The Book of George by Kate Greathead
thank you to Henry Holt for the chance to read this novel early by sending me an advanced copy. on bookshelves October 8.
Overview: George is a genius. Then he's a man-child. A predictable tragedy that befalls many precocious children. George's life fails to launch after college. He meets a girl that would give him her entire world but he squanders it one careless, dirty dish at a time. He's incapable of caring for himself, of doing for himself, of making things happen for himself. Or maybe incapable is the wrong word. George simply refuses to do it. The Book of George is hilarious, but it's also a quiet tragedy of every day life. Overall: 4.5

Characters: 5 If An Abundance of Katherines grew up, it would become The Book of George, and I find that uniquely delicious. George is a brainy, awkward child. Then he's an average college student, paralyzed by perfectionism and indecision. He's unable to choose a path, doesn't devote himself to a career–even when his girlfriend takes on supporting him to allow him to write full time, an unproven voice. George spends the entire novel depending on others because he can. Largely, he lives with his mother or with his girlfriend, in what is essentially her apartment. George fails to launch because he fails to try, and he is enabled in this pursuit. George is infuriating, but there's just enough to keep you hoping he'll get his shit together as the decades go on.
George's world is mostly filled by his family and Jenny. George and Jenny date various times over the course of the novel. They love each other, but as the book observes at one point, there's a certain doom in their original dynamic. Meeting so young, being so impressionable settled bad patterns into the bones of their relationship. It's fascinating to watch the problems develop from this original symptom. Jenny is framed as maybe not the brightest, overly well intentioned, but a large part of that seems to be George simplifying who she is in the service of his own narrative. This creates an interesting layer to the characterization in the novel. His sister is the biggest advocate for their breakup, from her firm belief that Jenny believes more. This says horrible things about me, but George's older sister Cressida might be the character I relate to most. His mother struggles with enabling George out of love and being incredibly frustrated with the way he lives his life. It is all so painfully realistic.

Plot: 4 The book takes place almost as a series of vignettes scattered across the decades of George's life. Sometimes, they come from a single year, sometimes a span of a few that run together. For each chunk of life there's a few scenes paired together that exemplify where George is at in life. You never know who George is going to have in his life, where he's going to live, or how he's going to make money when you get dropped down in a new phase. This allowed Greathead to take a very slice of life approach while keeping the pacing up.

Writing: 5 Greathead has a command of voice that truly blew me away. Especially in a third person novel, there's a rarity in books achieving characters that fully explode off the page like George does. This is somewhat ironic considering that the whole concept of George is that he's any millennial man. He's an animated archetype. The start of the flap copy literally reads, "If you haven't had the misfortune of dating a George, you know someone who has." She does a fantastic job of building out a world and progressing through it in a way that reveals all of George's foibles while making him compelling.
It's funny that there seems to be a trend this year in books written by women about lost, child-like millennial men fumbling their light in the tunnel relationships and their careers and everything else in life. Dolly Alderton's latest novel, Good Material, also comes to mind. Perhaps, this is because the final chapter gives the girlfriend the final word.

I adored this author’s debut novel “Laura & Emma” so was thrilled to get an advance of her new book from NetGalley. Love him, hate him, cringe at him - George is a fully drawn character that I won’t forget (maybe I even dated him in college?). I was entertained throughout as the life of George unfolds from childhood to mid-life - I love books that tell the story of a life. This book is big on character, light on plot - the perfect balance for this reader. I can’t wait until other readers get to meet George.

This was good! George is now the new descriptor for the white, clueless, self centered millennial man. I shout to the heavens, KAREN! And the masses instantly understand the reference and recoil. This character study is absolute perfection. I know soooo many Georges - hell, my brother is GEORGE!!! And yet you still like George, you can't help yourself, even though George is downright intolerable and you just FEEL for everyone surrounding him. The writing was simply fantastic, I was never bored and just sat back for the ride.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

While I enjoyed the author's writing style and appreciated the format of seeing the MC, George, at various points of his life, I think this is a book that just wasn't for me. I had little interest in George as a character - maybe he reminded me of an ex-boyfriend or two - and found myself rolling my eyes by his antics and interactions with others. He was truly an unlikable character, which I know is kind of the point, but I kept reading in hopes that he would have more character development and felt like by the end of the book, there was actually very little, which had me feeling disappointed.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the digital ARC.

