I really wanted to like this, but I struggled to get through it. The character felt too pretentious, and the plot felt flat to me.

I got such mixed reviews on this. I have dated a George so I almost felt perfectly victimized by it but was also so bored as I felt I was reading my own life.

This is certainly a complex and polarizing novel. My friends and I constantly discuss how women are born accepting pain, and men find their own ways to try and experience it, then shout “I’m the victim.” George is that man. He’s mediocre but he’s been told his masculinity is all he needs. I understand the attempt at the dissection here, but I don’t think people are ready or even care for that dissection, as we’re tired of hearing about mediocre men. I personally think the execution could’ve been a lot better.

"The Book of George" by Kate Greathead is a Character Study of Millennial Masculinity!

When I began this immersion read, I thought I'd made a horrible mistake by requesting "The Book of George". Seriously. I even set it aside for two months deciding if I wanted to pick it up again. Eventually, I did and you might say, George began to grow on me.

George is quite a character and you may recognize him. He's good-looking, smart, witty, and has great potential but he's his own worst enemy. He has tons of opportunities but motivation has never found a home in his life. He's happy one minute, sullen the next, snarky, makes snide remarks, pushes those closest to him away and if anyone knows what a mess he is, it's George. And, he's the first one to admit it...

So why did I enjoy the heck out of this story?

I love the satirical side of this characterization. Let's face it, George is not a star but you can't help rooting for him. For some crazy reason, you care about him. He's that relative, friend, or co-worker who does something eye-rolling or off-putting that you explain away by saying, "Oh, that's just George, being George!" Right?!

Do you recognize George now?

The best of my immersion read was the audiobook and the excellent narration of Blair Baker. She hit all the right notes in all the right places and she nailed the voice of George. I think it's also worth mentioning that this is a book about a man named George written and narrated by women. They brought George to life in a way that made him feel familiar to me.

I enjoyed "The Book of George" much more than I thought I would when I began and I know this won't be a book for everyone. After all, George is an acquired taste. For me with its satiric humor and ridiculous George moments, it was just what I needed! 4.25⭐

Thank you to Henry Holt and Co., Macmillan Audio, and Kate Greathead for a DRC and an ALC via NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Congrats to Kate Greathead, whose very funny novel The Book of George manages to ask and answer: what if you had a book kind of like The World According to Garp, except Garp’s mother was terrible, and Garp started off okay and then fell lower and lower as his laziness and obtuseness undercut his privileges—also what if he had a cancer scare based on a tiny ball of toilet paper getting stuck in his bum? A different flavor of the toxic masculinity satire of Rejection and, not coincidentally, The Great Man Theory.

The authorial voice made the story a simple read. However, the actual story was a bore. Things happened to George, and the passiveness of his character made me uninterested in his story. I couldn’t care to finish it.

This was an interesting book that described the life of a man named George from childhood to his late 30s. George is ultimately a sympathetic character but can often be thoughtless (sometimes even downright rude). Greathead does a nice job of walking that line.

You have probably known a George at some point in your life. An attractive, intelligent, good-humored guy with a ton of potential…if only he could muster up some motivation and get out of his own way. In The Book of George, Kate Greathead paints an intimate portrait of millennial manhood through a series of vignettes following her eponymous George from childhood into his late thirties. George grows up with every advantage and opportunity but is the very definition of “failure to launch”: He spends years working on a half-formed novel, content to let his mother, and then his girlfriend Jenny, steer the course of his life (and appreciating them not at all for it). George is infuriating, not just to the women in his life (and to the reader), but also to himself. He’s depressed and brooding, faking it through life but not sure he’s ever going to make it – and never quite managing to care enough to do anything about it. It’s hard not to want to punch him, but it’s also hard not to root for him.

The Book of George is a thoughtful character study, bitingly funny and full of meaningful observations about modern manhood. Greathead has an obvious talent for writing and characterization; whether or not you personally know a George, the characters in this book will feel all too familiar. If you enjoy character-driven narratives that reflect the best and worst parts of the human experience, give The Book of George a try. Thank you to Henry Holt & Co. for the complimentary reading opportunity.

