot so there's a lot of rhythm to the story. For me, this style made the story hard to follow and I kept losing my focus. But it also added a layer of both urgency and a bit of deliriousness into the story which I felt viscerally.

Despite my dislike of satire, there were parts of this book that were just laugh out loud funny, even for me. I couldn't help myself. I shared some of them with my 14-year-old who also thought it was hilarious. There are many, many mentions of our daily lives and twitter, and kickstarter and things that are both obnoxious and so true. And while it's exaggerated of course, it never veers so of course to be unbelievable. Sadly, for our society, most of this crazy was still in the plausible range which is what made it so much more funny.

If satire is your thing, and you do not shy away from stream of consciousness novels, I am confident this will be a winner for you. It might even be one of your favorite novels of 2019.

I received an advanced copy of this in exchange for an honest review.