“But by the time the first bombs fell,

we were already bored.

  We were already, already bored.”   

~ Arcade Fire “Suburbs”

I could not get this lyric from the title track of Arcade Fire’s album Suburbs out of my head while reading the newest Lars Iyer novel, My Weil. This is the story of a group of academics working on their Disaster Studies PhD projects, spend all of the novel doing everything but working on their Disaster Studies PhD projects. The group, who refer to themselves as the Collective, drink pickle backs (whisky with a pickle juice chaser) from bar to bar, play badminton, go to house parties of rich alumni, hang out in a junkyard, and genuinely fear life outside of their little bubble. They live in a dangerous Manchester, go to the second best university, and feel like their entire purpose is to avoid anything outside of their friend group. 

At the beginning of the novel, a new member is added to the Collective, one that has changed her name to Simone Weil, after the French philosopher, and is doing her best to live the life that is inspired by Weil’s work. Johnny wants to save her from this and from the dangerous situations that she gets herself into, with the same passion as a character who is trying to save a prostitute from her life of sin. While she is trying to learn compassion and grace by working outside of the friend group, the rest of the group sit around, drink, and talk about philosophy. Most of the group's conclusions and eureka moments really do not add up to much because they are constantly bored with the idea of actually applying themselves to these ideas. The only one who is doing anything close is Simone and Johnny is trying to stop this. 

Most of My Weil is interesting and funny. The first half really keeps me wondering where the entire plot is heading, and the last thirty-five pages could honestly be the beginning. At one point Johnny mentions that his PhD project feels like Zeno’s arrow, the closer he gets to the end, the further the end moves away. I feel this immensely in the second half of this novel, and I wonder what would have happened if Lars Iyer started the novel with the last thirty-five pages and built from the end. Overall I know what I was getting when I started Lars Iyer's novel, long passages with deep discussions about philosophy and applying it toward life, but I wish that My Weil was a little more concise. 

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Funny and scathing slice of Manchester academia. Great characters doing ridiculous things. Fun to be thrown into this city and see it through the characters experiences