Books are not read in a vacuum. Therefore, your engagement and enjoyment of one is affected by your mood, daily life, and experiences. This book came right after I read another about a hapless, immature young man, and honestly I just couldn't take any more. I applaud the courage of the author to give us a character front and center that would be difficult to like on the surface, but one we end up rooting for.

Published by ‎ Henry Holt and Co. by October 8, 2024

Domestic comedies appeal to me more than domestic dramas, if only because I would rather smile than cringe. The Book of George is an appealing blend of comedy and drama, although the emphasis is clearly on comedy.

As the title implies, the book follows a man named George. The story starts when George is 12 and ends when he’s 38. In George, Kate Greathead created a harmless and hapless character, one who is sullen, inconsiderate, and self-indulgent, an ideal protagonist for a domestic comedy. He isn’t as outrageous as Ignatius J. Reilly, but he shares some of that iconic character’s laziness, indifference to appearance, and ill-timed farting.

Like Ignatius, George lives at home with his mother, although only for parts of the story. George’s mother Ellen kicked his father Denis out of their Manhattan home when George was fourteen (Denis was dipping into Ellen’s trust fund to feed his shopping addiction). George does not see him often because, like most things, paternal visits feed the anxiety and depression that will characterize George’s life.

George attends college in Connecticut. He writes poems in a half-hearted effort to find an identity, but (despite having one published in a campus literary journal) abandons writing after concluding that’s he’s aping the style of David Berman. At a party to celebrate his poem’s publication, he realizes that “his own cohort’s lack of a group identity suddenly seemed pathetic. What did George and his friends have in common beyond being lumped together in the same dorm when they were eighteen?”

Random chance can produce friendships as strong as any other, but it doesn’t occur to George that he would need to develop a passion for something and join with people who share that passion if he wants to share a group identity. George’s search for an identity, as an individual or part of a cohort, becomes the novel’s continuing theme.

When a mysterious mass moves over his head one night, George views it as a celestial sign and decides to major in philosophy. He’s drawn to Schopenhauer, whose mother regarded him as “irritating and unbearable” despite his good heart. George is much the same. Perhaps for that reason, he believes that Schopenhauer wasn’t the “deeply cynical pessimist” that history has judged him to be. George recognizes his own cynical pessimism and sometimes makes an effort to change, but he also feels a need to be true to himself, even if his self isn’t someone he likes.

Having a degree in philosophy qualifies George to get a job as a waiter. He isn’t competent but he meets a waitress named Jenny who plans to attend law school. While they are dating, George begins working for his uncle in the financial industry, a brief career that gives George further opportunity to sit in judgment of the rest of the human race. The other traders focus on getting rich during the week and partying on weekends. George concludes (perhaps wisely) that they are not his people, but what group of people would claim Geoge as one of their own?

George maintains and on-and-off relationship with Jenny for more than a decade after college. More than once they break up and reunite. George’s inability to commit remains a barrier to a lasting relationship. In Jenny’s view, George’s greatest character flaw is “his absentminded disregard for others, his resistance to doing anything that posed the slightest inconvenience to him.”

When she eviscerates George’s character, Jenny hopes he will defend himself, but he tells her she’s right and that she deserves better. That George won’t stand up for himself makes him even less appealing to women, a fact that will be apparent to the reader even if George remains indifferent to how others perceive him.

The turning point in their relationship occurs when George and Jenny go on a road trip. They spend some unplanned weeks with a fellow named Dizart who lived with George’s parents for a time during his childhood and may have been having an affair with his mother. Dizart encourages George to take up writing. When George heeds his advice, the reader wonders whether he has finally found a passion that will motivate him to get out of bed (as opposed to antidepressants that don’t change his mood but rob him of erections).

George believes Jenny takes his depression personally, but there are many other aspects of George’s personality that trouble Jenny. She scolds him for poking holes in people rather than building them up. “It makes you feel better about yourself,” she tells him. “George couldn’t dispute this. He did not want to be such a person.” Yet change doesn’t come easily. It isn’t clear whether George will be a better person by the novel’s end.

None of this seems funny, but Greathead finds humor in George’s droll reactions to the world he inhabits. He attends a pre-wedding celebration and considers “this idiotic aspect of American culture: the aggressively self-celebratory nature of marking ordinary milestones as if they were some kind of hard-won victory or unique life accomplishment.” He returns to live with his mother, where he is soon joined by a pregnant sister who can’t handle her husband’s presence in her home. Asked to watch over a woman’s baby for a short time, George finds after a trip to the hospital that he is ill-equipped for parenting.