4.5 Stars

This was a very interesting character study of "George". We follow him as he boards at college and navigates life into his late thirties. A drug that is given for anxiety and depression is mentioned a few times in the book, so we get a glimpse into the fact that he "has issues". He can't seem to focus on a plan of any sort and execute whether it's meaningful employment, romantic relationships, or even to box up his childhood bedroom when the house is being sold and the movers are coming tomorrow. He'd most likely get caught up in playing a game on the GameBoy device he unearthed until he passed all the levels, or taking a long nap. He takes people for granted, makes snarky jokes/comments rather than give kudos to people who deserve it, and has philosophical insights- albeit often cynical. He can also be thoughtless and selfish. While this all sounds negative, this realistic composite of a man with psychological issues was very thought-provoking, as these unattractive traits can be found in many people we know, and even inside ourselves. His long-suffering girlfriend Jenny played a great counterpoint to George's personality, as well as his mother Ellen, who both held George to account for his failings. It was possible to sympathize with George's character because he received the criticism, understood his imperfections, was apologetic...although he was apt to fail again. Many of his cynicisms rang true and were humorous. This was a book that exceeded my expectations.

Thank you to the publisher Henry Holt & Company who provided an advance reader copy via NetGalley.

I tried multiple times to get into this book, and I couldn’t get farther than page 50. It felt like the story dragged and I couldn’t find something interesting to latch onto in order to continue reading. The story follows George in different stages of his life.

Thank you for sending me an ARC in exchange for a review.

loved this… laughed out loud several times which is rare for me! george is not “likeable” but he is a little lovable

An incredibly well-written book spanning almost four decades. It was so interesting to see how real life events unfolded in George's personal life. The characters are all wonderfully crafted. I look forward to Greathead's next book.

Thank you to the publisher for my e-copy.

Ooof this book hit close to home in all the worst best ways. George was a complete asshole who couldn’t find happiness no matter what he did. George is my ex, down to the places he and Jenny lived. Wow.

I will post on 8/1/24
Thanks to @netgalley and @henryholtbooks for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
Millennial George has parents and a sister that care about him. He graduated from college, but can’t settle on a career. He seems to be a free spirit riddled with anxiety. He is likable, and we all know someone like him. George will never be homeless or hungry, because someone is always there to help him. He even had a long-term girlfriend he could not commit to when she declared she wanted to have a child.
I was rooting for George to get his act together, and enjoyed reading a very realistic tale of a good person during two decades of their life. He was in college during 911 and the story ended with COVID.

What a strange novel this one is! Glad I read it thru NetGalley, characters are interesting but also frustrating. But I guess that is the point

The Book of George is a portrait of an uninspired man of millennial heritage. George is the protagonist in this novel. He moves in and out of a series of blundering romantic episodes with Jenny, his long suffering girlfriend, while he also searches haphazardly for a professional identity. For anyone other than a millennial, George would be a tragic hero. But George doesn’t try hard enough to be tragic. He haplessly treads water as he watches the collapse of the twin towers, a great recession, and COVID stream past him. George’s well developed character in Greathead’s novel is nuanced, not pigeonholed into a generational milieu by gender or situation. He is brilliantly designed to present a portrait of his position in the world that a reader can experience without an accompanying lecture. Great novels about generations do this with their characters. For examples, one need only think about Fitzgerald’s Gatsby or Hemingway’s Jake Barnes, both of them flawed, haunted by inner turmoil, and trapped in their lost generation. Greathead’s prose beautifully paints a portrait of George, focusing on his individual strengths and weaknesses, as opposed to his social circumstances. A reader of any generation can easily identify with George’s skirmishes with anger and Jenny’s deep irrational love for George. In the end, the reader wants to go back to the first page and read the entire novel again in order to soak up all the delicate images hiding in Greathead’s words about the millennial ennui that George and Jenny experience.

