Who Would Like This Book:
If you love your fiction strange, ambitious, and loaded with inventive world-building, Bubblegum is your jam. Think alternate universe with adorable (and disturbingly abused) flesh-and-blood robot pets, a narrator who chats with inanimate objects, and layers of wit reminiscent of Vonnegut or George Saunders. Fans of maximalist, idea-rich novels with meta-narrative flourishes, dark humor, and a splash of philosophical weirdness - especially lovers of Infinite Jest or 2666 - will feel right at home here. If you’re looking for something you’ve truly never read before, this is a rare treat.
Who May Not Like This Book:
It’s a dense, sprawling novel - think marathon, not sprint. The stream-of-consciousness, sometimes meandering prose can frustrate, and the plot often takes a back seat to tangents and meta-commentary. There are unsettling scenes of cruelty that might not sit well with every reader, and the intentionally unhurried pacing may test your patience. If you prefer conventional structure, traditional character arcs, or just want a brisk read, Bubblegum may not be your flavor.
About:
Bubblegum by Adam Levin is a dense, full-on, experimental literary fiction that delves into the life of Belt Magnet, a man who still lives with his father and struggles with simple adult tasks. The book focuses on revealing Belt's life and his encounters with eccentric characters who engage in long-winded conversations about various topics. The narrative is largely written in a stream of consciousness style, interspersed with mentions of media that either exist in altered forms or are completely fabricated in the alternate world depicted in the book.
The story meanders through flashbacks, manuals, and transcripts of bizarre video collages, while also incorporating gruesome scenes of animal-like creatures being tortured. Despite the lack of a strong plot, the book is praised for its humor, philosophical depth, and linguistic prowess, challenging readers with its unconventional narrative style and thought-provoking content.
Genres:
Tropes/Plot Devices:
Topics:
Notes:
Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
The book contains content warnings for animal torture, themes of mental illness, and unsettling violence.
From The Publisher:
"Adam Levin is one of our wildest writers and our funniest, and Bubblegum is a dazzling accomplishment of wit and inventiveness." -George Saunders
"Levin's brains may have earned him a cult...but here he swells to a democratic reach. Give him a try sometime. His gate's wide open." - Garth Risk Hallberg, The New York Times Book Review
The astonishing new novel by the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award-winning author of The Instructions.
Bubblegum is set in an alternate present-day world in which the Internet does not exist, and has never existed. Rather, a wholly different species of interactive technology--a "flesh-and-bone robot" called the Curio--has dominated both the market and the cultural imagination since the late 1980s. Belt Magnet, who as a boy in greater Chicago became one of the lucky first adopters of a Curio, is now writing his memoir, and through it we follow a singular man out of sync with the harsh realities of a world he feels alien to, but must find a way to live in.
At age thirty-eight, still living at home with his widowed father, Belt insulates himself from the awful and terrifying world outside by spending most of his time with books, his beloved Curio, and the voices in his head, which he isn't entirely sure are in his head. After Belt's father goes on a fishing excursion, a simple trip to the bank escalates into an epic saga that eventually forces Belt to confront the world he fears, as well as his estranged childhood friend Jonboat, the celebrity astronaut and billionaire.
In Bubblegum, Adam Levin has crafted a profoundly hilarious, resonant, and monumental narrative about heartbreak, longing, art, and the search for belonging in an incompatible world. Bubblegum is a rare masterwork of provocative social (and self-) awareness and intimate emotional power.
Reader Stats (8):
Want To Read (8) |
What can you read after
Bubblegum?
When you click the Amazon link and make a purchase, we may receive a small commision, at no cost to you.