George stumbles through life, finding and quitting jobs but never finding one he likes. His best moment comes when he is cast in a Superbowl commercial that takes advantage of his grumpy face. If failed relationships and family deaths are excluded, his worst moment comes when he is bombarded with judgmental emails from strangers who mistake him for his namesake uncle, an English professor who lost his job due to relatively minor incidents of sexual harassment. Judging and condemning strangers is a widespread hobby in the age of the internet.

The novel ends as postmodern domestic novels do, abandoning their characters mid-life without resolving their issues. The novel’s interest lies in its characterization of George of a man without direction who suffers from deficient introspection. Notwithstanding George’s degree in philosophy, he seems uninterested in examining his life and finding ways to change. He has a fairly easy life but can’t appreciate his good fortune. He doesn’t realize that women regard him as handsome, that he might be able to exploit the acting gig he lucked into, or that he has benefitted from at least modest privilege associated with white New Yorkers who get carried through life by friends and family members.

Making fun of people might be mean, but readers can take a guilty pleasure in laughing at George as he drifts from one circumstance to another. George might be right when he says that he doesn’t deserve Jenny, a woman who is light years more advanced in the art of social interaction. Yet George is far from evil. Like Schopenhauer, he has a kind heart even if his attitude is insufferable. When George commits an unexpected act of kindness near the novel’s end, it does not signal a change but a moment in which George reveals a part of himself that he usually conceals. George’s character traits make him an interesting and sympathetic person, one whose life is worth a visit by readers who are looking for a chuckle.

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"The Book of George" attempts to explore deep themes of identity and self-discovery but ultimately falls short. While the premise has potential, the execution feels lackluster, with a meandering plot that often loses focus. The characters, particularly the protagonist, lack sufficient depth, making it hard to connect with their struggles. The pacing is uneven, and many scenes feel drawn out, failing to hold the reader's attention. The writing is occasionally engaging, but the overall narrative feels disjointed and underdeveloped. While the book has moments of insight, it doesn’t fully deliver on its promise, leaving much to be desired.

While I did like this book a lot, I didn't really see the revelatory qualities in it that so many reviewers and readers are touting. I thought it was incredibly well written, seeing as such a hopeless and annoying main character would normally become utterly intolerable after just a few chapters. Greathead absolutely conquered something there. But it also spoke to the uselessness of so many men in this world these days, and how they're only as strong as the incredible women who inexplicably stand beside them.

The book about millennial masculinity that we never thought we actually wanted. The Book of George is witty and insightful--it is one that I kept thinking about when I wasn't reading it.

The Book of George by Kate Greathead is absolutely focused on the life of a guy called George, but the most interesting character was George’s mother. Or more specifically, the bit that had me intrigued, was George’s relationship with his mother, Ellen – fraught, inadequate, over-bearing, intense… you could throw any number of words at it, and they’d probably fit.

The story begins with George as a young boy –

George struggled to grasp the nuances of his mother’s contempt, but it was the beginning of his awareness of a problem in his parents’ marriage that had to do with his father’s love of expensive clothes.

And then –

By the time he and Cressida were teenagers, Ellen seemed to view them as fully formed people who were going to do what they were going to do. She supported their endeavors and applauded their successes, but their accomplishments were not a particular source of pride for her. Nor was she inclined to interpret their struggles as a referendum on her mothering.

George is spectacularly self-centred, lacks any self-awareness and drifts through life completely blind to his privilege.

George knew he shouldn’t be surprised – in the middle of tenth grade he’d pretty much stopped doing homework – but still, it felt like a slight when he wasn’t accepted to a single Ivy.

I realise that I may have made this book sound unappealing – not my intention! Greathead has a dry sense of humour and all of George’s exploits are told with satirical edge.On his decision to major in philosophy at university –

George’s initial enthusiasm for Kierkegaard and Nietzsche was complicated by their popularity.

One scene, when George volunteers for a day at a primary school (and gets the ‘uncooperative child’, who really is just a kid wise to George’s bullshit), will stay with me – it was so damn funny, and George’s reflections on horses is hilariously revealing.