This book was absolutely precious, but I think just not my cup of tea. I loved all of the characters though!

I really, sincerely loved this book. George is a mess, no doubt about it, but he has redeemable qualities. He is self-aware and “trying” to fix himself, but for a variety of reasons, he can’t seem to pull himself together. He has promise and he has talent, he just fails to use it in a way that is productive. I think that, in some ways, we all have a little bit of George in us; maybe that’s what made me sympathetic towards him. Or perhaps we don’t all have a little bit of George in us and I am just The Problem… Who’s to say!

The description of the book says that we all know a George. That’s true. I’ve known several, to varying degrees. I’ve dated a George, I’ve been friends with a George, I’ve been a George. I saw a lot of myself and a lot of my friends in this book. I appreciated the fact that, while characters did try to steer him in the right direction, the book never really tried to “fix” him. He had moments of massive failure and moments of sweet redemption, just like he would in real life. I wonder if my tolerance for George speaks to the type of person I am. Maybe I’m too much like Jenny (George’s on-again-off-again girlfriend). Maybe we’re all a mix of both.

Thank you so much to Kate Greathead for writing this wonderful book, and thank you to Henry Holt and Co. as well as NetGalley for providing me the opportunity to read it early.

I liked how complex the characters were- you love to hate them and hate to love them. However, I just did not enjoy the plot. I felt as though it was too long for the point the author was trying to make.

The eponymous character, George, is a caricature of millennial males: an often-insufferable young man who cannot get out of his own way, squandering his potential with his inability to commit to anything or anyone. He is not a particularly lovable character—his narcissism, cynicism, brooding anger, and sullenness make up some of his annoying flaws—but I could not help pulling for him a little. Not only does he disappoint his mother and his long-suffering girlfriend, Jenny, but he is, perhaps, even more disappointed in himself, yet he cannot seem to stop himself from saying and doing the things that alienate people. Told with sharp, often dry, humor, this perceptive and tender character study is often hilarious and overarchingly sad at the same time as we follow George through the first two decades of his adulthood. Engaging story and solid writing.

Thank you to NetGalley, Henry Hold & Co., and Ms. Greathead for making this advance reader copy available for review. The expected publication date is October 8, 2024.

I'm having a hard time rating this one. I liked the writing style and structure, and enjoyed following along through different periods of George's life. I do think this was well told, realistic, and authentic, but I did not like George at all. He had no redeeming factors for me. I found him selfish and inconsiderate and he had no character growth. I would have much rather read about Jenny the entire time, who was complex and interesting. A lot of reviewers claim that you either know a George or have dated a George, but I am neither because I cannot stand this type of incompetent personality. It was still a good read, but I would have rather followed a different character.

I think this was too on the nose as lit fic goes. George just wasn't an overall compelling character to anchor the entire book around.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

The Book of George by Kate Greathead is the story of the life of a boy named George. The writing style of author is very accessible and made this book a pleasant read. The character development in the book is also very good and parts of the book are quite funny.

This book is a character study. While I enjoyed getting to know George and his friends, I felt that the book lacked a plot and conflict. At times, I struggled to continue reading the book but ultimately finished it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The publisher's blurb for The Book of George makes George sound fairly unlikeable. Maybe that would be the case in real life, but I enjoyed the person that Kate Greathead writes about in this story that covers his life from about age 12 to almost 40. George isn't a completely pathetic character, he just has very little motivation, or maybe it's not placed in the right areas. We meet his father, mother, sister, and long-term girlfriend Jenny, and begin to understand better why he might be the way that he is. Jenny provides much of the motivation that George lacks, and later on, George's mother and sister are his rescuers. The book does have some humor, but often it's presented in a humor-tinged poignant way. I'd like to hold out hope that George was eventually learning to take the reigns and not just give up, as shown by his making multiple attempts to get a dead squirrel out of a car engine.

Thank you to Henry Holt and Co. and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on October 8, 2024.