“Because I always get the bad horse. The difficult horse. There’s always one horse in the stable that’s trouble, and that’s the one they put me on. And some guy who works there is always like, ‘Oh, you got Aspen? Watch out!'”
Iris had been avoiding eye contact, but now she looked at George in a curious, scrutinizing way. “You just have to keep trying,” she said.
… “It’s the horse,” George repeated. “I always get the difficult one.” George was usually popular with kids. He felt like Iris had gotten a dud.

It ends with George coaxing the kid to climb onto his shoulders and touch the roof without the teacher seeing. And this is the thing about George – he’s an absolute pill but he’s sometimes fun and kind and impulsive in a way that people occasionally like, and that’s what keeps people in his life (particularly long-suffering girlfriend, Jenny).

This book is being described as a ‘…moving portrait of millennial masculinity’. Well, I hope it’s not a representation of millennial masculinity because goodness, nothing will get done… unless the world is filled with Jennys.

I received my copy of The Book of George from the publisher, Henry Holt & Company, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

3/5

This book was almost...painfully enjoyable? The subject of men is not something I am usually particularly interested in, but I was very drawn in by the blurb. And Kate Greathead did a fantastic job delivering on the intrigue of this one. I thought George was the absolute worst and had no redeeming qualities. I have a hard time being empathetic towards subpar men who are inconsiderate and lazy. However, Greathead's portrayal was insightful and authentic. Justice for Jenny!

I really enjoyed this book -- I loved following George through the years and different aspects of his life. I loved the scope of this book, and getting to know George so thoroughly. Despite wanting to shake him many times, I found him very endearing.

George and I are almost the same age, so it was fun to read him experience things around the same age that I did.

I will definitely check out what Kate Greathead writes next!

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book!

Kate Greathead’s The Book of George follows two decades in the life of George, a man whose endless potential is matched only by his knack for falling short. Through his relationships — with Jenny, his endlessly patient girlfriend, and his mother, who offers support despite her exasperation — George’s story unfolds with moments of wit and unexpected depth. Caught between self-awareness and self-sabotage, George’s journey offers a glimpse into the messiness of human connection and the challenge of living up to one’s own expectations.

I think the important thing isn’t that George is a man or that you might know a George. Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. Maybe *you* are a George, or maybe you’ll meet a George someday. Actually, I think this might be a misstep in the publisher’s summary of the book — the point isn’t about whether you know a George. The point is to see George as a person navigating our society…and examine society through that familiar and hopefully sympathetic but critical lens.

It’s about the expectations we place on ourselves around success — what it looks like, how it’s measured — and the idea of happiness, and whether it aligns with those expectations. Throughout the book, we see these little pockets of community that shape George’s journey: his family, his college buddies, his girlfriend, and then his family again. George is goofy but tender. The potential that he’s meant to have, is it something he genuinely sees brimming within himself, or is it the idea that’s placed there from others and societal expectations? Sure, he’s bumbling. Sure, he’s a little helpless. But he’s also earnest, caring, and tries so hard to figure things out, constantly self-analyzing. Isn’t that what we’re all doing, in some way?

The Book of George was quietly sharp, with funny moments generously peppered throughout and beautifully bridges the gap between lighter fare and heavier themes. It’s a story that lingers, and I found myself reflecting on the people we are and the people we might become — at any time in our lives.

The Book of George by Kate Greathead* is a train wreck you can't look away from. George is a grown man who can't quite get his life together. He's funny, he's endearing, he's enraging, he's hard to be around. Many of us know a George in real life and this novel dug deep into how a person can turn out this way. I couldn't put it down! It felt a little Katherine Heiny mixed with Dolly Alderton's Good Material.

Oh George... What a dysfunctional, flawed, commitment-phobe, frustrating character you are! This story is charming and whimsical, told from a very unique male perspective and while I wouldn't want to date George, I was quite taken by his story. Literary fiction lovers who enjoy coming of age stories should give this a read; I'd love to read more books by this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for this ARC.

I am so thankful to Henry Holt Books, Kate Greathead, and Netgalley for granting me advanced access to this galley before publication day. I really enjoyed the dialogue and plot of this book and can’t wait to chat this one up with my friends!